Words by Josh Jones and Laura Martin
Photos by Steve Bliss and Dan Wilton
Laura: Ever tried sleeping in a sweaty plastic bag while a car drives two inches past your head all night? Well, that was Thursday night, all drunk and pitching a tent with a tripping friend at 3am. Which meant Friday wasn’t a pretty sight, combined with the soaring heat and cloudless sky. Time to man up.
The Stranglers gathered a pretty impressive middle-aged crowd at the Other Stage, prompting a mass sing-a-long for “No More Heroes”, which elicited a huge cheer, though not as much as when a solitary cloud passed over the sun for a second.
Herded along to the Dance Village – with a cool Cubehenge raving area – PBR Streetgang were DJing from inside a giant pineapple. Somehow a 200-strong crowd seemed to be dancing off the heat while the rest of village crawled towards anything that yielded a slither of shade; a fence, a sign, a guy rope.
Time to take it down a notch. Time for the sultry country stylings of a Mr Willie Nelson who was the perfect slot for the mid-afternoon Pyramid session. With tracks like “On The Road Again” and “Crazy”, the crowd built up their energy (with the aid of gallons of cider) to welcome Snoop Dogg onto the stage. It was an hour of Snoop’s greatest hits with the crowd jumping around while he ordered his backing band to: “play some motherfucking pimp music!”. And we motherfucking danced to “What’s My Name”, “Gin n Juice” and a sweet version of Tinie Tempah‘s “Pass Out”, who also made a cameo with the Doggfather.
If Snoop had taken it this high in the early afternoon, then hopes were even higher for Gorillaz‘s headline Friday night act. The cartoon band had stepped in as the replacement (thank fuck) for U2. It was meant to be an epic gig, with rumours flying round that Lou Reed, Mos Def and Snoop would be joining Damon Albarn’s all star show. Perhaps all the hype around the show hit it hard as it fell flat.
We’re not sure at what point Damon thought a 10 minute solo from the Syrian National Orchestra would go down well with the mainstream crowd who wanted to party on the Friday night. We love the Gorillaz here at ‘SUP, but this was definitely the wrong place at the wrong time. The subtle, intricate tunes were lost on the crowd who wanted sing-a-long anthems and and up-beat energetic set, which they didn’t deliver. OK, “DARE” and “Clint Eastwood” got us moving but Snoop would have totally smashed it in this time slot like Jay-Z did two years ago. As the crowd left in droves halfway through, I wished I’d plumped for Flaming Lips on the Other Stage instead, who by all accounts were the better show. Arse. That’s the problem, there’s literally too much music at Glasto. So I sloped off for the night to the wilderness…
Josh: I got woken with a punch in the face from a massive hangover early Friday morning, my tent was steaming and my eyes still having a really hard time to focus on anything. Unsuccessfully trying to shake the badness from my head I staggered up the hill to the Park Stage – I figured going anywhere near the teaming masses near the Pyramid would make me puke in people’s faces, which is rarely ever a good look. The Park stage was well chilled. People sitting on the floor, having a sunbathe and we joined them to ease into the day watching Peggy Sue with a cider and some weak lager – exactly what was needed. Peggy was followed by Lissie, who surprised me by being way better than I was expecting. Her voice is way stronger than I thought and she serenaded a rapidly growing crowd, who all fell in love with her.
After that I had to walk right across the festival site to go do a couple of interviews where I managed to catch Miike Snow belting out “Burial” at the John Peel Stage as I walked past to the Dance Village. After catching up with O Children, Chromeo and James from Pulled Apart By Horses (more from these interviews later this week), and pushing our way through an absolutely enormous crowd watching Florence and the Machine, being very Florence and the Machiney on the Other Stage (honestly… look at the picture), we ran back to John Peel stage to catch Black Keys. The heavy-blues-riffing brothers didn’t disappointed and belted out a 15-song set including opener, “Thickfreakness” (click here for video and full set list).
After Black Keys we made our way to watch Mos Def (we didn’t realise at that time his appearance had been canceled due to the tragic death of his mother), but somehow found ourselves back at the Park Stage just in time to watch an entirely underwhelming set by The xx. I won’t go into it, but ‘style over substance’ ‘over-hyped’ and ‘sheeshthisisboring’ kinda come to mind. If I hadn’t been standing next to Dan who had a two litre bottle of red wine, then I would have probably left.
