going to it this year. has been interesting to watch it change from my first time in 2004 to now, have been an on and off attender, depending essentially just on if i had mates who were going and if i had the cash.
the line-ups are slowly coming out, they put it out in dribs and drabs, like stage by stage with a week in between, which is an interesting new phenomenon. there's then a load of chat in my crew's whatsapp group. its quite a good way to do it.
i've heard people take the festival for task for what it is, who attends, vs what it purports to be. on the music front, there's a pretty common refrain that there's a load of dreck on the TV coverage, but when you go there's a billion stages and all the good stuff is on there.
no-one ever seems to agree with me but i always find it kind of amazing that despite having 'approximately bare' artists playing, i mean it's what, it must be a few hundred at least, it's surprisingly narrow musically speaking. and slightly parochial. ok its not a big surprise, but there is such a UK focus i find.
the bigger stages this year are so occupied with the most boring indie stuff that you can imagine. about half of dance stages they just announced, below, and with some notable exceptions (LTJ Bunkem) obviously i've never heard of any of it. on investigation there is an absolute tonne of cheesy d&b, which i like, some uk hiphop which for me is pretty much universally bad, and some house, a bit of techno. obviously i've haven't investigated all of it but it's always striking to me how given how they could probably get more or less anyone to play there if they wanted to, how essentially boring it all is, how little interest there is in anything that new. fundamentally quite a conservative booking policy i think, which is a shame given that i) i'm going and i want to hear things i like and ii) people are going to go whatever you put on on the smaller stages, surely you could branch out a bit.
www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk
