off: Glastonbury 98

[M Holmes]

bart writes:

> > >> So anybody else here at glastonbury this year ?
> > >
> > >I'll be there dude. My tent will be pretty much where it was last time.
> > >Up in the field to the right of the Sacred Field and towards the top
> > >fence at the peak of the hill. It'll have a wee Jolly Roger pennant
> > >attached to a silver dome tent if I can find the penant later.
> > >
> > >Come up for a beer...
>
> Mike, forgive me for not finding you. I was too busy drowning ;-)

I thought you were only waving.

> > Festival Eye broadcast Nik and Trevor live via the internet to 1 million
> > people. This was the first time this has ever been done at Glastonbury.
>
> Where & when did they play ???

I saw that they had played.

> Overall, I thought G98 was the Apocalypse.  After last year, I didn't
> think it could get any worse, but, by a mile, this was achieved.

Yep. I've never seen sheets of water course down a hill. Apparently this
was a record one day rainfall for the area.

> Luckily my tent wasn't submerged

Mine was letting in water through the bottom. I guess plastic is
permeable when you camp on top of water.

> but by saturday morning, my pitch
> was on the shoreline of a lake.

We were in the top field but even there the soil couldn't hold the water
that just lay on the surface of the mud.

> I thought the organisation basically
> sucked too, especially the stage crews & sound, who didn't really take
> any account of anything as far as I could tell.  Loads of bands
> (mostly those I went for) cancelled or were hugely late.

To be expected when roads for miles around were flooded out.

The best laugh has to be the Dance Tent. A huge marquee was erected for
the trip-hoppers. Sadly (AWWWWWWH) this was flooded out too. The folks
there ingeniously demanded a Skoosh Wagon to sort the problem out. A
Skoosh Wagon is a tanker with a huge hose which is used to skoosh out
the pits under the toilers. They suck up all the shit and toilet roll
and stuff, which is just as well when X gallons per minute of water are
pouring down the hill to join the less savoury fluids. So logically
enough the would be dancers figured that anything that could suck up
shit could also suck up the pool of muddy water from the Dance Tent.

So after a bit of whining and stamping of feet (or sloshing of feet I
guess) a Skoosh Wagon was duly dispatched to the Dance Tent. All was
going according to plan right up until the moment the driver hit the
switch. The mode currently selected was not in fact "Suck" and the Dance
Tent was treated to what may have been the most odious blow job in
history. It took more Skossh Wagons and a load of industrial
disinfectant to sort things out though perhaps Vicks Vapour Rub might
have offered something by way of sponsorship if asked.

> On the plus side, I thought a few bands played well.  James were
> great, and Primal Scream really went down well.  Foolishly, I left
> their set early to see Portishead - a mistake, since they were an hour
> late, it pissed with rain and Beth's vocals were so low in the mix it
> hardly registered.  The Ozrics started well (and late), but I was too
> tired/wet/cold to stay for the whole set.

I caught the end of the set which was excellent, though slightly spoiled
by amplified music from the two adjacent tents. Having three tents with
amplified music in the tiny Avalon field is comletely stupid. The Global
set at Croissant Neuf was also truly excellent and I duly tracked them
down to their tent and bought two CD's off 'em.

> Tim

FoFP