Glastonbuy 2011: Press round-up

The miserable weather made it hard for press photographers to find much to celebrate on site yesterday, so Gordon Smart in The Sun is reduced to running a blurry photo of Professor Green with a cardboard cup of beer:

The rapper - who is headlining the East Dance Tent tonight - intends to make the most of every minute at the festival.

He does, eh?

"But if it rains, I'm just going to stay in the Winnebago, drink rum, play cards and watch it all on TV."

Ah, yes. The classic festival experience of sitting in a caravan playing canasta.

Still, the Winnebago will at least help with time on site, right?

He said: "I've got on it on Thursday, then off Friday, then on it Saturday and on it again on Sunday."

Oh. So he's making the most of every moment, except Friday. Also, that suggests that although Gordon posted this today, and claimed he'd had the conversation with Green yesterday, he couldn't possibly have done. Is the photo really worth smudging the chronology?

The Mail has a tiresome report from "a middle-aged, middle-class mother". Yes, it runs through every bloody Glasto cliche you can think of:

The final tipping point? My wellington boot has literally been sucked off my foot by sticky mud, leaving me in my socks and up to my ankles in gelatinous brown goo.

Julie Lawrence is the Mail's woman crying "in the Portaloos" (did the Mail's legal team not get the regular missive from Portakabin insisting that their trademark not be used as a generic?).

It turns out she's not even a Glastonbury virgin:

Back then, still in my 20s, during the infamous mud bath of 1997, I laughed and trudged along with the best of them. Forget the mud and yucky toilets — sprirituality and music was what it was really all about, wasn’t it?

But now - why, she thinks she must have been as mad as Melanie Philips to enjoy it at all:

I want to shout: ‘Come on, ladies, what are we doing here in our dotage? This is NOT FUN!’ My back is protesting and every ounce of my being is screaming for a sit-down, a nice cup of tea and slice of fruit cake. What do these other middle-class mums have that I do not? Have I grown old before my time?

What do the other people there have that you don't? How about 'a genuine reason for being there other than filing an article that could have been knocked together in a Costa Coffee on Temple Meads station', Julie.

In the Mail tomorrow: Someone who doesn't really like tennis goes to Wimbledon and whines about how it's full of tennis.

The Express, meanwhile, builds its coverage around the cultural highlight of the day:

WAYNE Rooney and his wife Coleen waded into the mud of Glastonbury yesterday in wellies.

Hats off to the inept Express web operation, by the way, which still isn't convinced the U2 gig will happen:

Last night U2 were due to play a long-awaited headline gig at the event, attended by 170,000 revellers.

But, obviously, we won't find out if that happened until the Sunday Express goes to print.

In another part of the Richard Desmond empire - the only-slightly-porny part - the Daily Star is also fixated on Wayne and Colleen, but puts its sister title to shame by doing some Actual Journalism about their arrival:

A guard said: “Wayne seemed in good spirits even though he and Coleen had already got soaked.”

See? It's not a real story unless you talk to an eyewitness.

The Mirror seems to be struggling to make sense of it all:

IT seems Chipmunk’s dietary requirements at Glastonbury were no problem at all. After bringing the house down opening The Other Stage, he tweeted: “GLASTO was HAAAAM!!!!”

And cheese, I hope.

Sarah Tetteh got a byline for that.

The Telegraph had a secret weapon for the U2 set. Their man, Neil McCormick, knows Bono. Yes, he seldom mentions it, so it might be a bit of a surprise to discover that. But this once, he was prepared to use his connections:

Backstage insight from Neil McCormick:

Twitter: Nice to watch Bono signalling & encouraging band from behind the stage. They've got a sneaky keyboard player round back too.

Twitter: Road crew, gtr techs all on their toes for this one, problem solving, shouting at one another. Looks seamless out front. #U2 #glasto

It's not entirely clear how Neil could have been delivering "backstage insight" while also able to explain how it looked from the front.

I'll return to the Telegraph's coverage in a separate post, by the way.

