Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Glastonbury Sucks
This week Luke Glassford has taken the 7 Reasons sofa to a field far, far away. Luke is the chief music writer for music news and review site, All-Noise.co.uk and has been to Glastonbury more times than he would ever admit.
Yes people, it’s that time of year again – festival season! When everyone suddenly becomes a super-cool, shades-and-wellies wearing fashionista and likes to prattle on about how much of a ‘proper music’ fan they are. Right in the middle of this hyped-up, giddy season of festivals is Glastonbury – the biggest, oldest and oh-so coolest of all the summer festivals. And here’s 7 reasons why it sucks!
1. Travel. The first ‘festival’ thing you will do is make your way to the festival site. Like going on holiday, this is always the best bit. Except, unlike your holiday, the journey will come to an abrupt end about 50 miles away from your destination because of massive, soul-draining, spirit-crushing tailbacks. And if you think the 7 hours of stop-start traffic on the way there is bad, just wait until you leave on Monday morning – when you’re tired, dirty and in absolutely no mood to be queuing up for hours just to get out the car park!
2. Toilets. Where there’s lots of people, there’s lots of poo. It’s just a fact of life. At festivals, toilets become stinking, disgusting cess pits which make you more aware of everyone else’s bodily functions than ever. This also makes you much more aware of your own bodily functions and you will, at one point, have this conversation with yourself: “Right, I’m front and centre at the Pyramid stage and my favourite bands on in 10 minutes – God I love Glasto. Oh, hold on, do I need a wee? Maybe, but I should be able to hold it. No, I’ve thought about it now, it’ll only get worse. Ill have to go find the toilets. But how am I going to find my way back to this great spot? The queue will be massive too – I’ll probably miss half the gig. Well I can’t hold it for 2 hours now so Ill have to go, lose my friends and lose my great spot to go stand in a toilet queue for an hour. God I hate Glasto!”
3. Camping. Everyone ‘lucky’ enough to be going to Glastonbury needs to ask themselves: “When did I last go camping?” and “Why have I not been since then?” The answers will probably be: “Ages ago” and “Because it was crap”. Now picture that crap camping experience at that picturesque location with the shower block. Now picture an overcrowded field with tents and guide-ropes pointed in a myriad of angles, trapping you in a cess pit of drunken louts and annoying, squealing teenagers – that’s Glastonbury!
4. Weather. Yes we’re British so we have to moan about the weather. But no-one likes rain when they’re trying to enjoy themselves. Eating fast-food and drinking lager is no fun whatsoever when it’s raining. It’s also no fun when it makes a quick trip to The Other Stage a tiring ordeal made all the worse by the fact all you can do when you get there is stand ankle deep in mud and get rained on. And what do you do next? Why, go back to your flooded tent of course!
5. Expense. It’s not only the fact it costs so much. It’s more the rigmarole you go through for the privilege of just getting the chance to pay for a ticket. Filling out a massive, intrusive form will get your foot in the door. Then you have to get a ticket. Sitting in your dressing gown for 4 hours with your laptop on, pressing ‘refresh’ every 10 seconds while hitting redial on your phone. At 9am. On a bloody Sunday!
6. Other People. No matter what fun activity you do in your life, one factor will always ruin it – other people. They get in the way, push in in queues, throw cups of wee all over the audience and generally annoy you.
7. U2. Just when you think Glastonbury couldn’t get any more suckier, they wheel out your mum’s favourite ‘rock’ band for an opening night smug-fest on the Pyramid Stage. There’s not much more to say to justify this point except – if you’re looking forward to seeing U2 then you probably deserve all the horrible, soul-destroying stuff that is going to happen to you over the weekend!
Obviously, this is quite a pessimistic view of Glastonbury and there is fun to be had – so we look forward to a follow-up here on 7reasons.org called something like “7 Reasons Why Glastonbury Rocked!!!” (If you can think of 7 things that is!)
Never been… never will now!