The by now traditional Glasto rant
Mon. June 28, 2004Categories: Abstract Dynamics
‘What really drives student entrepreneurs into a premature commercial detachment is their audiences. Every new ents officer learns from first-term results; black music has no student draw; known bands are preferrred to unknown bands; no one in the student union cares who the latest critical cult figures are. Students are the great, middle-class, middle-brow bastion of British rock and, after twenty years, their tastes aren’t about to be shaken.’
So wrote Simon Frith in 1985. Well, after twenty further years, I see no reason to revise Frith’s judgement.
These reflections have been prompted by Glastonbury, naturally, which is now nearly officially the end-of-college-year prom for Britain’s student (and griduate) population.
I should preface my remarks here by referring to Ian Penman’s comments of more or less this time last year – and if anyone doubts what a LOSS IP is, and I’m sure no-one does, just read his Glastonburial 03 posts. Like Penman, I feel annoyed at myself for letting it get to me. The Pawboy put it perfectly: ‘ I still get agitated, perplexed – I wouldn’t actually say ‘depressed’, that’s not true – but something like Glastonbury irks and niggles me, still, in a way I wish it didn’t. I really do wish it didn’t.
…
Could you P-L-E-A-S-E knock me off my feet, for a while?
P-L-E-A-S-E knock me off my feet for a while . . .
‘Cos there’s a GALAXY OF EMPTINESS tonight.’
All that said, and obviously I didn’t GO – christ, you didn’t imagine that IN A MILLION YEARS I would, did you? – and obviously the telly coverage is as nothing compared to the real experience: cos there’s like MUD there (and weren’t Jo Wiley’s mud anecdotes abso-fucking-lutely, screamingly hilarious?), and FIRE-EATERs and JUGGLERS ….. (Has any cultural event of any significance ever happened whenever a juggler is within a hundred mile radius?) Penman again: I mean, music in a field – in the daytime? Wtf? It’s almost deliberately delibidinizing….
But that’s the agenda, really, the secret purpose of this now unopposed embourgeoisement of rock culture UK. What’s positively sinister about Glastonbury now is that it’s not just accidentally crap, it’s systematically crap – the hidden message screams out: it’s all finished, roll up, roll up, for the necrophiliac spectacle, it’s all over
ABANDON ALL CULTURAL VITALITY ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
Those who only remember the past are condemned to repeat it
Forever
The bill was almost parodicallly LCD MOR, so safe and organic and wholesome and unimpeachable and uncontroversial:
Macca! Oasis! Franz Ferdinand!
No black folks of course unless they’re well into their sixties (James Brown; Toots and the Maytals), but no whiteys EITHER unless they’re into their sixties (Macca) or sound like they could be in their sixties (Franz Ferdinand, Scissor Sisters)…
Go along with mum and dad, read the Guardian, smoke some dope — the whole of rock history fugged out into some blandly beneficient museum of dead forms, all breaks, disontinuities, ruptures edited out or incorporated back in (the ‘Dance’ stage), their force and novelty subdued and airbrushed into a joyless carnival of secondhand History for the stupefied delectation of the Last Men…. (And didn’t they look so BORED? Well, wouldn’t you?)
The significance of generation gaps wasn’t the tired Oedipal merry-go-round so much as that they pointed to a culture of constant renewal – how long is a generation? in any vital culture, it’s a matter of weeks or months, here? Well, the fact that the generation gap doesn’t make any sense any more at Glastonbury – balding accountants getting down to Basement Jaxx, Jemima studying Fine Arts at Sussex being ‘blown away’ by Macca (‘he was so gid!’) – is a sure sign that this is a ‘culture’ as energetic as the contents of one of Hirst’s tanks.
RESPECT, respect for everyone …. (when culture demands respect, when respect is the appropriate response to culture, you know it’s either died in its sleep or been killed). Respect is how they killed Shakespeare, make it all a part of the National Heritage….
A tactical nuclear strike wd have taken out virtually everything that’s debilitating, deadening and reactive about the Brit culture industry (the whole NME staff: bargain!), much of the current ruling class and a significant portion of our future masters too (all those aspiring Tony Blairs).
Once the bombers have hit Glasto, set the co-ordinates for Ibiza, things might start improving around here…
“…the secret purpose of this now unopposed embourgeoisement of rock culture UK.”
Gah! Mark, that makes my cringes cringe.
I mean, good lord, I don’t really like listening to music outside either (recently playing a gig in the open air only reinforced this feeling) but I don’t think this criticism should necessarily conclude with tactical military strikes.
“…the secret purpose of this now unopposed embourgeoisement of rock culture UK.”
Gah! Mark, that makes my cringes cringe.
Why? Surely no-one wd deny that Britrock is the bourgeoisie at play now?
I mean, good lord, I don’t really like listening to music outside either …. but I don’t think this criticism should necessarily conclude with tactical military strikes.
Don’t really want to talk abt Americans and irony, but….
