I was there! Half dead today though. We left at 1am this morning to come back. Got out the car park in about 5 - 10 minutes
Definitely NOT cool
!
We left straight after Stevie Wonder (had already packed up tents and loaded car in the morning), got to the car just after midnight and it took us 2hrs to get out the car park. A couple of friends who left the same time as us got home about 90mins before us as they were parked West not East. Doubly annoying as on Wednesday despite coming from East we deliberately tried to come in from the West to park there, only to be diverted all the way up to East 2!
Speaking of which queuing to get to the gate on Wednesday was a nightmare, we arrived about 9:30am but had to queue on foot with all our bags for 4hrs just to get through the carpark to the gate, then trekked over to find a pitch. My mate who has been the past 8 years said he'd never seen anything like it and thought coming early on Wednesday would see us get a good spot, I think the England game put paid to that idea! It's a festival, so, queuing at the gate etc is to be expected but when you come a 'day early' you don't really expect that much hassle simple reaching the queue in the first place!
But enough whining about the queues, onto the music:
Good
-Muse: I'm probably the only person in the country that thinks Muse are "kinda OK". Everyone else seems to love them or hate them. So when I say I thought their set was phenomenal I'm saying that as a relative neutral rather than a die hard fan. We were sat way back on the hill but the Pyramid sound system really did it justice, nice touch covering a U2 track as well (I almost cried, lol).
-Scissor Sisters: surprisingly good. Found myself getting in to it despite not really knowing many of their songs. Highlight of the festival for my wife I think.
-Slash: sounded good from the football field outside, lol
-Stevie Wonder: would have prefered to see Above & Beyond, Orbital, or Ash, but was dragged along to this. Not my type of music, but a good performance and enjoyable.
-Norah Jones: Great voice and played multiple instruments, what more could you want? Late afternoon summer timeslot suited her I think (unlike Faithless, just seemed weird listening to them in daylight!).
Disappointing
-Kate Nash: wife wanted to see her but she was shocking, worst 'gig' I have ever been to. People were just chilling out in the afternoon sun and because she didn't get a standing ovation for her first song or two started ranting "come on, it's glastonbury FFS!" or about how there aren't enough female songwriters. Well Ms Nash, you may or may not be a good songwriter, but you certainly aren't a peformer. Lyrics either mumbled or screamed, it just didn't work. See Norah Jones for an example of how to do it properly. To be fair, her 2 big hits (foundation and that cheese on toast thingy) went down OK at least.
-Stornaway: Had been looking forward to this but it all seemed a bit 'meh'. Definitely not helped by dodgy acoustics on the Park stage though.
-Biffy Clyro: What's all the fuss about? I missed The Cribs for this!
-MGMT: Again I think being sat at the side didn't help sound quality but we walked out halfway through to see Faithless instead, didn't do anything for me.
Should have seen Florence and the Machine as they covered a couple of my favourite songs (The Chain / You Got The Love), could kinda hear it from our tent but I missed out there.
Other general highlights was the sound at the Pyramid stage, I'm no audiophile but I thought it was terrific - even hundreds of yards away it sounds terrific. Far too many gigs I've been to can manage 'loud' but distorted music whereas Pyramid just sounded like it should do, amplified with no loss of quality.
My first Glasto, not sure if I would go again. I was expecting a much more chilled out atmosphere (based on what people had told me) but a lot of people seemed to be in a terrible rush. I like the music but the whole camping thing grinds after awhile and 6 hours is a helluva lot of time to spend in a car park
won't be making that mistake again!
)
