My Glastonbury Review!

Well, I'm back.

As you may have seen from various news reports, it wasn't the driest Glastonbury Festival on record; indeed, it's been the wettest weekend in June in the UK since records began, which is an awfully long time ago. With flooding in many parts of the UK resulting in loss of life and transport chaos, it comes as no surprise that this year's Glastonbury Festival was also a total "mudfest". We are talking serious, wellies required mud here. Not for the faint hearted.

However, this year we had one big advantage. We had been forewarned! The marvellous British institution that is the Met Office informed us well in advance of the impending deluge and in the light of this information, brollies, wellies and rain coats were all packed and taken to Pilton enabling one hundred and seventy seven thousand festival goers defied the elements and had one hell of a party.

This year's Glastonbury was the largest arts festival ever held. It took all day just to walk from one side of the farm to the other. There were literally hundreds of stages, dedicated to all different types of quality music from around the world. The famous Pyramid Stage featured, in my mind, the rather controversial choice of headline acts which were the Artic Monkeys (Fri, my friend said they were "just OK"), The Killers (Sat) and The Who (Sun), while The Other Stage (which is just as big) featured Bjork (Fri), Iggy and the Stooges (Sat), and The Chemical Brothers (Sun).

Although the live music and fun didn't start until Friday, most of us turned up on Wednesday to soak up some atmosphere and the campsite was filling up rapidly by mid afternoon. I'd strongly advise anybody going to Glasto in the future to turn up as early as possible as the camping areas get ridiculously full very quickly. Prepare to be very well acquainted with your neighbours throughout the weekend. I travelled light, with only a tent, sleeping bag, three bottles of vodka, a torch, boots and wellies and some clean clothes for company. In actual fact the coach down was so quick and easy, and it dropped me so close to where I was camping, that I barely carried my luggage 500 yards all day.

One of the great, unsung features of Glastonbury is the great array of foods available. You could eat your way round the site. The emphasis is defiantly on vegan, veggie and healthy foods washed down with cider and more cider. But there were plenty of meat options on offer as well. Its London prices so be warned. £3.50 a pint of cider. I didn't think that was too bad to be honest, all things considered.

Lets talk music. Bjork was amazing. One of my main reasons for going this year was to catch this set, and she didn't disappoint. She emerged wearing a mushroom shaped hat and long coat, but this soon gave way to a multicoloured flowing outfit with a silver painted forehead. She played a selection of hits, with at least one tune from each of her albums. Despite making a balls up of playing "5 years" (I don't think anybody noticed apart from obsessives like me), the set was excellent, and the triple-header of "Hyperballad", "Pluto" and "Declare Independence" was a magnificent finale. I must say the rendition of "Army of Me" was probably my musical highlight all weekend. Other acts I caught on the Friday were Arcade Fire, who didn't really grab me I'm afraid, The Magic Numbers, for whom the sun shined and we all sang along, someone I can't remember the name of at The Glade Stage, who were doing hip-hop and drum and bass with saxophones and were excellent, Mcr's very own The Travelling Band, who deserve a bigger stage and were terrific, and Bloc Party, who are a very tight band but bored me as I realised I don't like any of their songs, and they didn't play "Two More Years"!

Saturday saw CSS (excellent, camp nonsense), Babyshambles (outright rubbish, even with a guest appearance from Kate Moss), Klaxons (all shouting and loudness and jumping and brilliance), Maximo Park (who should be further up the bill, simply excellent stuff from them), and The Editors (only caught part of the set but sounded great). Then onto the Dance Arena. That's five different stages all catering for different dance music types, and I caught Mr. Scruff (a bit too downtempo considering the time of night), and Sasha (what a fantastic Thom Yorke remix he finished on) plus loads of random stuff.

Sunday will be known as the day I was the most wrecked, and the day in which I had to drink mostly lager because some of the bars had run out of cider! However, Shirley Bassey was probably the highlight – she knows how to hold a crowd and the diamond-encrusted wellies were remarkably clean. The Bond medley was brilliant, and we got "Big Spender" twice. The Kaiser Chiefs played and I have to say they have some great songs but why do they insist on yelling "whoa, whoooa, whoooooooahhhh" at every opportunity?  The last show of the festival for me was "The Chemical Brothers" and it was a stunning, stunning show – although I couldn't stay to the end because I needed the loo so much I just had to go.

So that was Glastonbury, and it was amazing. Although I had to get up for the bus early on Monday, the day it closed, I was home by three in the afternoon and started the painful process of readjusting to normal life again. I still have a raging thirst for cider. Luckily, I have some in the fridge waiting for me right now. I honestly don't think the bad weather and the mud spoilt the weekend at all for most people. Out of the four Glastonbury's I've attended (1997, 1998, 2003, 2007), three have been wet and wild and one has been sunny. I guess its all part of the charm. Hopefully, next year we can get a gig there. I shall do a rain dance to try and make this happen!!

I shall be field bound once again.

Ben