Hello Glastonbury

Now we are in late summer, which means that the Glastonbury festival took place nearly two months ago. As always, many people watched TV coverage of Glastonbury while muttering sagely that they'd much rather enjoy the performances from their living room than actually attend the festival. Good for them. It does fit with our hypermediated age that for many people their preferred mode of engagement with the festival is one that sees them looking at it on a screen. I nevertheless remain committed to the controversial belief that if you are doing Glastonbury by watching it on television then you are doing it wrong. Actually I would go further than that. You don't "do" anything by watching it on television. To actually do Glastonbury you need to be sleep deprived, caked in at least three days worth of dried-in sweat and have no clothing items that don't reek of woodsmoke or second hand joints (admittedly I know several people who regularly manage this from the comfort of their home).

That said, it's a while since I actually attended Glastonbury. But as I don't have a television I have not been watching live performances onscreen either. However, on a visit to my parents shortly after the festival concluded I caught a broadcast on the BBC of Glastonbury highlights: one tune from a succession of artists across a range of stages. I'm assuming they cherry-picked the best bits or biggest hit from each performer (though why anyone thought we needed to see Primal Scream lurching through "Jailbird" is anyone's guess: it was like a horrifying flashback to that period in the 1990s when every music magazine came with a tape of the song), but in some respects the format is a bit unsatisfying, as there is no sense of a set building. That'll teach me not to either go to the festival or have a television to watch the live coverage.

One thing I found odd about the BBC's Glastonbury coverage was how it was filmed and edited. We got a lot of fast cuts and camera shots that seemed to be taken from the stage itself or just in front of it, with performers often being shown in close-up. For me an effect of this was that the footage looked less like something taken at a festival or live performance and more like something shot in a studio, as though Glastonbury was just an extended episode of Later With Jools Holland. The crowd did feature in the occasional reaction shots, but shots showing the stage from the audience's perspective were rare. Once I noticed this it started grating on me and I found myself comparing it all unfavourably with Stop Making Sense, with its many long shots from the audience's perspective giving viewers far more of a sense of what it would be like to actually attend the concert.

The acts themselves… well they were variable. Megan Thee [sic] Stallion (not actually a stallion) had a certain "put it away love, you'll have someone's eye out" quality to her performance; some may have found this a distraction from the music, which may have been the intention. My mother felt that Wet Leg looked like escapees from the 1970s while I found myself thinking that maybe I should stop watching videos of them performing "Chaise Longue" and just wait till I see them myself in November. Paul McCartney doing "Band on the Run" with Dave Grohl was a bit underwhelming, but I wondered if that might be a product of seeing it on its own as opposed to the full set (McCartney was great when I saw him at Glastonbury in 2004, at a point when he was only starting to be cool again). I continue to not really get St. Vincent, for all that on paper her brainy lady pop music sounds like something designed for me personally. Billie Eilish's song meanwhile was pretty entertaining in a chunky kind of way, reminding me that I should probably engage more with her music as part of my plan to get down with the kids. I also liked Olivia Rodrigo's tune enough to consider taking a punt on her album.

The thing I saw that most had me wishing I was there was Lordé doing "Solar Power". If you timed your enhancements well then the tune's transition point would be the most epic of moments. The art direction of the staging was also stunning, with Lordé's hair dyed blonde to match the yellow costumes of her attractively laid out musicians and a stage set that for "Solar Power" looked like something from Philip Glass's Akhnaten. Ms Lordé also has this great wriggly dance (which I understand to be controversial, as some consider it to be a sign of how she is keeping it real, while others see her un-choreographed dancing as amateurish and an indicator that she is not serious about her art).

Beyond that I found Diana Ross doing "Upside Down" interesting on a number of levels. The security people at the front doing a formation dance that they had obviously learned five minutes previously was kind of endearing. Ross herself was far less aloof than I was expecting, as I had the idea she was one of those diva-like figures who find audiences a squalid inconvenience. Instead she seemed very relaxed and incline to crack jokes and engage with the crowd, not really coming across as the glacial "Miss Ross" I was expecting. More power to her.

I'm sure there were lots of other good acts at the festival whose music was not included in the highlights programme. Overall though I was struck by many mainstream pop acts there were playing. That was increasingly the case when I was still going to the festival and it's not an intrinsically bad thing, as not all mainstream pop music is bad. But it does feel a bit like the festival is losing or has long ago lost any countercultural edge it might once have had. Much of this I suspect is a product of the festival's televising. TV brings in a pile of money but it does mean you're going to have to programme acts that will appeal to the people at home. I wonder if that mean that the eccentrics who padded out the bill at the smaller stages no longer get a look in. No Joolz, Attila the Stockbroker, or John Otway: no credibility.

I'm also struck by how much bigger the festival site is now, which surely means that there are a lot more people attending than there were in my day. That again must impact on the festival's atmosphere, making it more mainstream and less countercultural. Oh well.