Glastonberries
well, i missed the tickets for this year, despite being more or less a local - slept in and then lost out - so i'm gonna miss it this year but I've been maybe 15 times and what differentiates it from other Festivals I've been to is that it's hard work in every way, even if it's sunny... it's relentless and often stupid and confusing and hardly ever contingent on who's actually playing... i've seen some great performances there (and Orbital reallly did... etc) but almost all of them have been accidents... stumblings....
with Glastonbury, it's the hard work that makes it unique... there's a lot of psychic energy to be smeared and there's a certain effort involved... there's always been a Monty Python (A cardboard box? You were lucky....) element to going and surviving and it's still there, despite the travellers being long gone... i got a bit pissed off circa mid 90s when the NME kinda crashed it but recently it's been easily back to form and the fact that Shangrila etc stay open forever now means you don't even have to trudge off site to the traveller raves....
And as for the music, it's never been about the main stage... though there's maybe a space for a tone setting marker (Michael Jackson dying kind of did it last year)... but a lot of bands play their heart out there - Animal Collective were transcendental at Glastonbury and dull as hell at Green Man etc etc
Now, I like Green Man well enough but it's a picnic, with nice people and pretty bands, same goes for lots of the other boutique festivals (ATP is the exception - it's a kind of Concentration camp for people who know who Devendra Banhart is ); lovely, but an entirely different experience...
I'm really pissed off that i didn't get a ticket - the last night with Orbital is going to be amazing....