Besides, it’s simply a FACT (as stated) that most of the people invested in making British popculture shit wd be eliminated if Glastonbury were struck by some uh unfortunate catastrophe…
Where’s yr punk spirit? This is part of creeping Glastonburianization – politeness, good manners, good taste, reasonableness….
Lovely stuff, but… I ‘used’ Glasto as my ‘end of A-levels’ thing in 1998, and while I wholeheartedly agree with your viewpoint — I had a fantastic time. It was even grimier than this year, but for all the stuff you rightly point to, and it *is* middle-class, yes, you can have a lot of fun there, more than I had watching it on TV…
I’ve only been to Glastonbury once… I think it was two years ago; and I had a great time as well. There is a lot of fun to be had in a big field with friends. But I can see your point. Glastonbury is populated by ‘weekend hippies’ who look down their nose at you when you announce that you’re only a hippie for the duration of Glastonbury but that the rest of the year you eat at McDonalds and participate in the market. A well aimed bomb would eliminate the majority of one of my most hated species.
However, there are also people whom I like who go to Glastonbury; so, erm, would it be possible to arrange some sort of shelter during the bombing for them? Or are they just the usual civilian casualities in the spectacular fireworks that would ensue? Also.. there would be the problem of many thousands of tons of incense going up in flames and a steady wind could cause major incense fall out over the country coupled with the gasing of millions with patchouli.
Come now, I understood that you didn’t lit’rally mean it, but I did take your rhetoric to mean “I really really really really really don’t like this” and it just didn’t seem worthy of what was being directed at it. (Grant me something here!) But maybe I’m, um, too American. It just seems like something you’d do better by ignoring.
That said, why not do a post reminiscent of Marcello’s Meeks thing and fictionalize what it’d be like if Glasto was bombed? I’d love to read that.
The cringe wasn’t because of the sentiment, it was the language. “embourgeoisement,” I mean, bwamamamama. (
Can’t say that I’ve ever been to Glastonbury. But as you know, I recently visited Isle of Wight festival. Missed The Who, too debilitated by mushrooms that particular evening to make it out, but saw Charlatans and Bowie on the last night of festival. Quite enjoyed the music, evening if music clearly out of the past and lacking edge. As for the crowd, seemed to be a good number of proles in attendance, which is a good thing, but I’m sure many were middle class as well. Lack trained eye for class differences in the UK . . . . Things were most exciting, from my point of view, when France scored 2 goals after the 90th minute. That is, the match was shown on big-screen television. Feared (and hoped) that crowd would start to riot. Very impressed, throughout course of the match, by how people in crowd threw beer bottles up into the air. A welcome element of danger. Chants about the French and, errr, the Germans were unimaginative and none too clever, but even this made for contrast with student crowds at college athletic events in the States, who invent clever chants about the competition. Americans have clever chants, the Brits wit in conversation. Indeed, the display of wit is the overriding requirment of social intercourse in Britain, even under the most drugged and debauched of circumstances. Americans get obliviated, the Brits, against all odds, retain their wit . . . . I’m actually very impressed by the way Brits like to celebrate in great crowds. Get more than 200 together in the States, and people start to sneer and say “who are these fucking imposters.” In the UK, so far as I can tell, it’s all about the massive, about football fan-dom and the persistence of rave values. Everybody merges together. Even my closest UK mates, who speak the Queens English, know that the phenomenon of the massive, or whatever is you want to call it, working class patriotism, is what makes UK party culture vastly superior to that of the States. “We have a different attitude over here,” the simple reply to my comment . . . . So, though I know nothing about Glastonbury, I do know a thing or two about music festivals in the UK. They may not compare well with yesterday’s raves, but they’re still highly worthwhile. At least from my vantage point.
As for tactical nuclear weapons, I sometimes hope for a few dirty bombs. So long as I’m not victime. Just to clear the city of uptight people and keep rents down.
Also, thought the djs in the Bacardi tent were quite good. Had popular appeal, but good nonetheless. Played Basement Jaxx, Nelly, Dizzee Rascal, lots of 91/92 Italo-keyboard stuff, lots of current hip hop . . . . Was also struck by how nice a place the Isle of Wight is to visit on holiday. Was told that most Brits now skip over the Isle of Wight and head for European vacation spots. Everybody’s a tourist, and so stuck with other tourists. Not so at points close to home.
If you read firsthand recollections — even if you’re a sceptic — of early rock festivals they were mindblowing, generation-defining events that had a real reason for being what and where they were. They were put on because there was no other way to bring the participants together, to capture something that was seen as fleeting and of that moment. But now it’s just “we’ve done it for 20 years so why stop now?” It’s the Lord Mayor’s show for the under 60s….
Go Mark! This is great writing. I agree entirely (with a contradictory punk snarl so as not to demonstrate any kind of *obvious* complicity with your prose…tho, on the whole, heh heh heh!).
Probably being a bit clunky myself here, but isn’t it because things like Glastonbury are completely apolitical that they are so…shite? To my small mind, CULTURAL VITALITY, as you put it, generally goes hand in hand with, ahem, POLITICAL VITALITY. Tho it’s a fucking hard thing to imagine in a Little Britain bloated with all that food, pets, property, complacency and er, not reading any decent literature. But – punk did happen didn’t it?! For two weeks in the 70s or something.
