A Shirt on Sunday: Glastonbury Festival – 26-28/6/2009

One of the things about Glastonbury is that for every band you see, there’s another three you missed. Looking at the back of this shirt, I am astonished at some of my choices, but nine years is a long time in rock’n’roll.

Janet and I rocked up on the Thursday to get a good spot, but didn’t see any music that night as far as I recall. Our first band on the Friday was on the Avalon stage: Baskery are a Swedish ‘punk rockabilly’ band. I.e. jangly guitars and banjo with a double-bass. No recollection of them at all, but listening on Spotify, they’re okay.

From there to the Main stage and Fleet Foxes – Their debut album was huge, if quiet but on a massive field the subtlety was lost a bit. Best on record, I think.
Up the other end of the site to the solar-powered Croissant Neuf tent, where Steve Knightley was doing his thing. Always a pleasure to watch him play, but we had to leave early and head up the hill to the Park stage for Dead Weather – Jack White, The Kills’ Alison Mossheart and a couple Raconteurs members. This was a semi-secret gig and they played a fine set, as I recall.

Most of the day at Glasto is spent walking from stage A to stage B; something Janet is generally very tolerant about, but has been known to send me on my way and just sit in one place to wait for a band. In this case, I went to see Fairport Convention on my own, and left them early in order to find Janet for Neil Young’s set.

The good aspect of the Galstonbury headline sets is that the sound is excellent (cross-winds permitting). The bad side is that you can’t see a thing on stage because of the bloody flags. We watched the screens and still enjoyed it, although the never ending version of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ was a tad tedious.

Saturday started at the Other stage and The Broken Family Band, who were in the process of breaking up. I’d always enjoyed seeing them at Festivals, but they never broke out of the indie rock circuit.
Round the corner to the Main stage and Malian guitar-slingers Tinariwen. Love a bit of African blues and they did their standard menacing thing.

I skipped Spinal Tap and went up to the acoustic area to see The King Blues, as recommended to me by Karl. Indie-punky band that didn’t do it for me in the context of the Avalon stage.
Back to the Main stage for Crosby Stills and Nash, who Janet had identified as a must-see, but we ended up leaving half-way through their set as they were just dull.
That left us with Bruce Springsteen to finish the day. Again, fabulous sound but hard to see. The audience was a bit baffled. The average student knows ‘Born in The USA’ and ‘Dancing in The Dark’. We got a whole bunch of recent stuff you had to be a fan to know and some obscure back-catalogue stuff. It was great, but the next day the toilet queue was not impressed. They hadn’t been impressed with Neil Young either, as for both artists the name is more familiar than the music.

Sunday starts with Status Quo. I’d last seen them in 1985 supporting Queen at Wembley, and I’d not been impressed. But standing on the hill in the sunshine was another matter and they were great!

More African blues with Amadou et Miriam – dressed in gold and playing a blinder.

We hung around for Tom Jones who was surprisingly good, mixing old and new songs to keep everybody happy, and he is after all a showman. Probably Janet’s favourite act of the weekend.
I skipped out to the Other stage for the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – don’t remember their set at all, but it’s on my list and the list never lies. A classic NME band, and very good on record.

Now a major blunder: rather than hit the Main stage for Nick Cave we went up to the Park for Tunng and Tinariwen. Tunng weren’t a band I knew – one of the rockier bands on the folk scene. It says here they are considered to be ‘folktronica’, which is not a good sign. What we got was a bunch of their songs with a couple for Tinariwen guitarists strumming along. It wasn’t the meeting of musical minds that had been billed.

As we were already up there, we stayed for Cold War Kids, an angular guitar & keyboard band I stumbled across somehow and really like. They didn’t disappoint, although I think I was one of the few in the audience who knew who they were.

At this point I think Janet went to bed and I went to Blur. They were doing the reunion tour, so we got all the greatest hits and Phil Daniels turned up to do Park Life and we all pretended to be cockneys for a couple of hours. A storming end to the festival and only year I saw all three Main stage headliners.