Glastonbury 2014: The view from the sofa II

So Metallica's (admittedly amusing) bear video makes their presence at Glastonbury even more problematic. If the festival's line was "well, we don't want to get involved in people's politics", how does that square with letting the headliners start off with a film that basically treats genuine misgivings about their activities as fuel for yuks?

It's a pity that Metallica's entrance left such a bad taste, as Lars Ulrich's post-gig interview on BBC Two was charming; a man who clearly loves the festival and was enjoying every moment of it.

Still, all the burbling about how astonishing having a metal band in Pilton was pretty redundant given that, across the fields, the Manics were kicking the arse out of You Love Us without the need for anyone to edit Wikipedia to record 'metal at Glasto' as a historic event.

The half-arsed red button downgraded itself to a quarter-arse for Saturday; if the 'look, here's, erm, Newsnight' chunk on Friday was bad, it was going to get worse. For a little while, one of the stages at Glastonbury was apparently showing Family Guy, according to press red. Oh, and for some reason tennis rolled over one stream of the coverage for a large chunk of the early evening, because sports always trumps the arts at the BBC, no matter what Tony Hall might think. (To be fair, sport always trumped news when John Birt was in charge.)

Robert Plant's audience looked to be having the best time of all the crowds - someone nearly shook the very eyes out their head when he started up Whole Lotta Love.

Best outfit? Cate Le Bon's space dress, obviously.

Lana Del Ray struggled a bit - the performance was fine, but it just kinda floated away into the sky. The USP suddenly turning into a disadvantage.

Clean Bandit (or Hollyoaks: The Dance Album) were much better suited to this kind of thing. And they had by far the best way of getting the crowd to bellow along, with a kind of elbows out/kitten cleaning ears stance when participation was required.

Oh, Pixies are still going. It turns out.

Dates with Cate

Coming soon: Two Cate Le Bon dates:

Monday 9 November – LONDON – The Social (£4)
Saturday 21 November – LONDON – The Borderline (with Nancy Elizabeth)

Apologies to those of us who don't live in London.

Rate 08: Christmas selection box: Neon Neon featuring Cate Le Bon

Neon Neon featuring Cate LeBon - I Lust U

Credit crunch claims new victims

Hah- you think you've had it hard, what with your house being repossessed, your job vanishing and your children being handed to the Inland Revenue in something to do with the 10p tax rate that you didn't quite catch.

Think again.

Duran Duran are really suffering. They'd lined up a job playing to senior executives from Deutsche Bank for an easy half-a-million pounds, only now that someone's found out the entire world banking system was based on a mortgage on a single trailer-park home in the middle of Texas and that's only worth half what it should be because it's going an unshakeable smell of wet dog in the bedroom, the bank have decided not to go ahead.

Duran have got the hump. Apparently. They're supposed to have re-routed their entire world tour in order to play the gig and everything. We've been trying to work up some sort of sympathy for the thought of people who were so willing to effectively dance as rich men threw coins, but we're finding it difficult.

Instead, here's Cate LeBon, doing Shoeing The Bones, on the grounds that she's got the same surname as Simon LeBon, but is more fun to listen to.