Have you ever noticed how people in music footage from the 60s (watching some fresh-faced guitar band or something)…the people dancing I mean…they’re just going crazy! It’s probably only pumping out at 5 decibels or something but the kids are just wigging out…they’re not in the least bit bored (unlike the jaded folk watching yet another gloomy lumpen-band on the Pyramid stage).
I hope the market crashes and everyone with property is suddenly destitute, especially those who fantasise about being fucked by Tim Henman.
i tht this wz sweet:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/glastonbury2004/story/0,14551,1248562,00.html
i too find the idea of being outside listening to music horrible but is bcz i. i am in my late 80s (hence highly delibidinising to anyone nr me esp.anyone angsty abt not being quite so young as they were), ii. i hate music anyway
haha danny baker used to say that punk wd end up being three old men on a park bench complaining abt the weather
Eppy, yeh….
I mean, I did say I wd rather have ignored it and that’s honestly true — but as we were saying when Simon mounted his semi (well quarter, well an eighth) defence of Britpop a while back, and as Simon admitted — you really have to live here to feel the dull, dead weight that the phenomenon exacts. And I’m sure it’s getting WORSE – the media coverage expanding into every newspaper, every television and radio channel — the less of a cultural event it really is, the more it is treated as if it is one —
And surely this was the absolute worst bill ever …. Paul MacCartney – do me a favour? James Brown? I despair…
‘Embourgeoisiement’ is a great word — let’s bring back that Marxist class war language I say…
Nina,
Absolutely agree — think this connects with Nigel’s point too — I’m sure at some time festivals were genuine Temporary Autonomous Zones of carnivalesque ecstasy — but Glastonbury, now…no way….
ONE ENCOURAGING THING
— read that mushrooms are now the drug of choice — dim very dim hopes that this might lead to some sort of revivified pyschedelic culture (i.e. not, naturally, some tired recapitulation of acid rock or something) — maybe???
I saw the neville brothers at glastonbury and that was really sweet. early in the morning on the mainstage, just me and a few goats. maybe some kind of advance warning for sentients before you drop the bombs dr strangelove.
I saw the neville brothers at glastonbury and that was really sweet. early in the morning on the mainstage, just me and a few goats. maybe some kind of advance warning for sentients before you drop the bombs dr strangelove.
it all happened twice
since most of freaky trigger were at glastonbury i for one welcome our new insect overlords!!
Mark, I agree with you about how tiresomely middle-class the whole thing is, but even if it was steaming cauldron of the shocking and new, I still probably wouldn’t go unless they built a decent hotel.
I got back yesterday and had a great time in patches (the less great patches were mostly down to fatigue) – and not really thanks to any of the music, which seems to get worse every year. What’s appealing is the friendly hedonism of it – an opportunity to party with mates on a grand scale without much if any lairiness.
Don’t like camping eh Mark ;-)?
Ting is bruv, unless I missed it, you sound like you’ve never actually gone, and don’t understand the hippy distinction between babylon (what, principally, goes on the telly) and the rest of the festival.
I’ve been to Glastonbury a few times, always enjoyed it hugely, and I’ve always, always thought that 90% of what you see on the telly is, as you say, crap… but those bits were never the bits I saw at the Festival.
Now you might say, “Well, you WOULD say that — you played in a folk band at Stonehenge 88 and ran 12 miles pursued by riot police from the stones afterwards” — and you’d have a point. But there’s a great divide between people who like to listen to music in fields, and people who don’t, and it looks like you’re on one side of that divide, and I’m on the other.
All I can say is, if you TRY doing a festival, with some tents, some mates and some puff, and it doesn’t rain too much, I reckon you’d love it.
in agreement with Paul, overall, that Babylon and the rest of the place = a huge divide. there is still something special about finding a ragga soundsystem and a couple of off it emcees in a field at 3 in the morning playing to a crowd going mental whilst they shout ‘fuck monday, fuck work, fuck your boss’ etc. the only thing is, it’s tuesday and, despite heartily agreeing with those sentiments 36 hours ago, i am now at work and trying to persuade my boss that i am, in fact, a productive member of the team rather than a hazy mess.
yes, it’s embourgoised. it’s full of accountants and middle class students, media wankers and, i imagine, london based philosophy lecturers. but wasn’t it always? it has become worse, i think, but they needed the fence and perhaps even the added commercial appeal to keep it going. surely the whole thing’s cyclical anyway and, as the event becomes inevitably more and more branded, it will transmute into something totally distinct from it’s original genesis as a ‘music festival’, if that isn’t already the case.
i think, having gone since 97, this will be my last for a significant period of time, but it is worth remembering that there are a lot of people still going there and having epiphaniac times to music they’ve never heard before; having experience that briefly wake them from the torpid lives they’ll shortly be returning to. sadly, i’m just no longer one of them.
it’s not so easily dismissable as the bloated corpse of the culture industry. that’s not a ‘punk’ viewpoint. it’s just self-satisfied elitism. besides which, there are still kernels of goodness out there, you just have to search for them…and maybe go and experience them yourself.
