We live in a post-genre world, maybe

Peter Robinson's bit in yesterday's Guardian suggesting we live in a world where genres are meaningless was in interesting read:

Last summer, a survey by “millennial insight agency” Ypulse surveyed 1,000 young adults. When asked about their favourite artists, many respondents couldn’t answer, not through ambivalence but because, it was concluded, “this generation is interested in so many music genres and artists”.

It found that while millennials are passionate about music (76% within the 13- to 17-year-old bracket said they wouldn’t be able to last a week without it), 79% of 13- to 32-year-olds said their tastes didn’t fall into one specific music genre. Just 11% said that they only listened to one genre of music. “It seems,” Ypulse noted when it published its findings, “that millennials are a genre-less generation”.

Maybe.

And you can see what he's getting at - people are less hung up on a pop/indie/urban distinction around what they're listening to. And, in part, that's down to the ease of discovery and consumption:

Samuel Potts, Columbia Records’ head of radio, puts YouTube at the heart of this. “Millennials or ‘digital natives’ are the first generation to literally have the entirety of the world’s music at their fingertips,” he reasons. “This influences the creators but also young fans in terms of taste. Online culture is inherently global, so genres that were distinct and contained to geographical locations are now cross-pollinated throughout the world. As a result, you get artists like 19-year-old Raury, who’s championed by the likes of Kanye and André 3000, and cites everyone from Bon Iver to Phil Collins as an influence.”

You can actually see the point where this starts to unravel - the idea that we're "cross-pollinating across the world" by bringing together Phil Collins and Kanye West. They literally mark the extremes of the entire global history of music.

What the article is really about is the less eyecatching suggestion that the mainstream has got a bit wider and a bit less regimented:

Even on The X Factor, acts were increasingly praised for their authenticity and their credibility; in auditions, songs by the likes of Kings Of Leon replaced Westlife’s Flying Without Wings.

This does require you to have believed that The Kings Of Leon were that much more credible than Westlife to begin with. And, sure, you might hear Sex On Fire on the X Factor, but that's about as far as it goes.
Perhaps if someone does Mauritia Mayer as their blind audition on The Voice, or Simbinbino gets covered by The 1975, maybe then we'll talk.

Because if we really were in this post-genre world, the news about Adele headlining Glastonbury wouldn't have had such a violently negative reaction.

Leo Sayer is probably a little disappointed this morning

Back in November, Leo Sayer was talking up the possibility that he was going to play the Legends slot at Glastonbury.

He was sort-of-right; turns out it's going to be ELO not LEO.

Or, rather, whatever the legally allowable format of the Electric Light Orchestra is these days - Jeffy Lyne's Electrish Light Orchestra or something like that.

The tradition is upheld

Ahhhh #glastonbury website has crashed

— Dirk Parker (@Dirk_KonceptGym) October 4, 2015

Every year.

Hannah Montana to South Mendips: Check

Now, it's possible that Miley Cyrus is going to play next year's Glastonbury.

On the other hand, this rumour coming a couple of days after the announcement of when the tickets will go on sale makes me wonder if it's not a cunning scheme:

- I'd love to go to Glastonbury next year.
- Yeah, but we can never get tickets. The demand is way too high.
- If only there was some way we could kill demand before people are thinking about booking.
- You mean we need some sort of wrecking ball?
- Yes! Yes, that's exactly what we need.

Cameron might torpedo Glastonbury houses

There's a shortage of affordable homes in the country. So it's brilliant that Michael Eavis is going to release a parcel of land in Pilton for a number of small homes-to-rent in the corner of the village.

Except now he might not. These new homes, and a number that have been built previously, are threatened by Tory right-to-buy policy:

[There is] a proposal to name 10 new cottages in Pilton after Margaret Bondfield, a trade unionist and Labour MP who in 1929 became the nation’s first woman Cabinet Minister.

