For anyone who went to the sun-soaked 1995 festival, the sugestion that this year's event was the best ever must seem like so much more hype. No doubt your appreciation of the festival is a function of your expectation, but for me I saw little to inspire and excite and much that I'd seen many times before.
No one doubts
the impressive organisation necesary for such a massive event, but do the figues for crime or clean toilets realy measure a successful festival ? Virtually all the people I spoke to (mostly old timers up in the Greenfields, many of whom were contributing something to the festival rather than just going along to consume) agreed on the following :
Too many people : The Crowds down in Babylon were horrendous, masses of litter and a truly MASS experience.
To much mass consumption : whether it's the food or the culture, Glastonbury is becoming just another rock festival. Massive bands playing on massive stages to massive audiences. I thought Glastonbury was supposed to be different, about re-generating a sense of community, of advancing an alternaitve culture rather than conforming to the orthodoxies.
Little or no environmental agenda. Lip service is paid to suporting good causes, but they can't even get it together to separate the recycleable waste at the end? This smacks of hypocrisy...
In many ways,
there are two Glastonburies - the Greenfields, where the chilled, peaceful atmposphere encourages particpation and creativity and the horrific factory-farm of Babylon. Maybe the purpose of Glastonbury is to encourage people to move from one to the other but more money and resources need to be prioritisied for the Greenfields, which need to expand down in to Babylon. Maybe this would attract fewer people to the festival, but given the chronic over-crowding, which surely broke health and safety regulations, this would be a good thing.
So, come on Eavis, you need to ask yourself "What is Glastonbur FOR", and whether clean toilets and reduced crime on site is the only answer.
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Glastonbury Festival 