But punk _is_ elitist, if by elitist you mean ‘not going along with whatever herd morality/ sheep consumerism dictates’ — there’s no way you can make a punk case for Glastonbury, festivals were what punk came to destroy, no question —
As for experiencing it myself, well, it’s far too expensive for me to afford even if I was predisposed to it —
Paul, I do like camping as it happens.
But I like cheesecake and I like chicken. I just wouldn’t want them on the same plate thanks.
by elitist i meant, in this case, the unshakeable, innate belief that your viewpoint is unassailaby superior to those of others. the belief that there is a herd and then there is you; rather than you being, more simply, a member of another herd which is just as bound by mutually agreed cultural rules, tastes and preconceptions. isn’t that one of the most fundamental problems with postmodernism – all systems deconstructed by a system that cloaks its own systemacity? it’s faintly laughable to see punk reconcieved as abstruse, postmodern deconstructions of music unheard by ‘the masses’ – wouldn’t johnny rotten say bollox to that?
Who gives a fuck what Johnny Rotten thought about anything, a quarter of a century down the line?
Let’s just forget punk ever happened. It’s in the way. It’s a monkey which needs to be dislodged forcibly and violently from our backs. The fact that I don’t understand anything about Desi or Eski or any other musical movement which sounds like a minor character from Dawson’s Creek probably indicates that that’s the way forward. If I’m too old to understand, then let the kids take over and have done with it. Amen.
The future is bling.
it all happened twice
Obv I have a belief that my view is superior to others —- otherwise it wouldn’t be my view. Such a belief is not innate or unshakeable however.
Postmodernism just _is_ the cultural relativism you seem to espousing (cf Lyotard on legitimacy, language games, end of meta-narratives)
it’s faintly laughable to see punk reconcieved as abstruse, postmodern deconstructions of music unheard by ‘the masses’
Well, so it would be – but where is that happening? You certainly won’t find any deconstruction here.
Interesting assumptions about who can consume what is deemed to be ‘abstruse’ too…
Glastonbury-goers aren’t the masses, though, are they? They’re the ‘middle mass, vulturous in the aftermath’ (MES)…
Look, I take it as a given that anything exclusively appreciated by the white middle classes is probably suspect. They / we are not the engine of popular culture, that’s obvious…
Marcello’s interdiction is of course OTM — but — I find your surprise at punk being aligned with contempt for the masses a little odd — punk was full of attacks on the zombified masses —-
>there’s no way you can make a punk case for >Glastonbury, festivals were what punk came to >destroy, no question
I’m guessing that you weren’t at a lot of festivals in the late 70s/early 80s then. Punk might have been against the sort of bloated events such as Knebworth, but loads of punk bands played the free festival circuit (ATV, The Fall, The Ruts, etc. etc.). They also played Glastonbury, because back in those far off days, it wasn’t such a big affair, so didn’t cost as much. Anyhow, anybody who wanted to could sneak in.
Who could forget Sham 69 playing Reading, with Steve Hillage joining them for a jam? Ah, nostalgia…
Who could forget Sham 69 playing Reading, with Steve Hillage joining them for a jam? Ah, nostalgia
LOL!
Yeh, that definitely makes the case for festivals!
The only outdoor festival I’ve ever knowingly attended consisted of just four bands — Psychic TV, Wire, The Fall and Siouxsie and the Banshees in the late 80s. And it was in a big tent so I guess it doesn’t really count. Mark me down as another festiphobe.
Saying punk came along to destroy festivals is hilarious! Complete lack of historicity there! The number of punk festivals I went to in the 80s… oh, that cracks me up!
Actually, some discussion of camping would be an interesting addition to the blog, Mark — favourite sites, close encounters of the wet / cow / dog kind, tent erection machismo… I’ve not camped out this summer, sadly, so some camping p0rn would be nice.
‘Punk festivals in the eighties’ — isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Punk in the EIGHTIES — ???
OK, OK, no doubt some so-called punk bands played at festivals — but I’m willing to bet they had no fucking fire-eaters or jugglers at these events, for fuxake
OK, some qualification: punk came to destroy festivals like what Glastonbury is now. That, at least, is uncontestable —- surely
moany letter here. Mark is not alone…..
>but I’m willing to bet they had no fucking fire->eaters or jugglers at these events
Of course they did; you really need to get out more!
As for punk in the eighties, surely somebody’s told you that it was all over by the end of 76 and, anyway, all the real punk bands were from the States…
Look, both of you, al of you, I’m serious, quit your moaning and the destruction rhetoric and come up with a picture of how it could look. That’d be much more interesting to me than complaining about people enjoying themselves illegitimately.
As for punk in the eighties, surely somebody’s told you that it was all over by the end of 76
Yeh – hence my scepticism abt punk festivals in the eighties…
and, anyway, all the real punk bands were from the States…
errr, ohhhhh-kay …
Look, both of you, al of you, I’m serious, quit your moaning and the destruction rhetoric and come up with a picture of how it could look.