Except the cottages may never be built, victims of the ­pernicious Tory plan to nationalise housing association properties and flog them at discounts of up to £77,000 or £102,700 in London.

I’m told Eavis isn’t prepared to release land if it could end up in private hands a few years later at a fat profit.

Understandably so. I say "understandably", although it's not clear that the government really understands.

Glastonbury 2015: How did Suede go down?

Suede were astonishing last night - headlining the John Peel Stage. Obviously, having neither Lee Nelson or Kanye West on stage with them gave them something of an advantage, and obviously my waistline and hairline makes me a bit biased. So don't take my word for it. Here's a quick round-up of Suede reviews.

It's fair to say that the Western Gazette's reviewer hasn't exactly kept up with the band over the years:

Starting with two lesser known songs, Brett Anderson, Bernard Butler and co entered the stage as though they owned the place, with a studied nonchalance that they had more than earned as a band that at one point nearly did.

There was a lot of smoke and those flags blocking the camera views on the BBC coverage, but even so, I suspect the return of Bernard Butler would have been a bit more noticeable.

And, not wanting to carp, but... Mercury Prize. Three number one albums. Fastest selling debut album in a decade. That's a bit more than "nearly did", surely?

Anyway, the paper warms up:

And then, as the first few notes of megahit Trash were heard something suddenly snapped.

Lead singer Brett Anderson's standoffish manner was thrown aside and his utter delight to hear thousands of fans still remember the words became plain for all to see.
[...]
Comperes say a lot of things: but when the guy closing the tent after Suede exited told the crowds they had just watched the best performance of Glastonbury, I couldn't help but agree.

While the Telegraph's liveblog tried gamely to enjoy Kanye, they were getting reports the highlights were elsewhere:

Hard to believe, but people are watching other bands at Glastonbury now. Rupert is at Suede, maybe with all those people that signed the petition saying Kanye shouldn't play.

Rupert Hawksley: God knows what Kanye West is up to on the Pyramid Stage but it would be a miracle if he gets a response to any tune quite as raucous as the one just experienced at the John Peel stage as Suede rattled through Brit Pop classic, Trash.

The NME news desk tried to keep a sense of journalistic detachment, but couldn't quite:

1996 single 'Trash' was played early on in the set, followed by more Britpop favourites including 'Animal Nitrate' and 'We Are The Pigs'. The former track saw the first big singalong of the night. Anderson kept stage chat to a minimum, but did encourage the crowd to "fucking have it" during 'Trash', while he spent a large portion of 'Killing Of A Flashboy' writhing around the floor. An acoustic 'Living Dead' saw the frontman put his mic down to allow the audience to sing, and early single 'The Drowners' also drew a frenzied crowd response after Anderson performed much of it while hanging onto the safety barrier and greeting fans.

Disappointingly, The Guardian's liveblog was so obsessed with Kanye that it didn't manage to mention Suede at all. They should have listened to the Mid Devon Gazette, which recommended Suede as a fine alternative to a man who needed a helicopter to get on stage:

If however, you are staying in and are determined not to watch Kim Kardashian's other half, the BBC is devoting much of its schedule to all things Glastonbury tonight, so do a spot of channel surfing and you should be able to find some music more to your personal taste.

Cue a video of 90's favourites Suede who are on the John Peel stage at roughly the same time as Kanye.

Panic Manual reviewed the set from Toronto, where - apart from when those sodding flags got in the way - there was a great view:

wasn’t actually at Glastonbury, but rather, I was at home, in Toronto. Now before you question the authenticity of my review, I have assured you I have taken the appropriate measures to simulate Glastonbury as best as I can at home, including:

- Rain, it was pouring rain outside. I opened the windows so the sound of water coming down on the earth would resonate in the background as I watched the show. A sound many Glastonbury fans would be familiar with.

- I watched it on my 40 inch TV in high def, which frankly, makes me feel a lot closer to the stage then 95% of the people at the Peel stage

So, what are the advantages of this superior view?

