Back in space and time: Glasto 1997
Radiohead doing No Surprises from Glastonbury ten years ago
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Glastobloggers: Mark Ronson's big surprise
So, then, who was Mark Ronson's big surprise guest?
Daniel Merriweather. The bloke who helped him murder the Smiths.
Oh.
Meanwhile, The Guardian asks Will Young questions and finds out he's got a Winnebago to sleep in. They neglect to ask him what he's doing there.
And Mrs Woman has turned in the best description of the BBC studio so far:
It's not the same since Peely died, but the BBC coverage is still excellent and gets cleverer over time. Interactive viewers can run their own video jukebox of earlier performances, while this year's studios are beautifully themed with a Biba-style motif of stylised berry twigs and huge blue and green sofas. Sounds gross, but not so.
Here, we think it might have been inspired, actually, by an Ikea coffee table we spotted earlier today.
Elsewhere, Words Department counts the number of Guardian blog posts and wonders who's reading them.
Busted RIAA litigants now sued for costs
At the risk of upsetting Paul Birch, the excellent Recording Industry Versus The People blog is reporting that Dawnell Leadbetter, who got a lawsuit from Interscope and others thrown out, is now pursuing the RIAA companies who sued her for the costs she incurred beating them.
Unsuccessful and expensive, then. Is there nobody in the big companies who is prepared to suggest abandoning this folly of legal action?
And they say the clowns are insane
The Insane Clown Posse are making a second film. Yes, a second one.
Presumably, the thinking is they might actually sell on DVD if they can be offered on a two-for-one deal.
Although it turns out the first movie has managed to gain platinum status for sales in the US. Which means, if you're one of our American readers, you might not own Big Money Hustlas. You might not know someone who owns it. But somebody you know certainly will know somebody who has it in their collection.
Is there a doctor in the tent?
We're not sure if it's just Sky being a little over the top, but they're reporting 1,200 injuries on site so far:
"... after torrential rain turned the site into a mud-soaked obstacle course.
As opposed, presumably, to a non-mud soaked obstacle course. Unless it was raining obstacles as well.
There's also one man "fighting for his life" (Sky again) after a drug overdose; he's been taken to hospital, along with thirty-two victims of the obstacle course.
That's the health news; in crime (and, of course, Somerset & Avon police boosting their figures by shooting proverbial fish in a biblical mud-pond) news, there have been 121 arrests onsite, and 163 reported offences. Interesting that with all the security that went in to protecting the event from ticket touts, the actual festival goers have been a bit more exposed to poor security this time round. There have been 28 tent thefts so far, despite the much-touted robocop honeytrap tents.
GlastOn TV: A glimpse of Pete Doherty
I'm not going to pretend that I'm television production material, but I'm struggling to understand the thought process which led BBC Three to show a sliver of Babyshambles - and I mean a sliver, I don't think Doherty actually sang a coherent word in the slice that made it to screen - before cutting away to The Kooks live.
Okay, it was absolutely live rather than taped, like the Babyshambles performance, but since they could join The Kooks at any point, wouldn't the fascinating experience of watching Doherty in front of a massive crowd, basking in having his words sung back to him, have been worth persevering with for a while longer? It would have been nice to see if he rose to the occasion; as if he really fitted in this sort of environment as much as the glimpse made it seem. This Glastonbury appearance could be the point where Babyshambles, where Doherty, finally loses his claim to be any sort of cultural outlaw and admits he's become a Fast Show character - well-loved, but poorly sketched. It could be a musical turning point. It might not be, too.
But you know that it's at least got to be more interesting than the bloody Kooks, live or not.
The Arctic Monkeys have just got round to doing Diamonds Are Forever on the press red service (a world where time runs differently, and last night is forever now) - it's nice to see what they can manage with a song that calls for a little bit more than their own compositions.
Bjork - besides inspiring someone to shout out "she's got scary lady trumpet players" - was notable for reprising her swan dress by wearing what appeared to be pigeon roadkill wings yesterday evening.
