Is Glastonbury the best festival in the world?

[jamiejc]

Is a frog's arse water tight?

[godders1966]

Godders I remember your thread well - You did get some stick.

I think you did really well to read that as passion and see it as a reason to go for it, because a lesser soul would have gone running back to V or Reading, or whatever, calling us all the names under the sun.

So I am double delighted to see you post now as a complete and total convert! You can watch them all roll in next year now and try to be the voice of reason!

[2/Z]

The only thing that does bother me on this forum is when someone makes a comment about how much they like a particular act and they get abuse like "you've obviously got no taste" and "what a shit record collection you must have if you like them". Music is such a personal thing and everyone's taste is different. It doesn't mean you are wrong, but you just like other things.

[beau1]

I think it is but I don't know much about the huge festivals such as Sziget, Wercheter and Fuji Rock.

[tazzyb]

Unitl Glastonbury gets

Nando's

Pub by a nice canal showing football

It can never be the best

Swinning RIP

[Boris]

No. It's shit.

[VCK]

Yes.

Topic closed.

[JaguarSkills]

FFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Pinhead]

I reckon that Glastonbury is what it is because it's not primarily run to make money. It's run firstly as a (self financing) party, and then when money does come into it, it's to benefit some great causes.

Quite agree - this is what makes it stand out for me as well; to attend a festival where you feel that in some small way you are making a collective difference with those causes makes it more enjoyable. Michael naturally takes some to cover infrastructure costs, but does he take any as profit at all now? Even recently I believe he mentioned again in one interview that he still has to re-mortgage the farm every year to cover infra costs. I wonder if he still does this if he doesn't live at Worthy anymore as well.

Michael (even now, supposedly retired) is still very much a farmer first. I'm 99.99% sure that if he was given an option of the festival or the farm, the farm would definitely win.

Yeah, though I remember those earlier interviews with him from the late 90's I think (e.g. on Julien Temple DVD), where he admits that although he was a farmer first, "I was never very good at it you see", and that he thought the festival might help since the farm used to often be in trouble financially. He has often also said now I believe that if the festival ever started loosing money again year on year, that he would definately "call it a day". Hence his fear and comments to the effect in 2008 when festival tickets struggled to sell out.

While there's been other festivals started since Glastonbury started which don't have money as their prime objective, they've been started in a different age, when money is held up as the master of us all (Thatcher's capitalism if you like) - and so they've not been able to tap into the same idealistic network of people that still remains a strong part at the centre of what Glastonbury is.

Yes quite - Glastonbury is very much a product of the context of its birth I feel, and the selfless efforts of Bella and Andy Kerr at the time.

Emily of course isn't a farmer, so it's hard to gauge how her increasing influence over the festival will pan out. I suspect that, in her mind, it'll be to a much greater extent than with her dad the business that she works for and pays her bills, and I guess that'll bring changes over time. But alongside that, it's not like she's someone brought in from outside, and detached from what the festival is about, so hopefully she'll hold onto that heritage.

She certainly drops the odd hint of a different direction for the festival now, though isn't Michael still essentially creative controller? I wonder whether her new husband will have any influence over matters of bookings and organisation. I guess she has to be allowed to stamp her own identity on the festival to some extent otherwise she'll always be felt of as simply 'running' it for her father.

The other 'contenders' have none of that. They're run by music promoters as purely money making exercises, and while some are very good at what they're trying to do, what they're trying to do is something different from Glastonbury, because they're driven purely from that profit angle.

S'why I don't go to any other festival. Sometimes I feel that this is an insular attitude, and I expect I'll go to BD in 2012 during Glasto year off. However, I think I'd always been comparing every other festival to Glasto to some extent, Glasto being my yardstick that no other can seriously (yet) live up to.

Edited November 12, 2009 by Pinhead

[amfy]

Thanks for your reply. I'm suprised to hear you remembered my posting, considering the amount of postings on here. It really must have stirred things up. Some of the replies were passionate, some were supportive but there was quite a few that were simply abusive. The abuse didn't bother me but the simple fact that so many people had an opinion made me realise it must be a big deal and it means so much to so many people.

[mikeb]

S'why I don't go to any other festival. Sometimes I feel that this is an insular attitude, and I expect I'll go to BD in 2012 during Glasto year off. However, I think I'd always been comparing every other festival to Glasto to some extent, Glasto being my yardstick that no other can seriously (yet) live up to.

[usatoglas]

This is a difficult one.

I think Glastonbury is the best music festival there is however, as a sheer experience, I think that Buning Man did it for me to take the top slot

[Mikeydread]

In my opinion - yes!