We’re back to my original point abt punk spirit. Destructiveness is a creative act. Preserving what is decadent and corrupt is negative. A picture without Glastonbury in it would be better than one that included it. If only because there would be some SPACE…
Can anyone seriously pretend that dinosaur rock in the seventies was WORSE than Glasto’s polite canon? At least it had some overreaching ambition…
That’d be much more interesting to me than complaining about people enjoying themselves illegitimately.
But were they enjoying themselves? In all the coverage I saw, as I said, ppl looked about as rapt as they do when queueing for a hot dog. Not surprisingly really.
Destructiveness is a creative act. Preserving what is decadent and corrupt is negative.
Good lord, I hate arguing about these sorts of things, but it sure seems to me that punk was in part about revealing but then reveling in la decadence. Degredation. Ugliness. That sort of thing.
As for destruction as a creative act, OK, (although I’d say it’s more an act of change, not genuine actual natality), since what remains after destruction is different from what’s there before, but you’re only focusing on what’s being destroyed. What would remain afterwards, and how would it look different? What good would that “space” do? I am not convinced yet.
But were they enjoying themselves?
I don’t know, call me deluded, but I tend to doubt that most people would pay money / put forth the effort to come to it unless they were enjoying it. I mean, I have a hard time understanding how people could enjoy a 6-hour Phish concert, but I don’t doubt that they do.
So I don’t think you can really argue that they weren’t enjoying themselves. You can argue that they were enjoying themselves but they shouldn’t have, or that they weren’t enjoying themselves enough, and I’d certainly be interested in either of those positions.
Good lord, I hate arguing about these sorts of things, but it sure seems to me that punk was in part about revealing but then reveling in la decadence. Degredation. Ugliness.
it’s the equivocation of degradation and ugliness with decadence that’s the problem here. Sure, ugliness and degradation, but decadence?
I’m not a politician, I’m not a PR person or a businessman, I don’t have to present a business plan or a mission statement. It’s this kind of mealy-mouthed PR ‘positive thinking’ (so-called) that has got us in such a mess. As Penman pointed out, everything’s acceptable now, everything’s coming back round. Things wd be better without Glastonbury in the same way that things were better in the 70s without Rick Wakeman and King Arthur on ice.
But were they enjoying themselves?
I don’t know, call me deluded, but I tend to doubt that most people would pay money / put forth the effort to come to it unless they were enjoying it.
Well, I admire your complete insulation from capitalism. You’re assuming that ppl are rational subjects who always expend their resources maximizing their pleasure —- well, we’re not. Ppl are spending money ALL THE TIME on things that they don’t enjoy – for a variety of reasons: docile consumerism, being sucked into a PR vortex, no alternatives…
Your argument is a bizarre a priori claim: ppl have spent money, therefore they must be enjoying what they have spent their money on. That would mean that ppl enjoyed Pearl Harbour! So, no, you can’t argue that ppl were necessarily enjoying themselves.
I’m not a politician, I’m not a PR person or a businessman, I don’t have to present a business plan or a mission statement.
Of course you don’t have to, but I think it’d be interesting if you did. I also tend to think it’s pretty reactionary to simply criticize without formulating a path out, but I could be wrong.
Things wd be better without Glastonbury in the same way that things were better in the 70s without Rick Wakeman and King Arthur on ice.
I don’t see that the disappearance of these things created anything that wasn’t there before. Did something spring up to replace them? And if it did, wasn’t it just something that would appeal to the same people who liked King Author on ice, who presumably didn’t die? This is one of the interesting things about your suggestion: not just the producers, but the consumers would die. How would that actually change things? I think it would, but I’m interested to hear how.
Your argument is a bizarre a priori claim: ppl have spent money, therefore they must be enjoying what they have spent their money on. That would mean that ppl enjoyed Pearl Harbour! So, no, you can’t argue that ppl were necessarily enjoying themselves.
People paid to attend Pearl Harbor?
What I said wasn’t rigorous enough, to be fair, so let me try and lay it out more explicitly. People do have some idea of what brings them pleasure. They weren’t going to Glastonbury blind–they knew what it was going to involve, and unless they were going purely to be around their friends, presumably they made the decision under the assumption that what they were going to experience there was something they were going to avoid. Granted, again, not everyone made this assumption, but I think it would take an odd view of human nature to assume other than that a sizable portion of the people there went in order to enjoy themselves. Granted, they didn’t necessarily do it to maximize their pleasure, but that’s not what we’re discussing. We’re discussing whether they got any pleasure. And, again, sure, a certain portion of the pleasure-seekers were doubtless disappointed. But I think it’s safe to say at least some people got what they wanted. This is all slightly silly, of course–I’m sure it wouldn’t take very long to find an account of someone who enjoyed themselves at Glasto, and indeed, here we go. Sure, there’s a mathematical possibility that no one at the entire festival enjoyed themselves, and since that possibility exists, you can make the argument that we can’t guarantee enjoyment, but I feel safe in saying that possibility is really really really small, given the vast numbers of people involved.
