With the country still in the midst of lockdown and no sign of any live music in the foreseeable future if at all this year I thought I would take the opportunity to look back in the archives, sounds posh I know but it’s just an spreadsheet, and revisit gigs I attended on this day down the years. I will keep this going until I can attend my first gig again in person so hopefully this also brings back memories for my gig going chums who have joined me on this great musical journey down the years.
It’s the end of June and of course its Glasto time. Today will be the first G lookback as the next four days will take into the four that I have been to for my trip along memory lane for you down the years.
2016 Glastonbury, England
Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. Are you detecting a theme? Its June, it’s an outdoor festival in the UK and there’s rain. To be fair, the damage had been done in the three weeks before the festival for what was one of the wettest June’s on record. The weather over the weekend wasn’t that bad. Mainly Saturday night and through Sunday but generally light. The trouble was the ground was already sodden and then 200,000 people tramping all over it quickly turned what grass there was into a quagmire.
This was my second Glastonbury, after the pure joy of my first the year before our excitement levels were high. It’s just me and Graham in a two man tent and cosy doesn’t even touch it. The conditions don’t help with little space to store dirty wet clothes. The upside is we are on our own campsite and so luxuries such as proper toilets, on site bar and showers were a welcome relief. After the real ale bar on the camp site the year before we have an inflatable igloo for a bar this year. It was funky with settees inside but there were several power issues and the structure started to deflate with us in it which was fun as we cower down by the sofa.
We met up with Julian (our co-conspirator from the previous year) and his family who were camping on the family site. Sadly their experience was a lot worse than ours with the bus company not giving them their tickets as their daughter had a GCSE on the Friday and so they couldn’t get the bus to site on Thursday, to significant falling over in the mud and uncomfortable conditions that eventually saw them leave site on Sunday morning.
I wrote more about the music on the blog here and despite the conditions we saw some great music, new artists and some oldies too. The overriding feeling over the four days was exhaustion. Pure and simple. Any stage hopping had to be carefully planned and assessed. Certain areas like the Park were not explored as it would have been too dangerous. Very late nights were in short supply on this trip and tiredness took over quite quickly with key objectives being dryness and a seat. Sunday was particularly tiring and we were back in the tent by eleven I think. As I mentioned in the blog though we did witness one of my Glastonbury greatest moments ever with the sight of over 100,000 people with illuminating wristbands flashing in time to Coldplay. To be clear it was the spectacle that was impressive not Coldplay.
Our weary bodies made our way home on the Monday with talk about doing it all over again next year a little bit more muted than the trip home in 2015.
That’s it for today’s trip down memory lane. Here’s hoping we can get to some form of normality soon. Support your small local venues and smaller artists in these difficult times, stay safe and keep on rockin y’all.