I have never been to a pop/rock festival despite my love of music. I have never really felt the need to go to a festival, although I have a fascination with Woodstock, the mother of all festivals. I have a poster in my study listing the artists who played that festival. Joan Baez, Tim Hardin, Richie Havens, Canned Heat, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, The Band, Crosby Stills and Nash, Jimi Hendrix and many more. Some of my all time favourite artists and it reads like an encyclopaedia of classic rock.
I can't say why I have never really wanted to go to a festival. Perhaps its all to do with the lack of creature comforts and maybe 40 years ago I would have had different views, but the opportunity to go to one of them never really arose and I never really gave it a second thought.
I have caught bits and pieces of this year's Glasto. On Saturday evening I watched Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. Of the two Gallaghers, I find Noel slightly more palatable than Liam but his after gig interview with Jo Whiley seemed to be little more than him telling us how he planned to get rat-arsed during the night and how he couldn't decide whether to have a cheese and ham roll or a ham and cheese. This food was designed to soak up the alcohol he was about to hit.
There was a carrot-haired presenter by the name of Jack Saunders who has shows on Radio One (I gave up listening to Radio One when they decided they were no longer going to play music!!).
Saunders must have a very limited knowledge of music as he declared that a monstrously untalented band named Caribou were "probably my favourite band of all time." We were only subjected to one song by them although carrot head told us that we could catch their entire set on BBC I Player. Think I will pass on that one.
Then we had a writhing, semi-naked young man who threw himself across the stage whilst seemingly pouring water over himself. Said young man howled a song, swore a bit and generally gave the look of somebody either high on drugs or completely rat arsed (probably both).
Carrot top eulogised about this, informing us that when it comes to counter-culture there is nobody on the scene today better than this herbert who apparently was called Young Blood. "When it comes to counter-culture they don't come much better than Young Blood. He's where it's at," we were informed.
So in my usual thirst for knowledge and understanding of counter-culture, I googled both Young Blood and the phrase counter culture.
Apparently Young Blood isn't his real name which came as something of a shock to me. First thing I found is that his name isn't Young Blood but Yungblood (very counter culture that). He is 24 and is described as an English singer, musician and songwriter (all three categories I would dispute). His real name is Dominic Harrison (admittedly not very counter culture) and he comes from Doncaster (definitely not counter culture). He has a number one album behind him (surely that makes him mainstream rather than counter-culture)?
According to Wikepedia (the font of all knowledge) he suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) which made him a troublesome student. He was suspended from school after a dare from his friend to "moon" his mathematics teacher. Harrison stated that he was an opinionated child and felt that his energetic nature was often misunderstood. He suffers from insomnia which doesn't surprise me. After watching his set at Glasto I was afraid of going to sleep in case I had nightmares.
The definition of counter-culture according to the dictionary is: "a way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm."
Well Mr Harrison is certainly at variance with anything that's "normal." As for the rest well he's not even at the cutting edge of a bread board.
So let's leave our little twerp to progress to his own obscurity after he's had his Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame and let's turn to something a whole lot musically more palatable.
Yes Sir Paul McCartney headlined Saturday night at the festival. I wasn't expecting much as I believed Maccas voice was shot. A friend informed me of this and my reply was "it doesn't really matter it's still McCartney."
But his voice wasn't shot. It was half decent (well ok three quarters decent) and the set lasted over two hours despite the fact he's now an Octogenarian. Macca once again proved just what rock/pop is about and it's not about some screaming banshee like wannabee who has a strange name and suffers from ADHT so thinks that the world should be subjected to his hurtling around the stage in the name of art.
McCartney belted out almost 40 songs. I would say 40 classics but a few of the newer numbers really didn't hit the spot. He seems insistent on playing a song "Fuh You" at every live gig. The message in this is obvious, only the word f--k has been changed to protect the innocent (and there probably weren't too many innocents at Glasto).
I just wanna know how you feel
Want a love that's so proud and real
You make me wanna go out and steal
I just want it fuh you, I just want it fuh you
You have to admit those aren't prizewinning lyrics. There were a few other cabbages amongst the onions (using cabbages as one of my least favourite vegetables and onions as one of my favourite). Yes there were a few other rough moments.
At one point Macca said something to the crowd along the lines of: "When we play the old hits everyone lights up their mobiles and waves them about in a bank of light. When we do the new stuff it's just a black hole." Of course that is true. McCartney's new stuff is anything from good to really bad (Fuh You being an example and other less than brilliant songs in the set included: Come On To Me - similar theme to Fuh You and New). For me all of those could and probably should have been omitted with a few more Beatles and Wings pieces brought in. I think I would have preferred The Frog Chorus and Mull of Kintyre to those.