Having access to cameras on stage, I could tell Bret and co were ecstatic about being at Glastonbury even Richard Oakes tried to muster a smile, maybe he saw a hot dog in the crowd or something.

That's just mean.

But is that really the best way to watch the gig? Is it?

The rest of the set read like a greatest hit’s list, including everyone’s favorite b-side about a heroin addict, The Living Dead. The crowd absolutely lost it when the group ended with Beautiful Ones, which had the crowd LALALALALAing so hard I could hear it through my speakers.

It was at this point I wished I was there and not my living room. Sometimes you just can’t replicate a live experience, no matter how you set it up. An encore set of She’s in Fashion and New Generation sent the crowd back to their mud filled, dirty tents happy. I would have cried if they brought an orchestra or something for Still Life, luckily that was not the case.

But if you're crying, you'd at least be crying in the privacy of your own home. I'm presuming you'd have shut the curtains first, anyway.

Getty let you embed images on blogs now, you know. Here's what people were either seeing on their home screens, or squinting at to spot in the melee of the crowd:

 

View image | gettyimages.com

 

Gaaboard were watching:

Suede aren't great but they're singling without autotune and singing their hits which puts them about 10 places ahead of that twat on the Pyramid stage!!

It wasn't all faint praise, though:

Jaysus I think Suede are hitting the mark. Have seen them at Glasto twice. It just didn't work the year I seen them outdoors but I think they might have been hitting the needle a bit too much back then. Indoors they are immense.

The Singletrackworld board was also experiencing mixed feels:

Northernmat: Suede - meh, never really got them. Lead singer bloke looks old now.
Scamper: Lead singer of suede looking old? I take it you are about 20, Matt?

Let's give the last word to DigitalSpy commenter Barbeler:

Suede have saved Glastonbury as far as I'm concerned. It was a magnificent performance that made every other band I've seen so far look like dreary amateurs.

Glastonbury 2015: The impossible happened

Who knew that, faced with Kanye West headlining the main stage, it was possible for the density of the self-regarding worn-out unwelcomeds to increase from there?

But it did:

KANYE West's Glastonbury performance was interrupted by an intruder.

The rapper, who was performing on the pyramid stage on Saturday, was greeted by comedian Lee Nelson.

Do you still count as a "comedian" if you have one joke that is so tired it doesn't even wake up when on stage at Glastonbury?

Taking to his Twitter to explain his reasons for joining Kanye on stage, Lee wrote: "Some people were saying Kanye shouldn't headline Glastonbury so I thought I'd give him a hand."

That doesn't even make sense.

Choosing not to address the stage invasion, proud wife Kim took to her Instagram to post a picture of the rapper on stage, along with the caption: "Glastonbury 2015! Craziest show ever!!!!!"

Hold on a moment, OK magazine - maybe Kim was talking about the stage invasion there. Or maybe she didn't even realise that Lee Nelson wasn't part of the act. (Okay, it seems unlikely - if West was going to draft in a comedy stage invasion, there'd be some clunky piece of cross-promotion with a "project". At least Nelson wasn't promoting an energy drink or TLC reality show.)

Glastonbury 2015: When legs snap

The line-up for Glastonbury now has a scary TBA in the Friday night headline slot, with the Foo Fighters pulling out as Dave Grohl's leg is so badly broken.

If it was me, I'd shift Mark Ronson across to the main stage undercard and let Florence headline. In fact, I'd probably have let Florence headline even if Grohl hadn't snapped his leg.

Glastonbury 2015: Kanye believe it?

There's been a predictable squeal of disrupted lives following the announcement that Kanye West is going to headline Glastonbury on Saturday night:

A petition has also been launched to prevent West from performing at the festival.

The petition [is] titled 'Cancel Kanye West's headline slot and get a rock band'

There's no way, just for clarity, that "rock band" is being used as shorthand for "a group of white men". That's not the intention at all. No. Not at all.