The most perfect experience so far - from a multiscreen point of view - has been CSS, although if we find out who stole Lovefoxx's headband, we'll kick their asses from here to Rio. It looks like security - in something of a first - have learned to not immediately treat a singer touching the audience as a code red this year. Although maybe if they had, she'd not have lost her headband.
Oh dear. Perhaps the Queens of Noize would have been better off if they hadn't scripted their links. The big question, though, from a presentation point of view is why they whipped the big sofa out from under Phil Jupitus and Lauren Laverne on BBC Two during the pre-Doctor Who portion of the evening. They threw to one of Colin Murray's "reports" (he is the one-man skateboarding duck of the festival) sitting on it; upon their return, it was gone. Perhaps it was banished because it gave the air of Jupitus having come up trumps on the mail-order bride deal.
See for yourself
The BBC has got piles of stuff online for you to watch and listen to at the moment. We're looking forward to curling up with Bobbt Friction's show later on, as we've not seen or heard a peep from the Asian Network stage anywhere else yet.
[Links will decay, we expect]
Blog round-updatey thingy: Catsuits within catsuits
Of course, if someone was going to sell us down the river, it'd be Sharon Osbourne, telling us to vote for The Master with a clunking spot of sexual euphemising. We bet he'd not even switched on the satellite at that point. Oh... hang about, it's back to Glastonbury, isn't it?
CSS seem to have been the best thing so far today, with the Guardian blog reporting on how to get around the problems of quick-changing when you're dressed skintight:
Simply appear in a glittery catsuit, then a few songs in (at the beginning of Meeting Paris Hilton, to be exact), take it off revealing... another catsuit, this time bright yellow. Though she was almost outdone by a sudden influx of people dressed as drum majorettes in the audience.
It's also the Guardian that has had its ears switched on, overhearing this:
What? You've just woken up? You're stuck in a tent? Your own tent? Someone else's tent! And you don't know how you got there? And you've got no clothes on! And there's no clothes in the tent? Whatsoever? And you want us to come pick you up and bring you some clothes? Would love to mate, but I'm watching Lily Allen...
Ah, Keith Allen's daughter. Worth leaving a friend naked and stranded for? Christina Nott thinks so:
Some people are a bit snobby about Lily, but I thought the gig was a great afternoon festival set. Bouncing around in luminous pink with a cigarette and a really strong ska reggae band, it was a real spirit lifter. Rain? What rain?
Hmm. We've not chased any of Allen's set up on the BBC yet, but we're betting that the "strng ska reggae band" is going to turn out to be more Musical Youth than Rico. We shall see.
Although we're still not sure what the hell Jack was doing during the first hundred years or so of Torchwood's operations - oh, sure, come along after the battle of Canary Wharf and remake Torchwood in the Doctor's image, but couldn't you have done that in 1901 and saved us all a lot of trouble? And how, exactly, did he get the job?
Tinyjo has been spending time in the caberet tent - apparently, Nicola Conti is still doing that act with the toy monkey. Simple Brainwaves is virtually at Glastonbury, i.e. watching on TV, and spotted something we'd missed:
Oh and the lead singer from Hot Chip looks a bit like Buster from the late, great sitcom Arrested Development, don't you think?
You know, it might have been nice to have something more in the way of explication for the absence of the rest of Torchwood at this key moment than a throwaway line about them going to the Himalayas. Couldn't they at least have been trapped in a temporal shift or something?
The Telegraph's Iain Gray had a crack at paparazzing last night, although actually he was taking photos in front of the stage, which isn't papping, is it? He did get a lovely shot of Bjork-being-snapped, though.
His colleague Christopher Howse has, meanwhile, discovered that he isn't the sole tie-wearer on Worthy Farm:
The drummer of Mumm-Ra was wearing one last night.
The Blood Arm skirt over their Glasto experience to get to the, frankly more important, business of amusing names for ice creams in continental Europe. Although why you'd pick a Girlie over a Bum Bum, I can't imagine.
Back at the Guardian blog, they've heard a rumour that David Cameron is thinking of turning up.
Hmm.. a plausible-looking politician with a pretty young wife, risen from nowhere, taking any chance of a televisual appearance, and a strange lack of policies. Why is that chiming with us this evening?