Glastonbury 2008: NME gets a bit confused

Surprising news from the NME this morning:

The National Audit Office (NAO) are investigating the BBC's coverage of last year's Glastonbury festival, to see whether it provides value for money.

That's going to come as something of an irritation for the BBC, what with the National Audit Office only having just published findings of an investigation into the costs of broadcasting Glastonbury in 2008 (alongside One Big Weekend and some sporting events).

The report noticed that the 2008 One Big Weekend event came in over budget, and that the BBC had some problems evaluating value for money on these events. Almost as if 'value for money' is a nebulous, meaningless term that depends on where you're standing.

The NME also neglects to mention that the report was requested by the BBC, which is quite a different matter from the NAO simply turning up on the doorstep.

Glastonbury zero

Although the official line is that Glastonbury didn't make a profit, the charities the festivals support still got their million quid, which would seem to be the main thing. The lack of any surplus for reinvestment, though, would surely be something of a worry- right, Michael Eavis?

"Glastonbury costs £22m now, it's a huge cost," Eavis recently told BBC 6 Music. "The infrastructure, the fencing, the roads, the water and the loos, the marquees, the management, the security and the police, it goes on and on so we do have to sell out in order to make it work."

"Costing had gone through the roof and the diesel costs had gone up by about 200,000 pounds," he said. "All the other costs had gone up as well."
[...]
"It's the first year in 39 years that we didn't make anything out of it," he said, "so it's not bad really is it?"

That would depend, Michael, on where the money underpinning next year's festival comes from. It does make the decision to offer tickets for sale earlier on - with a deposit up front - seem a little more understandable, though.

The Hoosiers are unmoved

The Hoosiers are disgruntled with the Kings of Leon:

Irwin Sparkes claimed the Tennessee band's headline slot was disappointing because it didn't feel "special".

"I saw them at Glasto and they are good but they just don’t put on much of a show," he told the Daily Star.

Countering this, The Kings of Leon, like most people, feel quite upset when the Hoosiers do put on a show. Of any sort.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

Greenguysglobal visits Glastonbury to look at proceedings with an ecological eye:

Last year there were signs everywhere to tell people not to p*ss in the streams, this year there were less. It may be a coincidence but there were a lot more people relieving themselves that way this year, and even more people not taking them to task about it. I guess the number of dead fish, and reduced water oxygen will eventually give the real picture.

That would have annoyed Noel Gallagher

The lukewarm headline line-up at this year's Glastonbury is now partly explained: they'd nearly landed a Blur reunion, an event which would have pushed any of the top-card names down the league ladder a slot.

Alex James say so:

"Blur very nearly played Glastonbury this year. There was a pang of regret when I heard Damon [Albarn]'s mum had nixed it at the 11th hour.

"I was looking forward to showing off to [his wife] Claire and the kids, but I suppose the important thing was to have been asked, and listening to all that screaming I felt pleased about how things had turned out.”

This, we suspect, explains the Kings Of Leon if nothing else.

Gordon in the morning: Gordon is the story

Sit down, and then place your head between your legs. For today, we come to offer our sympathy for Gordon Smart, not to point out how shoddy he is. Just for today, like.

Gordon got cornered by Jay-Z in a nightclub ("trendy London club Paper", as Gordon puts it) to take issue with Smart's Gallagher-pandering review of Mr. Z at Glastonbury:

He told me: "You were the only one who gave me a bad review. Everyone else said it was history.

"I’m not one of those guys who gets cut up about good or bad reviews but you missed the moment, man.

"It was a first for Glastonbury and you didn’t get it. You’re a non-believer. I was making history and you missed the moment."

Not that he could care, Smart's paper's full of shit, and he only reads the racecard, anyway.

"I have sold your paper on stage for the last few weeks.

"I made history on Saturday and that can’t be taken away from me.

"It was something new, never done before, and I’m proud."

And Beyonce's fuming.

There's nothing more pathetic than someone over-reacting to a review which diverges from their self-image; you'd have thought that Jay-Z would have had a little more dignity than to indulge in this sort of thing - and, certainly, he might have chosen to argue on grounds of quality rather than his misplaced "history in the making" mythology.

Glastonbury 2008: Band of Horses

More video from last weekend: This is Band of Horses doing Older in some tent or other:



[Part of Glastonbury 2008 videos]

Jay-Z appearance pays off - for Jay-Z

The Glastonbury appearance, then, has put some money in Jay-Z's back pocket, as the Midweeks are showing 99 Problems back in the Top 25, and Numb/Encore creeping into the top 40.

It's not expected that Oasis will be appearing in Sunday's chart.