What you seem to want to argue is that this pleasure is somehow illegitimate, manufactured. Or am I misreading you?
Yeh, some ppl enjoyed it obviously. I’d just question whether that enjoyment was particularly intense in most cases.
Besides, ppl enjoyed Tales from Topographic Oceans. What’s yr point? I’m tempted to echo what Marcello said in the great 1985 debate: people often don’t know what’s good for them.
The problem with asking for a positive suggestion for a replacement is twofold:
1. Regular readers of this blog (like yrself) are well aware what I like: you can see me enthusing about it here all the time. I feel the idea of a ‘positive’ suggestion in respect of Glastonbury would make sense if k-p was relentlessly negative about everything. It isn’t. It’s obvious what I’d rather see in place of Glastonbury. But part of the problem is that sluggish monoliths like Glastonbury precisely stop us from envisaging any alternatives
2. Asking for an alternative is like asking how I’d replace the Nuremberg rallies. I’d rather they didn’t happen. In the same way, I’d rather there wasn’t an annual celebration of middle class complacency and militant conservatism sucking up the cultural energy of the country.
This relates to your point abt Wakeman and King Arthur. Of course something came to replace them: punk. I assume that many ppl who had gone along with Wakeman in a desultory sort of way suddenly realised that there were far more exciting ways to entertain themselves than what they’d previously thought of as enjoyable.
Thing is, yeh, Wakeman didn’t completely die out, but with punk, ppl were made to feel ashamed for liking him. Good. That’s what I’m suggesting: middle class conservatism should be a little bit shameful.
As for that Glasto blog — jeez, it hardly sounds like they were in transports of ecstasy does it? Fucking hell: Orbital played A Thing Called Love in their DJ set and everyone loved it!!! How depressing.
Can we just clear up one thing right now: The idea that early punk was some sort of working class revolution is absolute bollocks. With the exception of a few co-opted yobs (e.g. The Pistols), most of the prime movers (McClaren, Westwood) were solidly middle class. The early audiences in London were not lads from the council estates enjoying themselves but mostly privately educated middle class kids from the suburbs. The proles came later. Look at the Grundy interview and the kids at the back: They’re mostly from one of the most fanatical sections of the Pistols early audiences: The Bromley Contingent. You know Bromley. Hardly the ghetto is it?
Rant over.
A few co-opted yobs? Interesting… Like John Lydon, you mean? ‘Yobs’, revealing view of the working class, that…
Obv punk’s roots, like that of most of vibrant UK rock, was in art school (universities have never led to any worthwhile development in pop – see Frith’s comments) – art school was itself, once, a place where the working class could get access to ideas/ resources ordinarily exclusively the province of the middle class.
If you can name any worthwhile punk band whose members were exclusively or even primarily middle class, I’d be glad to know…
p.s. there are working class people in Bromley. And not all working class people are ‘urban’.
‘Yobs’, revealing view of the working class, that…
Obviously I was being sarcastic. My point is that it is as incorrect to view early punk as a working class movement of some kind as it is to assume that bands like Yes achieved their enormous success because of some sort of middle class conservatism. You might not like Rick Wakeman (and I don’t), but it’s simply incorrect to claim that he and his ilk made all that money from an exclusively middle class audience, or that the ridiculously bloated albums and tours they indulged in were somehow conservative.
If you can name any worthwhile punk band whose members were exclusively or even primarily middle class, I’d be glad to know…
I’m not going to fall for that one! We’ll be arguing about the definition of ‘worthwhile’ until next Tuesday…
Yes there are/were working class people in Bromley but, being personally aquainted with the Bromley Contingent, I can assure you that the majority of them weren’t. The Finchley Boys, who used to follow The Stranglers, were very working class, but I bet you don’t consider The Stranglers ‘worthwhile’.
I don’t want to labour this (oops, too late!) but my point is that it is simply historical revisionism to view punk the way that you seem to.
You might not like Rick Wakeman (and I don’t), but it’s simply incorrect to claim that he and his ilk made all that money from an exclusively middle class audience, or that the ridiculously bloated albums and tours they indulged in were somehow conservative.
Depends on what you mean by conservative — certainly not as conservative as Scissor Sisters or Franz Ferdinand for sure.
I don’t want to labour this (oops, too late!) but my point is that it is simply historical revisionism to view punk the way that you seem to.
How is that exactly? I’ve said above that I see it as a primarily artschool thing (i.e. it involved some middle class input) – but that said, all the major charismatic personalities (artists not managers) were unambigously working class, Lydon foremost amongs them.
Let’s change the reference point if you like, to jungle and rave (the most exciting Brit musics ever IMHO) — almost exclusively a working class phenomenon.
I don’t know why ppl would want to deny the obvious truth that the main creative engine of pop in Britain has been the proletariat… By the same token, I don’t know how anyone who’s been in a university could imagine that much radical, exciting or interesting could emanate from those mausolea of conservatism. Frith’s right!