Thing is, there are good reasons for asking if Kanye is right for Glastonbury - but the objections are exactly the same as the objections to U2 headlining Glastonbury. An act well past their best before date being promoted beyond their due. And even those objections... well, you have to remember that when people say things like this...:

We spend hundreds of pounds to attend glasto, and by doing so, expect a certain level of entertainment.

... part of the reason you're paying so much money is because it's a massive festival, and there's about sixty thousand other stages to go and watch. Seriously, if you're paying that much money to go to a music festival and can't find something headlining one of the stages to enjoy, why are you paying hundreds of pounds to go to a music festival in the first place?

(With U2, there was a broader question about whether a festival that still had some pretence at being counterculturally aware ought to be booking acts who shuffle their cash off to lower tax regimes, which is a fair question. Kanye isn't a rock band isn't even a question.)

Glastonbury tickets sell out "in record time"

The story everywhere about Glastonbury tickets selling out "in record time" actually should read "Glastonbury ticket sale more robust than previously". Doesn't look like the servers melted down in quite the traditional way - which is a step forward - although there are a number of complaints from people who somehow went from having tickets to not having tickets in the time it took them to enter their credit card numbers.

Annually, I ask this: why do Glastonbury turn what is already an increasingly elitist event into one which rewards people with the most resilient internet connections and highest number of devices? Why fetishise the 'ooh, we sold out in x minutes' when they could have an actual lottery.

Glastonbury sells out

Alright, not completely, but the first tranche of tickets did (notice each year it's ever more like a share offering - by 2018 there's going to be a Glastonbury Tickets Pathfinder Prospectus...)

They were the the tickets bundled with coach travel; these have to be sold a few days early as the coach stops so bloody far from the festival site you'd be best off setting out now in order to arrive in the decent campsites before anyone else gets there.

The traditional ticket scramble is due for Sunday. It's not clear if they've improved the system for purchase this year, but Twitter say they're confident they can cope with the upswing in complaining tweets from people who get frustrated by the process.

Glastonbury 2014: James Arthur was absent

A bit from last week's Glastonbury to mop up - you've doubtless spent the last seven days ploughing through the BBC coverage trying to find out a set by James Arthur. But there doesn't seem to be one.

It's almost as if he wasn't there.

Hang on, he wasn't.

How can this be?

James has his theory. It's that Glastonbury us wrong:

Arthur tweeted yesterday, saying:

Its sad that I'll probably never play Glastonbury because of the format I was discovered.. Has anyone from xfactor ever played it?

He then tweeted: "Especially sad when you see how mediocre some of these acts are live!! #verybitter," but deleted the tweet shortly after.

I'm pretty sure Bad Lashes headlined the Pyramid Stage Saturday last year, didn't they?

Perhaps James should have a word with his record label and see if they... oh, hang on, he doesn't have a label, does he?

It's sweet though that he thinks it's his having been on the X Factor which makes him a pariah, rather than it's only that he's been on telly that sustains him at all.

Still, James: try sending a tape to BBC Introducing. You might be able to make it in music after all.

Glastonbury 2014: This morning, possibly

In a hotel somewhere around Bristol, team Kasabian gather in a breakfast room. They spend some time choosing between the complimentary muffins and the complimentary danish. One of them asks for lager. Told he can't have lager, he makes a fuss. A member of the hotel team gets a can of lager from somewhere. One of Kasabian suddenly realises that he's going to have to drink lager with his coco pops. Not for the first time, he wonders if he's made a terrible mistake.

The band sit down at a table in the corner with tablets and newspapers. One speaks.

- So, lads, last night. We closed Glastonbury. We headlined Glastobury. We owned that place. What's the world saying about this new Kasabian era?
- Erm... well, this paper is just all about Dolly Parton.
- Yeah, so's this one.
- This one too.
- They're all about Dolly Parton? What about the internets?
- Well, our fans seem to have chattered about us a bit
- Yeah, but... mostly...
- Yeah, it's mostly about Dolly Parton
You could feel sorry for Kasabian: They wait for years to become top of the bill, and still end up going on five hours after the headline act.

