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.

Glastonbury 2014: Metallica are those mystery headliners

The creatures outside looked from Glastonbury to Reading, and from Reading to Glastonbury, and from Glastonbury to Reading again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Dollywood meets Pilton Pop

I’m incredibly excited to FINALLY announce that the #BlueSmokeWorldTour is coming to @GlastoFest on June 29th! ;) Stay tuned for more info…

— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) February 27, 2014

Glastonbury 2014: Ticket sale screw-up time

Seetickets & the festival hit refresh again, hoping this time it'll work:

Glastonbury 2014: Removing a stain on the Rabbit Hole Stage

I'm not sure it's quite the first booking for next year's Glastonbury, but one band has already been signed up.

There's a background: the Rabbit Hole Stage was struggling to find someone prepared to play their headline slot against The Stones on Saturday this year, so Hamish Guerrini made up a silly name - The Railing Stains - and put that down for the slot.

The trouble is, nobody at the festival realised it was a joke, and the band name started to appear in promotional literature.

They even got picked as a "top thing to see".

Still, no harm done, eh? It's not like there's a real Railing Stains.

Except there is. They're a Brighton-based Stones tribute, and naturally they were surprised and excited to discover they were playing Glastonbury.

They tried to find out how to get in, but failed. The Argus captures the happy ending:

After hearing of the band’s disappointment through The Argus, Mr Guerrini added: “When I found out we tried to get in touch, it would have been great to have them play.

But unfortunately it didn’t happen.

“As a way of making it up to them I would love to book them for next year on the Rabbit Hole stage.”

That's, of course, assuming Eavis doesn't poach them for the Pyramid stage.