Meanwhile, Andrew Collins has considered if Jay-Z fitted Glastonbury from a political, rather than musical, angle.

Glastonbury didn't think that The Verve are as good as Keane or something

Richard Ashcroft's suggestion that Michael Eavis didn't think The Verve would be as good as Keane have been scoffed at by Emily Eavis:

Speaking to the BBC, Emily Eavis said that Ashcroft's comments were “not true at all" and were “not a big deal.”

"We've liked The Verve for ages and we were really pleased to have them on," she added.

That doesn't quite answer the suggestion that Michael prefers Keane, though, does it?

Glastonbury 2008: Noah and the Whale

As the crowds arrive home, so more interesting stuff is appearing on YouTube. This is Noah and the Whale doing Five Year's Time:



[Part of Glastonbury 2008 video]

Glastonbury round up: The journey home

It's not just the streets of Britain which have become a godless place, apparently - The Sun reports a Glasto crimewave:

CRIME more than doubled at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, police figures revealed yesterday.

By last night there were 489 reports of crime among the 170,000 festival-goers, including drug offences.

The shock number compared to 236 reported crimes at the three-day music extravaganza last year.

Cops said this was because there were more tent thefts, trying to put a happy face on it:

Sergeant Carolyn Crocker said last night: “Despite a challenging festival in terms of thefts from tents, 99.7 per cent of festival-goers will return home having not been victims of crime.

“The event remains one of the safest of its kind and we continue to work proactively with festival security to ensure people have a safe final night.”

"Challenging" = we have had a rotten festival.

Gordon's team chooses to celebrate binge drinking again - remember, it's only a problem in the news pages:

And THE TWANG’s PHIL ETHERIDGE has a top phrase for going on the lash – “Getting on the swamp”. Genius.

Yes. What genius. I'm starting the public subscription for the statue and blue plaque.

Gordon didn't enjoy Jay-Z, either:

The whole point of the big bill topper is to get your arms around your pals’ shoulders and sing along to the chorus.

So when Jay opened the show by miming to OASIS megahit Wonderwall – after playing a tape of NOEL GALLAGHER saying he was wrong for Glasto – I thought we were in for a treat.

It was all downhill after that, though. There was no spine-tingling COLDPLAY Fix You moment. Or 50,000 people singing Don’t Look Back In Anger and pointing at the sky.

A festival entertainment where you don't feel you're stuck in a Burnage Bierkeller sounds like a step-up to us - surely, if Smart wants to get involved in some man-on-man hugging - just as mates, like, not in a funny way - he could have waited for the Verve.

Talking of whom, the mystery of what the hell they were doing as headliners was explained by Richard Ashcroft, reports the BBC:

"I want to thank Emily Eavis for inviting us to play Glastonbury," Ashcroft told the crowd. "And I hope her dad realises why she booked us now."

Mr Eavis founded the festival on his Somerset dairy farm 38 years ago.

It's not known yet who came up with Kings Of Leon, though. Perhaps they let the cows have a go at choosing a headliner, too.

Alexis Petridis in the Guardian was more positive about Jay-Z than Gordon was:

Then a broad grin spreads across his face and the crowd go obligingly berserk. It's the sound of a risk paying off handsomely.

It's also one of those transcendent, tingle-inducing Glastonbury moments people talk about so much, but it's a Glastonbury moment unlike any other: suddenly, a festival whose very future seemed pretty bleak 24 hours ago feels like a triumph.

But then, if Guardian writers want to hug their mates, they hug them. They don't have to wait until Noel Gallagher gives them the excuse.

The 3AM Girls suggest there was some band-on-band rudeness:

Amy Winehouse snubbed by Arctic Monkeys at Glastonbury

Although it turns out this "snub" was, erm, just that didn't go to watch her.

Michael Eavis - as pretty much is standard by now - has decided that his crazy plan worked, telling the Mail:

Summing up the weekend of music, festival founder Michael Eavis said: "We've a much younger audience this year.

"It's like Sunday school at a nice local church. You have to have youngsters there, otherwise we just all grow old together."

60 Seconds on BBC Three last night had a quote from "organisers" suggesting that the appearance of Jay-Z had "secured the festival for the next two years", which seems a little unlikely - or, rather, like so much spin to us. We're guessing the scraping last-minute sell-out was the deciding factor.

In the Times, Caitlin Moran was won over, suggesting that in the context of some of the other things you might see in the fields, a major recording artist playing his hits is hardly that unusual:

But a wonderful air of curiosity is embedded in Glastonbury's bones — and what you found outré on Thursday, by Sunday is greeted merely with a shrug and an amused “Why not?”.

