Thursday 23 June 2011

Glastonbury 2011 live: Thursday 23 June

U2's the Edge joins us as guest blogger as we head to Glastonbury festival for four days of mud, mud and more mud. Oh, and probably some bands and stuff too ...

To read ALL our Glastonbury coverage head to our fancy new page

2.13pm: Hello and welcome to the 2011 Somerset Mud Sliding Championships, live from Worthy Farm in Pilton. I'll be your host for the next few hours, during which you can expect to see competitors gearing up for a gruelling endurance test ... oh, wait ... I've got my brief wrong? So this is actually Glastonbury festival? Bloody hell. It's going to be another one of those years, isn't it?

Or maybe not. The sun is shining and while nobody expects the mud sloshing around the site to clear up exactly, we may not be in for a total washout. The forecast ? Friday night notwithstanding ? looks pretty decent. Not that it makes a jot of difference to our dedicated team of livebloggers who will be sheltering backstage frantically updating you on the latest news, gossip, reviews, video interviews, podcasts, tweets and pictures of muddy folk.

We want you to join in too (more on which later). Especially if your mission is to be "that guy" on the news, sliding headfirst down Pennard Hill with a jester's hat on. You bloody fool.

2.55pm: Don't tell me the excitement hasn't kicked off ? we've just had an email in saying that O2 predict Glastonbury goers will use approximately 1,088 GB of data on their phones this weekend. And if that isn't the least interesting fact you'll hear all weekend, I don't know what is.

In far more thrilling news, the above clip is me outside the Guardian hut explaining what we'll be up to at this year's festival. We'll have a team of hotshot music reporters out in the fields all weekend, of course, but we want you to join in too. There's simply too much festival for us to handle alone. You can tweet us at @guardianmusic and, if you're down on the site, please tweet reviews for us using the hashtag #gmreview. You can also send your best Glastonbury pictures to our Glastonbury 2011 Flickr group.

3.21pm: We're expecting a bit more political ruff'n'tumble here this year compared to previous festivals. Which, considering the most political thing to happen at Glastonbury during my lifetime was a successful campaign to Bring Back Wispa chocolate bars, can only be a good thing. Michael Eavis seems relaxed about the festival becoming a sounding board for discontent although that may change if the UK Uncut lot get their way and successfully draw attention to the tax arrangements of headliners U2. Anyway, to kick things off, here's Jude Abbott of Chumbawumba who sent in a picture of herself modelling her new Bono-bashing t-shirt.

3.33pm: "Stop going on about the mud, it's boring!" says reader ShermanMLight. Ok, ok, point taken, it's only the weather and all that. But before we shut up, let this lovely muddy video be the final grizzly word on the subject (for now at least) ...

4.34pm: Apologies for the lack of service ? for the first, but probably not for the last, time this weekend our internet decided to go on strike.

4.36pm: Now we're back in business here's a picture ... of the Edge! He's made good on his promise to email over photos and tales of the build up to U2's headline slot tomorrow night. Says the Edge:

"Touch down in the UK from Baltimore! I slept the whole way. Flight time was 6 hours and 52 minutes. But they had Barrys tea ? it's the small things that count. My head feels like a boiled onion."

That wasn't his first correspondence with us, either. Previously U2's guitar hero had emailed to say:

"It's 4am at Baltimore Washington International. The plane is loaded. So are the band. We overnight it to Cardiff. This is mental."

And before that too:

"In Baltimore about to go on. I Just met Florence for the first time. She's amazing. I saw her from side of stage last year at Glasto. One of the two highlights. The other being Broken Bells. Here we go- here we go- here we go!"

Expect more Edgy updates as the band build up to Friday night.

5.01pm: We're not just looking for Glastonbury tweets (@guardianmusic or hit me direct @timjonze), reviews and pictures but also your videos. Do email them over to your.videos@guardian.co.uk
and we will catapult you to worldwide directorial fame (ie stick them on the site).

5.15pm: It seems like the Edge is actually trying to put us out of a job with his dedicated stream of updates. Seriously, I might give him a quick lesson in how to use R2 Web Tools and head off to the Green Fields for the night while he sits here grappling with SEO dilemmas. Anyway, here's the U2 chopper which, I'm assuming, will be transporting the band from Cardiff to Worthy Farm. He's titled this picture "All change".

