Got The Blues

No, not a football hangover, but the ‘post-Glastonbury Blues’.

The high point of my summer gone, no England world cup triumph to look forward to, and a return to work today, with tired eyes and body yet to fully recover.

On a more positive slant, the festival was excellent, helped by perfect weather. Glastonbury rarely disappoints. There is always something new to see or hear, and the organisers avoid many of those things which can jar at other festivals – long queues, heavy handed security, cross-stage noise. We even managed to travel to and from the festival without any traffic hold-ups.

I watched the England – Slovenia game on the big screens on Wednesday, but decided to miss the Germany game. It was screened in two fields on the far edges of the festival site, and getting a decent position would have probably involved missing most of the afternoon’s music. My view was that if England won, there would be a further game to watch, and if they lost, I’d regret missing the music. Good call.

There are plenty of more informed views than my own, so I’ll keep my comments simple –

i. For England to have won the World Cup we required our best player to be in scorching form. He wasn’t.

ii. The team will kick themselves about that dismal performance against Algeria, particularly as the draw unfolds – a Ghana / Uruguay route to a semi doesn’t look too daunting.

iii. If our players look carefully, they’ll spot plenty of other Premier League-based players who’ve had a poor time in South Africa, and not many who’ve been successful. Are we paying the price for having such a competitive league?

iv. Daftest comment so far. The FIFA spokesperson who suggested that, after the Lampard ‘goal’ and Tevez offside, the authorities may have to look at removing pitch-side screens. Missing the point?


For any music types out there, here’s a list of the bands that I managed to see over the festival weekend.

The Magic Numbers
Lissie
Frank Turner
Mumford & Sons
Carl Barat
Biffy Clyro
The National
Laura Marling
The Lightning Seeds
The Hold Steady
Slash
Teddy Thompson
Ray Davies
Richard Thompson
Ash

It’s only upon writing this list that it’s occurred to me that I currently have a very ‘white’ musical taste. I’ve never thought of myself as a ‘musical racist’, but at a festival showing a huge range of music from around the world, I seem to have a ‘Caucasian bias’. I’m sure the ‘guitar bias’ is more relevant.

I’ll try to have a look at Betfair at some point today. I quite like the look of Paraguay and Kim Clijsters, but the odds may be prohibitive.

I’ll finish with another YouTube clip – a band whose festival performance did nothing to diminish their standing as my favourite current band – The Hold Steady.