After all, when you've spent all weekend sitting under a 30ft robot ant, watching a man dressed as a toilet holding hands with Queen Victoria, you might as well go down to the Pyramid Stage, and attend your first hip-hop gig.

So, Jay-Z proved that a good performance can convince many doubters. Over in the Telegraph, Tom Horan discovered the same message, but in a slightly less likely corner:

The old Harrovian-turned-crooner James Blunt divides people into two distinct camps - both of which contain millions of members. There are those who can't bear the sight of him, and those who buy every note he records.

As he took to Glastonbury's Pyramid stage in blazing sunshine both were well represented, and neither was disappointed.

I lost count of the thousands of women mouthing every line of the former Guardsman's romantic ballads. To their credit, they comfortably drowned out the people hooting and laughing at each new declaration of love or all-round sensitivity.

Yes, James Blunt - for the Telegraph, bravely walking into enemy fire:

Blunt, as always, simply rose above it all, and delivered a slick, professional performance. His commanding officer would have been proud of him.

Horan also takes some sort of prize for stripping a set down to its essentials, in his entire Amy Winehouse review:

The troubled singer, pictured, took to the stage wearing a blue dress and greeted the audience by saying "hello, Glastonbury" to much applause.

We suspect the word "pictured" explains this rather odd sentence which misses much of the drama of Winehouse's appearance - it's just a sop to allow the paper to run a photo of a young woman in a strapless dress. Everyone, eventually, gets the Glastonbury they want.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury 2008: Franz Ferdinand

From the YouTubes - here's team Franz doing Katherine Kiss Me:



[Part of the Glastonbury 2008 video]

Glaston the box: Day three

Once again, the red button service has wound down early, filling screens with stuff that's been on over the last couple of days.

Still, let's not carp, eh? Instead, let's focus on the sets of Eddy Grant and Neil Diamond - both doing their first Glastonburys (Grant seemed as surprised as anyone at this) and both clearly, clearly relishing it. Not in the way Shakin' Stevens or Jay-Z did - in a "I'm making this festival better" way - but just a genuine delight in being part of it. Who couldn't feel a warm glow as Neil Diamond abandoned his set list's demands for a ballad because, man, he wanted to dance?

And, let's face it, Cherry Cherry is far more fun than something that's effectively two seconds of a U2 song played over and over again, isn't it?

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury 2008: Jimmy Cliff

Mr Cliff has seen a lot of what the world can do - although nothing would have prepared him for meeting Amy Winehouse backstage.



[Part of Glastonbury 2008 video]

Glastonbury web round-up: Battle royale

Yes, yes, Noel Gallagher was wrong about Jay-Z. There was no reason that Mr. Z shouldn't have headlined the festival (although five years ago might have made more sense) and really, the racially-tinged 'this isn't for your type of music' complaints were best ignored.

But, of course, they weren't, were they? Like an imagined slight in the Big Brother house, the mutterings of discontent have been seized on, and repeated and inflated and turned into a focus rather than treated as an irrelevance.

BBC News watched:

The New York hip-hop star fired up the crowd with an introduction that included a BBC interview in which Oasis star Noel Gallagher said hip-hop was "wrong" for Glastonbury.

Jay-Z then took the stage to the strains of the Oasis hit Wonderwall.

"So they say you guys didn't want me here to be here tonight," he said.

"They said you guys weren't into hip-hop." The crowd responded by chanting his name to show their support.

"Thanks for all the love here tonight," the star added, saying Glastonbury had "embraced my culture".

In effect, though, wasn't all this effectively agreeing with much of what Gallagher said? That hip-hop wasn't core Glastonbury? Wasn't the point more that, actually, there was nothing unusual about having a black American perform on the Pyramid stage? And that Jay-Z's culture and the Pilton culture are just different parts of a musical continuum?

But Jay-Z needed the ghost of Gallagher, as otherwise it was just a standard show, records Gigwise:

Contrary to popular belief Jay-Z was not joined onstage by any of his celebrity friends but did sample an array of artists during the set including AC/DC on '99 Problems' as well as U2, Estelle and Rihanna.

Away from all this, Simon Munnery has written a piece for the BBC Glastonbury site:

In a way Glastonbury is the opposite of the world; outside Glastonbury the rich live in luxury and the poor in squalor - in Glastonbury the rich, the ticket buyers, live in squalor while the workers live in comparative splendour. It's like a cell with many different organs within.

Why doesn't someone give him some money to make TV programmes?

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury 2008: Punch or slap?

So, judge for yourselves - was it a full-on assault, or was it a bit of slap?