5.23pm: We do have other photographers here, you know, ones that don't also spend their hours playing on U2 records. Here's a lovely Guardian gallery of the best pictures from today.

5.44pm: It's time for some hard news, and this is a really quite brilliant story from Paul Lewis.

The basic gist is that some science people (analytical toxicologists, apparently, although I prefer to use the technical term "science people") wanted to rifle through the Glastonbury sewage system and analyse it in the "first major attempt to test the use of legal highs and illicit drugs at a British festival". And to think I thought my job had its grim moments.

Anyway, despite this project having the backing of the police, Glastonbury festival weren't having any of it and so cancelled the project. Drugs, music and human waste ... what more could you want from a news story? Oh yes, a cheeky quote from Michael Eavis:

"The drug culture these days has changed beyond belief. What a cheek to even suggest there's a problem."

6.05pm: Well that's me done here, then. Thanks for reading, it's been emotional, best Glastonbury ever etc ... oh, wait, there's still a night and three full days to go? In that case I'd better hand over to my colleague Caspar Llewellyn Smith who will be manning the controls here until 11pm tonight.

18.14: Hi, this is now Caspar Llewellyn Smith, taking over from Tim for as long as the will to live remains.... although, in fact, it's been a gloriously sunny afternoon, and as much as everyone runs the risk of an early mudbath - here's a great video if you missed it earlier - there's also got to be the chance of getting sunburnt now. Bizarre. Any road, by 10am this morning there were 93,476 people on site - against 99,020 by the same time last year, when it was properly scorching. We're well on the way to reaching full capacity now: approximately 177,000 people will be present on the Worthy Farm site over the full festival, including those holders of the 137,500 general weekend ticket holder that sold out within four hours in October... and so it is that Glastonbury this week becomes the third largest city in south west England.
I had a walk around the site earlier - up to the Kidz Field, where early reports on Rastamouse were highly encouraging - past "Naughty Corner" and into the Green Fields. Already I've heard some grumblings about how the festival's become more commercial, so a bit more on that later.

18.22: Ah, Emmy the Great, a proper pop star, has just dropped by, on the hunt for some wi-fi. She's playing a couple of gigs, chairing a green panel and running a blog for Water Aid. She's just arrived. "I'm about to have a good time," she says. That seems the general vibe.

18.25: Rosie Swash was out and about earlier, and snapped this image of replica posters from the first Glastonbury, back in 1970, when it carried the (better?) name "Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues Festival".

18.29: And likewise Adam Gabbatt - who by day is a Guardian news desk person, and this is his first Glastonbury. Any suggestions from those of you who've been before as to what he might get up to this weekend, let us know in the thread below. Ha! And entertainingly, he's got sunburn! He says:

Welly Henge has sprung up not far from the Other stage. Like its more easterly rival, it consists of many structures intricately assembled in a rough circle. Unlike its rival, the components of Welly Henge can be purchased at JD sports.


.

18.38: And here's the weather forecast.

18.45: Feature writer Hadley Freeman was with us last year, when she met lots of celebrities, but not alas this time; she emails to say:

I'd like to propose a theory about the weather: I've been to Glastonbury six times. Every time I go? Sunny. Every time I don't go? Rainy. I think my point is made.

18.49: Proving that all Welsh lads are mothers' boys at heart, guardian.co.uk/music subeditor Dafydd Goff went to The Park earlier this afternoon to get a tattoo in honour of his mam. An alternative to typical Glastonbury tramp stamps, this year's must-have tat comes courtesy of The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, an organisation that raises awareness for maternal and child mortality in the developing world. Check out the video above for a full explanation of their work. Fashion's finest, including Lily Allen, Henry Holland, Naomi Campbell and, er, Michael Eavis, have all been seen wearing their hearts on their sleeves (and, apparently, other places), so if you fancy looking like a sexy mother lover at Glastonbury, head over to Mum's Tattoo Parlor.

18.54: Oh dear, just catching up with your comments in the thread below. Poor garyfl, whose Glastonbury is over already. Although perhaps he's the smart one...

19.08pm: And looking at what's what on Twitter, @jteav seems to be having a good time...