Stranglers are OK, btw, but really pub rock as much as punk, weren’t they?
I promise I’ll shut up after this last point, but I just want to make something clear: I’m not asking you to come up with a festival, or anything, to replace Glasto. (Nor am I charging you with eternal negativism; just in this particular case, which I don’t think you’d disagree with!) I’m just asking what difference you think it would make. Not for any sort of responsible reason, just because I’d find it interesting. You know, OK, uh, we’re both agreed that Nazi rallies should have been eliminated, but what would the world have been like if they were, eh? That’s all I’m saying.
I, as you know, tend to disagree on the “people don’t know what’s good for them” point, so no need to go another round on that.
45 comments. Alright!!!
I’m a bit late, so quickly…
1)Students = middle class/bourgeois. Not any more mate, if ever. Glasto part of Radio 1-ification of culture. 1 Big Summer and all that. Mine’s a fat one. Ibiza/Homelands etc. Bosh a few. Mainstream culture, for sure, just like , I don’t know, the seaside in the 50s for Richard Hoggart, but not bourgeois. (Doesn’t make it good – just an observation)
2)Festivals/camping/music outside. Lots of free fest/punk dos etc. in the above but no mention, as far as I could scan, of the whole M25 rave thing/castlemorton and all of that. ie not whether Glasto is punk but whether it’s acid house. I went in 92 when the soundsystems invaded. Absolutely mental and totally unofficial. You’d step through the gap between two burger bars ‘cos you heard some music and find yourself in a maze of tents and tarpaulins intertwining their way around ‘babylon’. Someone stripped to the waist hammering on an empty fire cannister. MCs and everything BLOW YOUR WHISTLE. My first time. Might sound lame now, but at the time pure hardcore vibe. Obviously, they weren’t welcome. Eavis had all turntables confiscated at the gate the next year, BUT, the late night action is STILL often around the stalls (mass crowds on drugs dancing to tiny little systems) not even any of the more ‘out’ stages and TUNES emerge. ’03 it was pure diwali. I’d only heard ‘get busy’ before, but everywhere was all these different versions, elephant man, uh oh, and all that. My point is that as an event there is a lot more cultural energy to it outside of the official bills than the juggling/healing/pot-throwing thing.
3) Which brings me to: I reckon about the same number of people go to work as pay and loads of these people are still full-timers, even after the travellers got banned (when was that ’93 as well?). Now I really may not give a shit about someone’s traditional iron smelting technique, but i missed out on the last dregs of the refusenikcounterculture in the 80s -squat parties etc, (which was very post-punk, no? not hippy) and it’s just good from where I’m sitting (in an effing office) to know that there are other ways to live your life – that this hell isn’t seamless – even if I’m not attracted by them.
4)Lots of what you say is bang on (god, the bill this year!)but without going, you can’t really know how intense it is. I’m sure people aren’t enjoying themselves. They are physical, emotional, psychological wrecks. It is still the most drug saturated place I’ve ever been combined with almost total sleep deprivation, unsanitary conditions, extremes of weather (it’s worse in the heat) and I kind of respect that experience. Maybe it’s worth knowing, that feeling. (not going to entice anyone to go, but not a cosy, polite, feeling – even if the people feeling it are as you describe.)
Alright, keep up the good work, See ya later,
ps You’re right re: reincorporation and dance tent. I think that appeared for the first time the year after the soundsystems. Remove the threat and replace with tamed version.
I don’t know why ppl would want to deny the obvious truth that the main creative engine of pop in Britain has been the proletariat…
I don’t think I’d want to deny that either. The single most revolutionary intervention in popular music in this country came from four working class boys from Liverpool. I just want to deny that punk was initially some sort of working class versus middle class thing. It might have been a reaction to musical snobbery in some quarters (which worked both ways: There were a lot of people out there who were much better musicians than they pretended to be), but mostly it was about boredom with the music scene and looking for something new.
I don’t know enough about jungle or rave to address your change of reference, but would just like to ask about Orbital whose early records abound with references to Reich and other contemporary composers. I have a suspicion that they might be prog ravers…
By the same token, I don’t know how anyone who’s been in a university could imagine that much radical, exciting or interesting could emanate from those mausolea of conservatism.
You’ve got a nice picture of Throbbing Gristle on your blog. Gen went to Hull and Sleazy went to Buffalo in the States. I’m fairly sure that Chris Carter went to university as well. I think all three of them dropped out, but they started their radical, exciting, and interesting activities whilst still there. Jhon Balance of Coil went to Sussex. I could go on and on…
Of course I don’t know what this says about students and music today. I believethe Chemical Brothers met at university, but you might agree with me that they’re not that hot.
Apologies for the length of this. I’ll shut up now.
Jamie, lots of interesting points there. Isn’t Radio 1ification also bourgeoisification? There’s a meeting in the middle there – Robin Carmody has discussed this process from the opposite direction (‘cultural proletarianization of the middle classes). As the student population has expanded, and art schools have reverted to being the redoubts of the privileged, youth culture becomes increasingly student culture, a student culture with any vestiges of radicalism/ intellectualism long since shorn away.