[Part of Glastonbury 2008 and Glastonbury 2008 video]

Glastonbury paper round: Winehouse fray breakdown

It's not unusual for journalists to spice up their copy with a few fact-skirting extra details, but reading Rav Singh's coverage of Amy Winehouse's fan spat, you wonder if he realised the event he was embroidering was on national television live. And, erm, on video on his own paper's website linked from the paragraph where he upgraded a half-hearted annoyed slapping to this:

The singer first used an elbow then threw a flurry of punches after leaving the Pyramid stage to saunter along the front row as she sang Rehab.

The 100,000-strong crowd had lapped up hits...

Although, of course, not that sort of hits.

The Sunday Mirror at least admits that - as with the set - while there may have been intent, there wasn't much contact:

Amy Winehouse made a chaotic appearance at Glastonbury last night - spitting chewing gum at the crowd, rambling incoherently and attempting to punch one fan.

The People sounds a little confused:

Amy Winehouse is refusing to leave hospital until a court decides the fate of her hubby.

She feels soothed and secure in the £2,000-a-night London Clinic and plans to stay put until BLAKE FIELDERCIVIL is sentenced in 12 days' time.

Okay, they might have gambled on her not doing Glastonbury, but she'd been in Hyde Park on Friday - how do they explain that?

She was well enough to appear at Glastonbury last night and the Nelson Mandela 90th birthday concert on Friday.

But she is now back in the Harley Street hospital. Mum Janis, 53, said: "She likes it there and feels secure. She doesn't have any worries while she's in there. "Going into hospital has allowed her to be properly rested and cared for."

So she's unable to face the world, except for when she's stood in front of 100,000 people staring at her.

The People hasn't got any mention of fan-scrap incident, which is understandable, in as much as it's not really a functioning newspaper any more.

For the Telegraph it was a "scuffle"; the Sunday Times hedges with "appears to punch a fan" (oddly linking to a YouTube video rather than the more official-looking video their sister News of the World has.

The Sunday Telegraph has sent Stanley Johnson to Pilton - or "London Mayor Boris Johnson's father, Stanley Johnson" as the headline snappily titles him. So, what does London Mayor Boris Johnson's father, Stanley Johnson, make of it all?

In the early hours, when gentlemen of England still lay abed, I watch convoys of fork-lift trucks shunting piled-high boxes of baps to different dispersal points around the valley.

It's a little known fact that Glastonbury is all about the bread products, but an army marches on its stomach and London Mayor Boris Johnson's father, Stanley Johnson is determined to push an analogy that this is like, you know, war, but with Jay-Z.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury Flickr dip

Kosso catches a snap proving that the Eavises have introduced a swift system for dealing with complaints this year; David E Young captures the essential somewhere over there there's a band-ness of festivals; Coderkind proves not everyone loves Amy Winehouse and Will Rose captures Duffy lost in a moment.

Oh, and Project365 shows the best way to enjoy the festival.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury 2008: Candi Staton

Or "Canadace Station", as she seems to have been dubbed on YouTube:



[Part of Glastonbury 2008 videos]

Glastonbloggy: A quick scamper

BBDO say their joke is a repeat, but then Glastonbury is about the classics, isn't it?

Gowherehiphop catches Lupe Fiasco's slightly-more-political-than-Borrell-at-Hyde-Park speech:

“During his set at the Glastonbury Festival in the U.K. last night, rapper Lupe Fiasco spoke out about “tyrannical world leaders”, clumping Zimbabwe’s longtime dictator and the American president in the same category “Fuck Robert Mugabe, Fuck George Bush,” he said. Fuck politics, democrats, socialists, the Labor party. Music’s what it’s all about.”

David Cameron, we're given to understand, has already welcomed this endorsement of the Conservatives.

John Demetriou takes the Mail to task for its less-than-enthusiastic embrace of the festival:

Let’s move past several paragraphs of negativity and nastiness and get to something else: “With a captive audience, traders ramped up their charges…you could buy a sausage sandwich if you had £6 to spare and a mocha to wash that down for £3.”

You can just hear the selfish old bitter cunts now, as they read this story pretending not to look at the pictures of fruity looking girls swanning by: “ooooooh, how much? hooowww much? And I’m going to have to pay for this!”

The reader's responses are also explored:

Chris said: “How can the Fire Authority allow people to pitch tents so close to one another? This site is a fire disaster waiting to happen.”

Yeeeeah, close it dooowwn, now. Nuurrgh.

What an absolute spanner. What the hell has pitching tents close together in a wet and damp environment got to do with fire hazards, and if there were fire hazards, don’t you think this would have been looked into?

It's a good point, though - we're betting none of those tents have got fire escapes, much less clear signage pointing out the emergency exits. Something must be done.

[Part of the Glastonbury Weekend]