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.

Glastonbury 2014: Meanwhile...

That Glastonbury is a moment that brings everyone together thing in full. pic.twitter.com/G7sOHTkfTv

— Jon Bounds (@bounder) June 28, 2014

Glastonbury 2014: View from the sofa

"We're not going to go on about it" reassure Mark Radcliffe and Jo Whiley, leading off the late night live chunk of Glastonbury coverage on BBC Two.

But they do, of course.

And then when they hand over to Lauren Laverne in another part of the field, she can't help but talk about it, too.

And why wouldn't they? This year, clearly, isn't the Glastonbury of Metallica; it's the Glastonbury where the lights went out.

Trouble is, although Lauren had rather a good anecdote - about being chided for asking the bear-slaughterers if they'd bought the heavy metal thunder with them - the stuff that was most interesting about the power outage wasn't touched on.

(Incidentally, it wouldn't be Metallica's heavy metal thunder; Dolly Parton has brought a rainbow with her, and we all know what you have to endure to get one of those working.)

Normally, the BBC's Glastonbury coverage is padded with films of people who've paid silly money for tickets doing really dull things - giving us a taste of the "festival experience". This year, when it'd actually be really interesting to know what it was like to be in a city of tens of thousands of people when the electricity stopped being in the wires and was just in the sky - nothing.

Apart from Mark Radcliffe saying something about communal singing in a tattoo tent, there was no answer to the question 'what was it like on the site?'

Instead, the crisis was reduced to a short snatch of footage of Rudimental walking off the stage.

The big disappointment this year is the red button coverage - clearly all the love has been poured into the website. Three channels of music, more or less lobbed on screen; with whatever happens to be on TV given (it appears) a free pass.

So, at one point, you could have watched Elbow on BBC Three, or something else on BBC Two. If those options didn't delight you, you could press red to get three more bands - except one was Elbow and one was BBC Two.

What's the point of pushing the stream that's already on TV through the red button service?

And doing it so badly - for a good ten minutes, the "BBC Two" Glastonbury feed was so locked in to simulcasting BBC Two that it pushed out a great chunk of Newsnight. (If Jean-Claude Juncker was actually being inducted in the cabaret tent, my apologies to the red button team.)

I suppose it's fair to say that it's more surprising that there's a red button at all - with SmartTVs and Chromecasts and whatnot, it's easier than ever to get the rather good bbc.co.uk experience onto your TV.

(Slight grumble here - the Glastonbury content from iPlayer doesn't show up on the iPhone version of iPlayer, which makes it harder to enjoy on a TV. I know this is a bit like complaining that the handle on the cup the ambrosia comes in is a little fiddly to hold, but... worth mentioning.)

So, what of the bands themselves?

Arcade Fire, it's clear, have edged ever closer to vanishing over the Bono Horizon.

I know, I know...

... how can I possibly think that?

You know when the fireworks (literal fireworks) are at the start, not the end, of the set, that you're watching a band who are overdoing the spectacle.

Men made out of mirrors; the bobbleheads; two-faced skeletons (one of whom, distractingly, had a brand name of a morphsuit maker on his ass); a stage full of around thirty people at one; racoon make-up; pyrotechnics... it's just so fucking tiring to watch, and it's dressing up music that doesn't really need all this extra packing. You've written songs that are packed full of strong, striking images - why are you hiding them in the worst circus ever?

Elsewhere, Blondie were a little ragged around the edges - doing the high bit from Rapture would be difficult under normal circumstances, but Harry just-about nailed it on a stage, early in the day, outdoors. And the cover of (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) was a delight - especially watching the ripple of 'oh! this is what this is!' run through the crowd at different speeds.

