Thursday, June 28, 2007

Glasto 2007 Review 1: The Mud Scientist Prelude

After providing us with a chemically enhanced review of the 2004 festival, our roving raver Krossie is back with some more installments in his Glastonbury romance. All photos are pulled from this deadly Flickr collection.

Michael Eavis:
Well what have you got for us in the way of mud this year my bofin-tastic friend?
Mad Scientist: Very Vell - If a vay can be found, in which, through radical agitation of the slippy mud – a partial transition can be achieved to gloopy mud we can create ze new hybridised super mud which will first of all cause zeee slip sliding avay but also trap zee victim by zeee vellies achieving a miraculous double torment for zem!
M.E:
Could it last?
MS: Ze super mud vill be highly unstable at a mol ecul ar level BUT perhaps a unique combination of ze persistent light rain with occasional short clearances it can be maintained as zeee mtestable complex… But also veeeeee vill be needing zeee many feet with wellies to go tramp, tramp, tramp and then pound and pound and pound like this, like this, like this AHA HA ha ha ha ha!
M.E. That’s my knee you’re hitting
M.S: Sorry…Its just recall ze good old daze – free reign for experiments many vict…subjects for da procedures….ja ja JA! Vell
M.E: Vell??
M.S: Vell can ve proceed with these procedures – vit this new a different type of experiment ?
M.E: Yes….I do believe it could well be possible…YARR


That’s nearly all from me on the mud. I could bleat and moan and make comparisons with the battle of the Somme or Napoleons exit from Moscow, maybe the last chopper out of Saigon 1974. But this is to be mostly about the music of which there was much – a lot of it pretty decent too! However for a brilliant general article on the buzz of Glastonbury and what it involves try Charlie Brooker’s cynical but very accurate Guardian review.

Part One

(Warning contains cursin’ like- recommended for childish readers, copyleft but maybe put in a link to my Myspace.

6.15 am – Persistent rain since 4 has killed of the last sound system – thank jah for small blessings – sleep comes…

9.30 am – Awake to an interesting roasting tent scenario
– Mr Sun has arrived?
(boffin laughing in the distance…)

10 am – 12 pm rain pours like there is no tomorrow.
Strangely there never seems to be any correlation between the weather and the appearance of the sky in Glastonbury – impossible to call it – experimental weather, mental weather!

Adopt random wander strategy -
First up Tor Dogs play their guilty pleasure cover versions on the Jazz World stage
Of course comrade Nietzsche assures us that there can be only innocence in the taking (and even giving) of pleasure.
In this case full marks Nietzsche – stinking Neil Diamond covers remain stinking Neil Diamond covers – what ever you chose to call them.
Pleasure and guilt definitely ride smoother in separate vehicles methinks.

In the new Park Stage which the younger Eavis is later to officially open - the Ralph band make a tolerable racket up to a point.
The sun arrives back.
Upgrade opinion to “decentish 70s mush”.
The sun goes
– So do I.

Wandering to the dance area for two bands I want to see the weirdly monikored !!! (chk chk chk apparently is how ya say it) and eighties acid pioneer A Guy Called Gerald.
Catch the Cribs en pasant by the other stage.
Shite!
First wander around the tents to sample random DJs.
Ok break-beat seems to rule the British dance scene for now.
Punters already pleasantly mashed going by them eyes!
Crap dance music proves yet again vastly superior to crap guitar music.

Whoops - Me boots after 5 years service spring a leak – rush off for girly wellies which serve very well for the rest of the festival. Dump boots.
Glasto tip wellies >>> any other footwear including yer sophisticated 2000 quid ultra hiking boots.

They are the dogs for squelching through any conditions.

Dance tent East.
The DJ playing when I get in is called caged baby.
He should have been
(as in shoulda been caged - baby – ah ya get my drift?!)
Of he goes and out hop
!!!
Its 4 pm for you guys but its 4 am for us…they tell us…
Jaysus these guys turn out to be quite a proposition – a 28-32 legged limbed and lithe, gay funk monster from straight outa New York city – they rock out from the first chord.
The gadging about of the gangly lead singer in his massive yello wellies and his disreptutable buddy with the weird beard are a joy to behold.
He seems to have at least four extra vertebrae and be convinced that his mike should function as a spare portable cock.
Some what in the Rapture/LCD sound system mode they duck and dive around the stage like the Happy Mondays circa 1989

on crack

“tell your friends out there we’re the best mutha fookin band in the world
he tells us bigging up their next night’s show in the Glade
(even better it was too I’m told!)
Well there ya go - now I have
– who could argue with him!?
A great start.
The sun comes out

Off across the mud track to the slightly smaller Dance Tent West…
Now who here has heard of a Guy Called Gerald?
Hmmm not many…
Who owns an early 808 state album?
Or a ground breaking piece of ambient Drum and Bass called Black Secret Technology?
To be honest I was shocked he was even playing.
I was shocked there were so many people.
But I wasn’t too shocked that it was an incredibly good gig!
His style still has much of that eighties funky percussive groove to it. In the daze before rave when house was techno and everything was subtle, funky and based on locked grooves. The tunes proceed by way of crunchy but slightly wonky industrial baselines, tinny acid squelches weaving in and out and pin point hits of 808 drum machine. The final weapon is the very occasional use of awesomely beautiful vocal samples.
He’s not adverse to throwing in lines from Detroit Grand Pubah’s sandwiches, Boogie wonder land and even an awesomely treated and isolated sample of Sylvesterout of the 1970s classic “you make my feel mighty real”?
This was the best moment for me as he froze out the entire track except that one highly treated highly pitched voice filling the tent with its
“feeeeel real, feeeeel real, feeeeel real, feeeeel real” - beat kicks in – frenzied crowd response. Finishes with a very silly version of 1988’s chart hit Voodoo Ray.
John Peel would,without doubt, have been somewhere at the back, just smiling and nodding his head…

Ah John Peel ya had to remind me!

Rant follows

(What’s the fucking deal with the John Peel stage eh eh?.

What

WHAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?

Drab indy smindy bollix from bands who’s names all start with “the”
Is this what I listened up for every night on my tiny radio with the crap medium wave signal and the telly smacking it around into a whistly mess?!?!
I don’t think so.
And here’s the news flash
YO
–Yeah John Peel did Occasionally play the Wedding present
He ALSO played The Bhundu Boys, Bikini Kill, Napalm death, Mantronix, Public Enemy, Tackhead and any form of minimal techno, acid, drum and base and gabba gabba break core noise terror he could get his mits on!
The fucking Peel stage was sickening insult to the mild mannered Liverpudlian and everything he stood for in the breadth, depth and range of his courageous musical meanderings.
Who ever or what ever fuck wit put together this atrocity exhibition should be fuckin lead out to a place not far from this court and there…..

Krossie is taken away up to the healing field where a team 17 trained, battle hardened psychologists fail to talk him down for over 45 hours)

Rant ends

OH wait, wait

NO

NOOOOOO NOOO no noooo noooo NoONoooooooo…

I didn’t see any of kasabian, Maximo Park, Lily Alen, Babyshambles, The Arcade Fire, the fookin Manics (jay sus wept!), The Who, The Killers, The Kooks, The Gossip, The Kaiser Chiefs, The Twang, The New Pornographers, The Artic Oasis beatles Monkeybabywipes (what ever!) or, indeed, anything on the Pryamid stage ha ha
Why?
Because they are bloody useless in my view that’s the why
–so there!
Is it because you is a lonely snobby muso git then?

Em…

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