The Guardian wryly reports a flop in the fields:

Mobile phone company, and Glastonbury music partner, Orange, had a cunning ruse to get punters interested in its wares. It sent a 6ft 8in "appy man" to Glastonbury to roam around the site. Festival-goers were challenged to find this man, with the prize potentially being tickets to the side of the Pyramid stage. Clues as to appy man's location were to be posted "on the official Glasto App and via Twitter", Orange wrote.

Alas, the punters the Guardian spoke to were unaware of appy man's existence, let alone whereabouts. This reporter did find appy man, mostly because his PR man was loudly alerting passersby to his presence.

A quick look at the @appy_man twitter feed revealed 500 people had signed up for clues as to his location – or 0.25% of expected Glastonbury attendees.

The idea that people have better things to do at Glastonbury is heartwarming.

Although the presence of a mobile phone company as "music partner" really does look odd given all those claims about Glastonbury isn't sponsored...

Comes With Music expands a little

The initial take-up of Comes With Music - Nokia's music-subscription-with-a-phone - hasn't been entirely stellar, with suggestions that only 23,000 people have signed up so far. Although those that have it are very keen on the service.

Now, Nokia have done a deal with Orange to bring a CWM handset to another network:

Orange will be the only UK network to offer the service, marketing it through five plans ranging from £25 a month for 200 minutes, 300 texts and unlimited music to £45 a month for 1200 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited music.

The sting? If you want to have the music directly on your phone, you'll still have to pay for the data transfer. Which makes free music quite expensive.

Gennaro Castaldo watch: Hung up

Another day, another HMV announcement that comes without the Knowledge-Stick of Castaldo. The poor guy is probably struggling to keep up as HMV mutates its business seven or eight times a day.

Earlier in the week, you'll recall, it was suddenly going to be a cinema. Now, though, it's decided to be a mobile phone store instead:

The deal puts what Orange calls "show and sell" spaces into HMV shops, where Orange staff can demonstrate to punters why they don't need a dedicated MP3 player or portable video device when a high-end telephone will do both jobs almost as well. Glasgow, Plymouth and Teesside will be the first of a hundred such spaces to be created in time for Christmas.

Because, of course, the natural place to go if you want a telephone would be a record shop.

The idea seems to be in allowing Orange staff to persuade HMV customers to buy something they didn't want. They could try this with their music offerings, too, I suppose - inviting people to tell customers trying to buy Westlife that, actually, they might think about buying something better instead.

I'm not sure that this is quite going to work, though - it assumes that there are a large number of people who go to HMV to buy mp3 players in the first place, and that they're going to be persuadable that they don't know their own minds in large enough numbers to make it worthwhile. Have they done any testing on this? Because my guess would be that the sort of people who buy mp3 players at HMV are going to be either impulse-buying or else purchasing as a gift for other people - neither of which categories would obviously scream as being easy targets to lock in to a contract.

If only Gennaro was able to shed some light into this curious development. Perhaps he's preparing to issue guidance to editors if HMV announce plans to sell kitchenware some time tomorrow.

A different shade of Orange

As their response to the government's Digital Britain report, Orange have offered to build a lovely broadband network and, more interestingly, shouted "oi, no" in the face of proposals for a rights agency to police intellectual property online:

[L]ike many ISPs, it stresses that "the real key to combating unlawful file-sharing and copyright infringement online is (a) education and (b) the development and popularisation of legitimate and compelling content distribution business models."

As James P pointed out, this is the same Orange who sends out those terse letters to alleged unlicensed file-sharers at the request of the big record companies.

Indeed, it seems that even this, Orange is now feeling queasy about:

"This proposed solution, which is still strongly advocated by the music industry despite public statements to the contrary, cuts across basic principles of common law, user rights and ISPs' legitimate commercial interests and would fail a straightforward cost-benefit analysis," Orange said.

To be fair to Orange, the ISPA did push back fairly hard on some of the demands from the BPI, even if in the end it accommodated some of the less wild-eyed ones.

And they're clearly not about to take a digital cop scheme without a fight, either:

As for the idea of a rights agency funded by industry, which would be backed by legislation against persistent illegal file-sharers, the company told Carter it "does not think it is appropriate for it to fund a rights agency that would only be to the benefit of the rights-holders. This would ultimately become an 'anti-piracy tax' on all consumers, whether or not they infringe. Orange does not understand why one industry should be asked to fund the protection of another industry's commercial interests."