Sidenote: After last year's fuss about whether jokes about the Rolling Stones being old were okay, it's worth mentioning that Debbie Harry is 69 on Tuesday. But people don't obsess over it because jokes about Blondie being old were never a thing.

Also because she'd kick your butt.

Chvrches were great; and Drenge are still on course to become Mudhoney by the end of next year.

Glastonbury 2014: Lily Allen's plus ones are better than yours

Now, that's a nice gesture: Lily Allen's given her free Glastonbury tickets to kids from her village instead of what she apparently describes as "my showbiz mates":

"I get a certain allocation, and because I am on the Pyramid main stage you get more. My husband has been in charge of ticket allocation. I have quite a lot of blaggy friends who hit me up for stuff all the time and never really appreciate it. I have all the calls, `Can we have some tickets?" Allen said.

"He has given them all to our villagers. There`s, like, 25 kids from Canham who have never been to Glastonbury and who are going to have such a shock, and all my showbiz mates are like, `Er?`" she added."

I'm not quite sure I'm buying the 'my showbiz mates' phrase, but "blaggy friends" sounds genuine enought.

What the pop papers say: Glasto clear way for Ted Nugent in 2015

As part of the preview to the Glastonbury festival (or rather its preview of its preview), this week's NME asks a ginger question about how James Hetfield, the bear-slaughtering bastard, is headlining.

Emily [Eavis] refuses to be drawn in.

"I don't really want to get involved with it, in terms of official comments," she says. "Every year we have people campaigning. Last year we had Tyler, The Creator; we had Beyonce anti-fur; we had Jay-Z and guns; we have this. We can't get involved in other people's politics, if we did that we'd rule out most bands in the world."

Glastonbury - which once advertised itself as "the CND festival", which raises funds for campaigning groups Greenpeace and Oxfam - can't "get involved in other people's politics".

Given this willingness to turn a blind eye to people's politics, you wonder if there's anyone Glastonbury would rule out. James Hetfield's NRA buddy Ted Nugent? Will Macht Und Ehre at last get their big chance on The John Peel Stage?

Obviously, Glastonbury has long since ceased to be about a group of people with shared values getting together, but this year feels different again. It's the first time they've ever gone "look, we don't care about what people think, and given we've already done a homophobe we're unlikely to worry about who we give a platform to in the future."

Glastonbury 2014: The BBC headcount

It's now a fixed point in the summer season; newspapers who dislike the BBC getting all overheated about how it takes people to do broadcasting of a music festival.

Because this is a year divisible by two and not four, that means the comparison must be made with the World Cup of Soccer, which is going to happen in the next week or so:

BBC sends 300 staff to cover Glastonbury Festival - that’s 28 more than its Brazil World Cup crew

This compares to 272 who are heading to Brazil for the World Cup

I'm sure the Daily Mail will, elsewhere on its website, be clearing space amongst the upskirt shots of teenage girls to complain about the number of BBC staff covering the World Cup as well, but for now that's the comparison they want to go for.

How can it be, then, that it takes a larger number of people to cover a number of stages running simultaneously for about a dozen channels across TV, radio and digital, than it does to cover a football event where the match coverage is provided by somebody else and which plays out languidly over the course of what feels like an entire month?

Oh, hang on. The question has answered itself, hasn't it?

We'll see you back here next year for "the BBC has more people covering Glastonbury than turned up for the defenestration of Nick Clegg".

Glastonbury 2014: You might be able to hear the sound of slaughtered animals

Remember when Glastonbury was a lovely, earth-positive sort of place to be?

That's obviously long since become a memory, but they cling to supporting causes like Greenpeace as a memory of the good times.

But they will let anyone play these days - hence, the 2014 event is going to be headlined by Metallica. That means James Hetfield will be taking time off from working on a documentary about the not-quite-humans who get their kicks killing animals. Bears, in this case. Kodiak bears, the near cousins of the polar bears that Greenpeace are trying to keep alive.

Perhaps the Eavises just like the irony of that.