I can hope

Glastonbury was all over the BBC this weekend and I enjoyed dipping in and out of radio and TV coverage when I was able.  I really enjoyed Alanis Morisette who was surprisingly good and Self Esteem is a talented lady.  Loyle Carner was pretty good too, he’s a decent song writer but it’s getting a bit ‘samey’ for me nowadays.  Neil Young was okay, I like the music but his voice grates a bit. I enjoyed Goat and the Prodigy on Sunday night made me wish I was there, especially when I had a text from a family member who was in the crowd.  Festival evenings can be truly magical, moved to emotional exhileration by a great performance and going on through the night, trying to keep the high going until exhaustion puts the brakes on.

But before festival nights come festival days which involve walking miles, often in extremes of weather whilst being bombarded from all sides by distractions designed to lift the cash from your wallet.  My first festival was the ‘Monsters of Rock’ in 1984 and in the forty years since festival comfort has improved beyond belief but comfort comes at a cost.  Festival commercialism slowly crept up on us and these events once a celebration of counter culture were kidnapped by the Establishment years before I stopped attending regularly and none more so than Glastonbury.

As much as I enjoy the coverage it was hard not to notice how much the BBC loves to sell “Glasto” to us.  Over excited presenters spew enthusiasm about how great is to be there but they aren’t really there are they?  They are not sleeping in a tent that turns into a sauna after 10 am.  They are not sharing toilets with two hundred thousand people.  They are not walking several miles every day whilst fuelling their bodies with shit food at rip off prices.  But all of this can be worth it if the right act nails their set and sparks you off on a mad festival night time journey of adventure, I hope I have more of those in my future.

Controversy, shock horror!  It started with a band called Kneecap from NI who I’d not heard of until it all kicked off.  These lads obviously court controversy and all the free publicity will do them wonders.  We’ve seen it all before; Sex Pistols, Ozzy Osbourne, The Beastie Boys, Eminem and so on. The twat PM couldn’t keep out of it and the BBC were too scared to screen them but other bands didn’t waste the opportunity to speak out about Palestine.  Bob Vylan is a band I’m well aware of and I like them; aggressive, outspoken and intelligent.  The first Glastonbury speech is included below, make your own mind up.  Later in the set they chant “Death, death to the IDF” which goes up a whole notch but the overall message only reflects what a hell of a lot of ordinary people are thinking.

I’m not shocked or offended by what Bob Vylan did and said, I applaud them.  I am disgusted by the reaction.  I’m disgusted that people from any walk of life can show more outrage at a speech and a chant than they do the murder of children.  What is happening is what was once called “ethnic cleansing” but our leaders are cowards who want us to look the other way and anyone who demonstrates against it will be punished.  This offends me, makes me fucking furious.  The media has the gall to call this anti Semitism, it absolutely is not fuck off.  At times like this I’m reminded that most people are idiots, they haven’t worked out that politicians don’t really have their best interests at heart and they still believe their newspapers tell them the truth.  There is a large chunk of the population that believes this shit and this deliberate, state sponsored misinformation will have an effect.  As my kids would say; “What the actual fuck?”

Their generation are not so easily fooled, they don’t get their information from the traditional sources and move comfortably through this digital world while I am happily allowing it to drift beyond my comprehension.  My kids have studied the media and understand how it works far better than I did at the same age and with new technology they have already left us miles behind.  I can only hope their generation will not succumb to the herd mentality and they hold the right people to account for the crimes of the first quarter of this century.  Well I can hope.