Unless by sending out warning letters, of course. But that's more about keeping the record industry quiet than policing their rights.

MIDEM 2008: Orange: DRM is hobbling our business

It's not just customers (or would-be customers) who get frustrated by DRM: it's a pain in the arse for retailers, too. At MIDEM, Orange music product development director Brenda O’Connell has told MocoNews that DRM has caused problems for the company's attempts to create downloads usable on PCs as well as mobiles:

“The DRM ecosystem on the mobile and on the PC is fundamentally different; getting them to talk together to create a seamless experience was a huge amount of work.”

And results have been “nothing to write home about”, she conceded: “It’s taken us two years to get this converged service to market, two years is far too long. We’re also very concerned about the fact that customers are really rejecting DRM. We want to launch not only a la carte services but subscription-based services, rental models. DRM is what’s holding us back at this point.”

Something to think about as you read music industry bosses raging at people who grab music where they can - after all this time, it's the industry's reluctance to trust people which is, reducing the legitimate options for downloads and ironically making theft more likely.

For all the talk about this MIDEM being a conference where the industry has embraced digital, when you listen to the people who are trying to work with the majors, it's clear they've not actually changed their position at all - just started realising they're going to have to. Ten years too late, and they're still dragging their feet.

Still, Orange retain some optimism:

Orange content services SVP Herve Payan: “If we don’t remove the DRM, we believe it will be slow growth. Ideally, we will have MP3. The majors are changing; we think in the next six months we will have it.”

But still another six months? And that's the optimistic view?

[Part of MIDEM 2008]

Not that Glastonbury's gone commercial or anything...

BBC News explores just one of the tents on the site:

Across three days, at least 100,000 handsets will be powered up at the on-site Chill n' Charge tent.

The facility is free and will not feature any logos of the mobile phone network which is providing it.

However, its choice of colour for the canvas - bright orange - might give even the most sozzled of festival-goers a clue about who is behind it.

The marquee will also contain 35 internet terminals to show off the company's broadband service.

Punters will be encouraged to "upload your pics, e-mail your mates and let your mum know you're still in one piece" - while those at home get behind-the-scenes tours and a Glastonbury blog from Peaches Geldof.

"We want people to walk away from the festival feeling more positive about our brand than when they arrived, to think that we have done something for them," said Mat Sears, spokesman for, yep, Orange.

"Then obviously we hope that when it comes to them deciding which mobile network to sign up with, who to supply their broadband, we might be their number one option."

I know, I know the arguments - that, despite the ticket price pushing the event ever more into the VIP box bracket, there's still a need for more money to fuel the event. But you do wonder if the festival might not have retained some of its specialness if it sacrificed a few of the clowns, and got by without Orange powering its marketing with a Peaches Geldof blog onsite.

Meanwhile, shouting "former SAS man" Andy McNabb - yes, him - is in The Sun offering tips on how to survive Glastonbury. We're not sure if he's ever actually been there, as the key tips are "start queuing to recharge your mobile before the last 'charge' segment disappears" and "hide from Peaches Geldof at all costs", but instead McNabb, who was in the army, you know, seems to be preparing festival goers for a trip to a war of some sort:

It is time to leave the Jesus sandals at home. Wellies aren’t just for fashion victims like Kate Moss.

What does that even mean? Since when were wellington boots fashion items?

Change your socks regularly (take extra pairs) and keep your feet dry. It might save you from trench foot.

Change your socks? Was he in the SAS or matron at a minor public school?

Every night simply put on your dry stuff and change back into the wet stuff in the morning. I have survived for months like that.

When I was in the jungle we always had a wet set of clothes and a dry set.

Or, since it's only a weekend, you could just take enough tshirts and trousers to have clean dry clothes every day. Because you're camping in Somerset, and not in the jungle for months.

If you have got one, a head torch is great, leaving your hands free wherever you go.

Which is useful if you have to... um, use one of the broadband internet terminals or pick the olives off your bruschetta or something.

