When visiting my mum after Glastonbury this week, she reminded me that it's nearly twenty years since I attended my first music festival. I can still vividly remember the first experience too: I went to the Reading Festival with my mate Jeff; we shared a yellow, porous tent which filled steadily with water during a first rain-soaked night and when we awoke the festival started with a band called Gaye Bykers on Acid who introduced themselves with: "Hello, I'm Freddy Mercury, and we're Queen!"
That same year (1989) New Order topped the bill with The Mission and the Pogues. Bjork was still with the Sugarcubes, Spiritualized were still Spacemen 3 and Billy Bragg was...well, Billy Bragg.
Twenty years on I'm still having trouble resisting the allure of a great fest and the Glastonbury Festival is the best of the lot in my book. As tradition dictated, I once again borrowed a tent, only this time it was the rain-resistant type! It did rain (of course, this was England in the summer) but that didn't take the shine off a vintage weekend.
For your enjoyment, I offer a video summary of some very well-spent holiday time. If you don't have the patience to sit through the entire video, skip to the end to see how Jay-Z wowed a reluctant British public.
Movie credit is clearly due to Emma, without whom I would never have believed I was not too old for this sort of thing.
Eddi Reader? Wasn't she in the New Bohemians?
Posted by: ian | July 06, 2008 at 03:03 AM