Don't forget that you, too, if you're at the festival or watching it from tomorrow on telly, can send @guardianmusic 140 character reviews by using the hashtag #gmreview

AND! If you're here and shooting any videos, send them to us and we'll sift through the best (hoping we get some...) once we're back in the office next week and publish 'em on the Music site. Here's the address to use: your.videos@guardian.co.uk

19.23pm: So one of the big stories this week relates to U2. Last Sunday, Dorian Lynskey, who'll be down here later this weekend, and the Observer's Kitty Empire had a good ding-dong over them.
Here on the liveblog, we're just deeply pleased that the Edge has been hitting us with picture's of the band's journey to the west country today. We've now put all his images thus far on a page of their own: guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/23/glastonbury-2011-u2-the-edge

19.38pm: So now I'm wondering whether any of my colleagues have tracked down the SEVENTY FIVE YEAR OLD Michael Eavis, who's supposed to be "officially opening" the festival with a speech to assembled charity-types near here in the backstage compound. The three main not-for-profit organisations supported by the festival are Greenpeace, Oxfam and Water Aid - the first two of which have been associated with it 19 years. About 30 smaller charities, 30 schools and 30 local carnival clubs, mostly based in Somerset, also receive donations each year.
And later, I'm also hoping to hear word of Noah and the Whale, who play the BBC Introducing stage, I think it is ...

19.53pm: The Observer Food Monthly is also representing here, with a snap of the posh-looking restaurant in the backstage area, wittily titled the Muddy Duck.

19.55pm: And more news from Adam Gabbatt:

In the tipi field, next to the stone circle is a "yurt-based sauna". The entrance is through a tipi, and the owner informed me it was a mere �6 for the experience, or �12 "for the festival". With showers at a premium, it seemed an enticing prospect, until the owner swept back the curtain to reveal a central green filled with entirely naked people.
"It's the best way to get clean at Glastonbury," he said with a wink. I left.

Photography not allowed.

20.02pm: Cue after that last post my own Glastonbury festival sauna story... which is on much the same lines, but - and this is some years back - I thought I'd give it a go, despite (or perhaps because) of not having somehow slept for a good 36 hours. Somehow, the whole "naked" look is hard to pull off when you're in that state, as I discovered; it didn't help my self-esteem that the bearded gentleman squeezed in somewhere to my right had - how to put this delicately? - the most enormous penis.
Hey, ho... No photographs exist of this episode either.

20.09pm: You might, indeed, like to add your own sauna stories - or such like from Glastonbury or any other festival - in the thread below...

20.18pm: So the usual Glastonbury rumours are in full swing... conflicting reports that Kesha and/or Pulp will be appearing at the WOW stage shortly ... We've heard a few times now that the Sheffield lot will be playing at some point over the weekend and while Kesha is the second-most popular act playing this year according to our new band tracker on our main Glastonbury site, well, I imagine more people here would rather see Jarvis. A lot more.

20.28pm: Meanwhile, Saturday night's headliners - who are struggling to compete with U2 and Beyonce for column inches and may feel they have something to prove ("like they're any good..." says someone; possibly me) - have just tweeted about their nerves...

20.32pm: Oh, if you missed this elsewhere on the site: various pop types talking about what Glastonbury means to them.

You know, I LOVE Donovan.

But I do worry about him.

20.49pm: Ok, you know things are getting going when up in Strummerville, the camp fire is being lit...

20.52pm: And ... we have word that the special guest at WOW was not Pulp ...

From Henry Barnes:

"It's Daft Punk! It's The Wombles!" Nope. It's Ke$ha, filling the role of Special Guest at the WOW stage in green lipstick, gaga-loads of attitude and nowt but a torn American flag to stop her choreographed bimbling from becoming indecent. Most of the crowd treat her sweeter than the sugar water keeping her beautiful backing dancers' hair aloft, but there's an older (mostly male) contingent, who either don't know the words to Take A Dirty Picture Of Me, or refuse to sing-a-long. Ke$ha's no substitute for Wombling-free, apparently.

So everyone breathe a sigh of relief...

21.05pm: Ok, while Tim Jonze suggested we'd be here until 11pm tonight, he was... wrong. We'll wrap up now, following a muddy morning, after which the sun came out here in Pilton, and things look set fair for tomorrow.

Oh, still no word of Noah and the Whale, but with all due respect, I think we can all go to bed - or out into mayhem out there - without learning how it went with them. Friday does, after all, bring the start of the festival proper. We'll see you again from just before 11am tomorrow. Thanks to the big pop stars who've helped us out today and thanks for all your comments.


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/23/glastonbury-2011-live-thursday

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