Other useful items are safety pins, sealable plastic bags for keeping things watertight, vinyl tape for running repairs, a torch (with spare batteries), penknife and whistle.

We're sure the Glastonbury organisers will be delighted that The Sun is suggesting people turn up with knives. But a whistle? Will that actually help you if you get in to trouble, or just encourage people to throw things at you in the mistaken belief that you've wandered out the rave tent?

You're on a dairy farm with thousands and thousands of other people, Andy - where would you be so far from civilisation you'd need a whistle rather than shouting "help me" to get help?

Andy then turns his attention to food:

AN army marches on its stomach and you will also need some decent scoff if you want to go the distance.

Burgers for breakfast, kebab for lunch and chips for dinner, all washed down with copious amounts of lager really isn’t going to do your stomach a lot of good.

Anyone who has seen the loos at Glasto knows that you want to keep your visits to an absolute minimum.

Andy McNabb - who was in the Paras or something - apparently knows no fear, other than a slighty grubby chemical toilet. Can this really be the same man who barked at Sky One viewers about how he would survive a dirty bomb who can't even face a dirty toilet cubicle?

I like sachet grub which you just rip open and eat.

Or, erm, you could just go off to one of the dozens of food stalls. Or perhaps have some biscuits? You can just open the packet of biscuits and eat them.

Don’t forget to stock up on lots of fruit and veg.

Wholefood such as muesli to eat in the morning will give you energy for a full day of revelry.

All that roughage. Handy, except, erm, if you're trying to "keep your visits to the toilets to an absolute minimum."

Water needs to be rationed at all times but drink plenty of it. The SAS carry water purification tablets.

Don’t laugh — you may need them over the next few days.

Sorry, Andy. I'm trying not to laugh but water purification tablets? Things might have got bad in the past at the festival, but even in 1997 nobody got dysentery because they were forced to drink the puddles.

CHOOSE higher ground and remember the prevailing winds at Glastonbury are usually from the west.

A decent Gore-Tex tent will keep you dry — you won’t need to dig a foxhole.

Great news, everybody - you won't need to dig a foxhole. Although that will come as a disappointment to everyone who turns up at music festivals carrying a shovel.
The next segment is called - honestly - yomping:

GO the pace of the slowest man or woman in your unit. Conditions will be testing. It will be seriously boggy out there.

If one of your team is falling behind STOP and let them have a breather.

The most important thing is making it through together and intact.

Or you could just arrange to all meet up on the right-hand side of the blanket stall if you get separated. Or even, you know, text message each other. It's not clear what McNabb thinks will happen to members of your "unit" (or "your mates" as most people would call them) if they get separated - will rogue members of Kula Shaker be picking them off?

Apparently:

ALWAYS look after your wounded — and try not to suffer any casualties.

But what do you do if, say, you are caught by a friendly fire strike from the John Peel Stage, Andy?

Carry paracetamol with you at all times to combat recurring hangovers.

Good advice - if your system is awash with alcohol, top it up with pills.

But let's not mock - if it wasn't for Andy, who used to be in the Foreign Legion, remember, whoever would have known that headache pills can help with cases of headache?
Then, we're on to "Know your enemy":

BE alert at all times. You never know when you could become a target.

Watch out for the dodgy characters you are likely to encounter — drug dealers, dippers, rogue hawkers and muggers. Do NOT attempt to take these people out but report them to an official.

Aw, come on. I've brought my spade to the middle of the West of England, I don't need to dig a foxhole and now you're telling me I can't use it to "take out" a "rogue hawker". Where's the fun, eh?

But, seriously. It's a music festival. There should be no room for rogue hawkers - birds of prey like hawks should only be used for good.
Some final advice from Andy:

LET’S face it, you all want to get into the VIP backstage area. Well, it requires some skilful blagging.

There is no point queuing and pretending to be on the guest list. Be brassy and just bluff it.

Clearly, talking absolute bollocks is something of a talent for Andy.

It’s best to walk in acting like you should be there.

Who would I want to meet?

The Killers, of course.

So, if you see a bloke in soggy clothes, lapping water from a puddle yelling "but I'm a Mormon too" as he tries to get round the back to the Pyramid stage, that'd be Andy McNabb.