Badlands

Cheers for this - think 9/9 sorted for us. Any idea what the presale was for? That was far too easy - thought you had to sign up to mailing lists. In fact, I reckon that’s my first ever gig ticket bought via presale.

Thanks. Fingers crossed for Villa then.

I dunno. We’ve been here before with Ezra and Sam Smith, and whilst he’s a bigger talent than either for me - there’s always the risk that he peaks too soon. Hope I’m wrong mind

Is there scope for second nights at Edinburgh or Brum? I think there’s going to be demand for it.

It’s the oddballs who spend their days teaching their kids the lyrics to Sunny Day in the hope they’ll get lifted off their shoulders and onto the stage come showtime.

Any recommendations for Finsbury? Where to drink? Food? Queues once inside?

Fairly certain the quality of the sound at WH is placement dependent. Had some great times there and experiences where I’ve strugggled to hear it properly. Other stage was a marked improvement I thought this year. Only saw PSB and Metronomy but both sounded ace pretty far back behind the repeaters.

For what it’s worth, practically all of my mates who said it was their last have performed a 180.

The food vans are the litmus test for me. Not that it spoilt my festival but there were queues everywhere for everything, even those off the beaten track

I seen Noel at Islington Chapel when he was still with Oasis - about 200 odd people there. Sublime

Cali’s posts had him watching back from the recording, maybe he can give us a comparison between the recorded and the iplayer version….

Yer man in the crowd with The End scrawlings on his chest that was air drumming and basically living his best life on someone’s shoulders during the final medley is welcome to my house for tea and a catch up anytime.

There’s a conversation to be had at some point about how ‘’honest’ them vocals of his are all night. 2:45 for an 80 year old man to be on top of his game is a big ask without barely dropping a note.

3rd run through for me tonight, by god it’s good. It’s still Hey Jude that’s getting the feels the most though, swear I’ve not heard noise like it. Macca, at 80 years and thousands of gigs later, trying and successfully reaching the high notes that I was miserably failing at after losing my voice at Big Easy Jam two days earlier…

Divers Diner meals aren’t great and would avoid if you want to spoil yourself with food. However, they were doing bowls of hash browns for £1.50 all weekend so they get brownie points for the cheapest meal on-site

Was that the first year they’ve sold Brothers in all the bars. Get sick of beer after a few days and wanted something cold and fizzy but the apple stuff was unpleasant

Macca was a very late finish. Absolutely plausible people couldn’t get across till 1

Park wasn’t busy, in fact once i squeezed out the crush I darted straight back in as there wasn’t any crowd on the left hand side.

Four Tet finishing at the Park and those from Arcadia trying to get the other way. Then people coming across Pennards towards both. Crackers.

“Normalise communal urinals” - woman with her trousers down bent over the urinals at Williams Green on Thursday…

To think I wasn’t fussed about him playing Hey Jude

Not sure ‘making them work at the festival for a ticket’ is much better to be frank. Dangerous crowd control is due to lack of proper organisation, not because it was too busy. Every year we get packed pinch points after big acts, mad busy times when a larger act is on a small stage and complaints the festival needs to change. Same as it ever was.

Macca obsessives on Facebook reckon the iplayer version has been remixed to rid of a couple of technical difficulties from the Saturday recording. Also includes Danger which was omitted. Just watched it back and it sounds just as spectacular as I remember on Saturday. Up there with Blur 09 for me that was.

Pricing out people less well off so you don’t have to queue as long for a piss is such an utter shit take.

I’ll maintain the view that the Park/Arcadia incident was dangerous and possibly negligent. But, that apart, whilst it was obviously busier, I didn’t think there was anything that I hadn’t seen before. Theoretically, there’ll be a few complaining about the crowd who wouldn’t have been there in the first place if they didn’t up the capacity. We cannot have it both ways. Bigger queues for toilets and food but with a better chance of going? Aye, I’ll take that.