No Rock And Roll Fun

SOFABURY EDGES TOWARDS CLOSURE: Ooh... now, there's a tricky choice - Stellastar or Muse? (See, they could have had Zero Seven headlining the new stage tonight and Stellastar could have done last nights, and everyone would be happy.) Stellastar's set is quite muted, but beautiful in a 'don't call it shoegazing' way - I'm going to say it, yes I am: sonic cathedrals. Over on the pyramid stage, Matt Bellamy is attempting to throw in more electorfeedback doodling into New Born than you could possibly imagine. He's adopted a white jacket for the occasion, although it looks like it could be a raincoat. Either he's adopted Columbo chic as his look for 04, or else he just read the weather forecast before he left home this morning.

Over on the 6Music glastonbury blog, Mark Sutherland wins the easiest bet of them all: "It took him [Michael Eavis] precisely 27 seconds to describe this year's Glasto as "the best ever". He also says his row is very much with Vince Power rather than Mean Fiddler per se and that one headliner for Glasto 2005 is already in place." He's not being drawn on the headliner, which everyone seems to have accepted is doomed to be U2 - after the Bishop of Bath and Wells this year, it's Bono as the holiest man on campsite in 2005. He's not much being drawn on the Power row, either, but he's meant to be livid at Vince Power's bragging in the Daily Telegraph that it was all down to Power that there's a Glastonbury at all. Power told the Telegraph about the financial breakdown - they take in GBP11.2million on tickets alone - and suggested "There was talk about the thing becoming corporate," he says, "but today, people feel safer. Melvin has managed to secure the site and operate it professionally and properly.". After this year, there's two more years of the contract between the Eavises and Mean Fiddler to go; many more public suggestions that Eavis wasn't running things "properly" for the couple of decades he managed to grow the event from Three Hippies and A Field to the foremost performing arts event in the country and we can't see that contract getting extended much further. If we were Michael Eavis, we'd just drop the question "Whatever happened to the Phoenix festival?" into any press discussion about MF; perhaps following up with "Oh, didn't they close it after all the riots? Or were they at Leeds?" And if MF are responsible for the "nuts and bolts" of the festival, does that mean they -and not Michael Eavis - were behind the ticketing fiasco? If so, and if they left Eavis to handle the flack - you can start to see why the farmer might be wishing he had a longer spoon with which to sup when Vince Power and Melvin Benn come to tea.