But overall it was a blistering set from arguably the greatest songwriter our country has ever produced. Before the evening there was a debate about what song he would open the set with. I plumped for "Maybe I'm Amazed" which he has said in the past is one of his favourites. But that song came at number 11 in the playlist. He opened with Can't Buy Me Love which somehow seemed perfect.
I'm not a great fan of either Steve Coogan or his alter ego Alan Partridge but as a Beatle fan he did sum things up when he said "The Rolling Stones have about seven or eight songs that could be classed as classics. The Beatles have 50." The only thing I would disagree with there is I would say the Beatles have over 60 classics and he didn't even play Eleanor Rigby or Penny Lane (two of my all time favourite tracks). Just for those anoraks, at the end of this blog is a list of what Macca played and where the songs come from.
Before the performance, BBC interviewed the rock music critic of The Telegraph newspaper who said that McCartney oozes niceness - always willing to chat with anyone and always friendly. The same was said on a sports programme about Rafael Nadal the tennis player who apparently never refuses to have a photograph with his fans and always thanks everyone from the cameramen to the ball boys and girls. It costs nothing to be nice as they say.
Last comment on Glastonbury and McCartney. On the Sunday morning show on BBC one of the newspaper reviewers said they thought it rather strange that the most powerful aspect of Glastonbury came from songs written 60 years ago and there was a kind of sadness in the fact that youth culture had taken a back seat.
That's total nonsense. It doesn't matter when songs were written if they are classics. If Yungblood represents youth culture well please please please let's regress some more. Let's have some Vera Lynn next year even if she is no longer with us. They can do wonders with holograms as Abba have found out.
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It was my intention to tell you today about my college reunion in Harlow yesterday. Sadly I didn't get there. We set off in plenty of time but got about eight miles down the road when we came up against a huge traffic jam on the A11. It was all due to a serious accident which shut the road. It took us well over an hour to get to the next turn off to get off the A11 and by then it was too late to work out an alternative route. So after driving 30 miles over two and a half hours we were back home and so walked to the Queen's Head for a roast lunch.
It was annoying and there may not be another re-union but of course something more important may have happened. Somebody's life may have been changed forever by the accident.
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Wimbledon tennis championships start today. I believe that women are this year receiving the same prize money as men. Why then are they not playing the best of five sets rather than the best of three?
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Finally that Paul McCartney set-list. By my reckoning 19 or 20 solid gold classics.
- Can't Buy Me Love (from The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night)
- Junior's Farm (Wings)
- Letting Go (from Wings’ Venus & Mars)
- Got To Get You Into My Life (from The Beatles’ Revolver)
- Come On To Me (From Egypt Station)
Let Me Roll It (from Wings’ Band On The Run) - Getting Better (The Beatles)
- Let 'Em In (from Wings At The Speed Of Sound)
- My Valentine (from Kisses On The Bottom)
- Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five (from Wings’ Band On The Run)
- Maybe I'm Amazed (from McCartney)
- I've Just Seen a Face (from The Beatles’ Help!)
- Love Me Do (The Beatles)
- Dance Tonight (from Memory Almost Full)
- Blackbird (from The Beatles’ White Album)
- Here Today (from Tug Of War)
- New (from New)
- Lady Madonna (The Beatles)
- Fuh You (from Egypt Station)
- Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite! (from The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper)
- Something (from The Beatles’ Abbey Road)
- Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (from The Beatles’ White Album)
- You Never Give Me Your Money (from The Beatles’ Abbey Road)
- She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (from The Beatles’ Abbey Road)
- Get Back (from The Beatles’ Let It Be)
- I Saw Her Standing There (with Dave Grohl; from The Beatles’ Please Please Me)
- Band On The Run (from Wings’ Band On The Run)
- Glory Days (with Bruce Springsteen)
- I Wanna Be Your Man (with Bruce Springsteen; from With The Beatles)
- Let It Be (from The Beatles’ Let It Be)
- Live And Let Die (Wings)
- Hey Jude (The Beatles)
- I've Got a Feeling with John Lennon on video; from The Beatles’ Let It Be)
- Helter Skelter (from The Beatles’ White Album)
- Golden Slumbers (from The Beatles’ Abbey Road)
- Carry That Weight (from The Beatles’ Abbey Road)
- The End (with Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen; from The Beatles’ Abbey Road)