The acid house comparison is also interesting. Think there’s an interesting discussion to be had about the struggle against ‘official’ culture in connection with Glastonbury (and elsewhere): history of fayres/ fairs markets, carnivals, carnivalization versus incorporation.
Obv agree about alternatives to ‘air-conditioned totalitarianism’ (Lyotard) — it’s just a pity that the Glasto alternatives involve dirty kids, fire-eaters, tie-dye, Kensington white rastas and other major delibidinizers.
Eppy, if you’re not asking for me to come up with a replacement festival I’m not sure what you’re asking. The Nuremberg analogy was obv hyperbolic but it had a real point; namely, that the removal of certain events/ cultural phenomena is good in itself.
In connection with Jamie’s and others’ well-made points about ‘Babylon’, though: isn’t the sheer concentrational, anti-distributional massified centralism of Glastonbury the problem? Doesn’t it inhibit the potential for more small-scale, ongoing (i.e. every weekend, not one weekend a year) cultures a la acid house/ rave? Why moan about Babylon, get hassled by Eavis’ commercops, why not set up a Temporary Autonomous Zone outside his officialized space? Just questions.
btw: in the Times today —-
‘Glatstonbury is for students and trendy parents, isn’t it? I am willing to stretch that definition a bit, but evidently not as far as Philip Gould, Tony Blair’s pollster, and Emma Soames, the sprightly editor of Saga, the magazine for the bingo-and-bowls generation. Both are 54 and attended the festival.
“I danced for two hours to Paul McCartney in the rain and the mud,” said Soames, who is Winston Churchill’s granddaughter. “He was really cooking. I also enjoyed dancing to reggae music performed by Ben Harper. What I enjoyed most was the fact that there were loads of people my own age there. In fact, we outdanced the younger ones, not that they would admit it.”
Gould could not be contacted yesterday, but sources suggest that he is more of a glam rocker.’
LOL!!!
why not set up a Temporary Autonomous Zone outside his officialized space? Just questions.
This where I drone on for hours about Stonehenge as an alternative to Glastonbury . I’ll let you fill in the blanks, but will just mention that in them thar far off days, many of the bands at Glastonbury would also play Stonehenge, so you could see them for free without even the hassle of trying to sneak into Glastonbury. Everything Jamie describes as being good at Glastonbury was presnt in spades at Stonehenge, which really was a TAZ, in that the police circled the site, but never came onto it. The only authorities who used to come on were ambulances.
Another TAZ: When Hendrix played the Isle of White (1970?), there was an alternative free festival set up literally just outside the site at a protest about the price of tickets. These are the sort of festivals which are really interesting.
SoP
I don’t know enough about jungle or rave to address your change of reference, but would just like to ask about Orbital whose early records abound with references to Reich and other contemporary composers. ..
Sure, and there are similar references in, for instance, Derek May’s work — but I think this is an interesting collapsing of high/low culture (one shdn’t assume that an interest in the avant garde means that you aren’t working class obv – ctually this was part of the point of Morley’s brilliant radio 2 documentary the other night ); this seems to exactly opposite to the middle massification of Glasto, where everything meets, literally, in a sludge of indistinction —
You’ve got a nice picture of Throbbing Gristle on your blog. Gen went to Hull and Sleazy went to Buffalo in the States. I’m fairly sure that Chris Carter went to university as well. I think all three of them dropped out, but they started their radical, exciting, and interesting activities whilst still there.
Fair enough, but surely the fact that ALL THREE dropped out is significant. Given that they all went to different places, they can’t have started TG whilst there. Couldn’t their radical interests have happened in spite of being at university? The fact they all dropped out certainly implies that.
Jhon Balance of Coil went to Sussex. I could go on and on…
But I don’t think you could… One member of an esoteric art band (hardly the mainstays of punk or rave), three members of TG, all of whom didn’t complete their courses. Hardly an overwhelming case really. More like exceptions that prove the rule.
btw, please don’t apologize for posting comments, still less for posting long ones. It would be easy enough for me to disable the comments facility if I didn’t want people to contest what I’m saying. That’s half the fun of doing the blog! So,thanks to you and for everyone else who’s posted, especially those who disagree.
Best thing about Glastonbury is not actually attending. Every year I spend a weekend actively not being there – walking to the shop, listening to the stereo, having a bath. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.
More like exceptions that prove the rule.
Not really. I doubt that most people who go on to become professional musicians actually finish their courses; not unlike the art school people. I guess that what you would have to do was to point to bands formed at university who you would want to say were were shit (surely I’ve given you a head start with the Chemical Brothers?).
I mentioned Jhon Balance because he is linked to TG via the fact that Coil mostly consists of him and Sleazy; he wasn’t the only other person I could think of.
To avoid a pointless discussion about decent music which came out of universities, I won’t bother listing any other people, but I would just like to ask about the role of universities in disseminating music. After all, even the Pistols were out there making money on the university circuit.