Glastonbury 2017

[KGR]

Obv we're all too old and boring to actually be there. But we can talk about it, here, right?

Most of it (main stages) is live online at the BBC website. That said, some slim pickings this year, though I presume we'll all be watching Radiohead at 9:30 tonight, which I presume will be live on BBC2.

[KGR]

Apols for double-post.

If anyone moans to you that there are no artists making political music anymore, refer them to Kate Tempest will you please. Thanks.

I'm exhausted just keeping up.

[Diable Rouge]

Apols for double-post.

If anyone moans to you that there are no artists making political music anymore, refer them to Kate Tempest will you please. Thanks.

I'm exhausted just keeping up.

Why only watch on the website, when it's pretty much wall-to-wall coverage on BBC Four and Two?

[Snake Plissken]

And if you are in the UK - or can use a VPN - then you can permanently download everything via get_iplayer as soon as it is available.

[jwdd27]

20 years since my last visit - and like every Glastonbury bore I regard my last visit as the last time it was any good, when it was still real people, when you could still get in for nothing (not that I did), it was big but not too big, and so on.

On that occasion I missed Radiohead to go see Primal Scream, who were in the dance tent although they'd just gone rock. They were extremely wasted and sounded awful, but it was awesome. Ended that evening sat around a campfire in the teepee field with some Hull teepee people, who I think were friends of the Scunny acquaintance I'd bumped into. They were pricks though.

Talking of which, I struggle to watch it on TV now because of the flags.

[lackedpunch]

Just watched Elbow's set (on BBC). Guy Garvey plays good music as a DJ, but Elbow are really really boring. All their songs are plodding and lack any spark or syncopation, and his voice is awful. Their success baffles me. If I had the energy I'd turn the TV off and put some good music on.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Elbow have a very cosy relationship with the BBC - their set tonight was a so-called secret set but was bound to get coverage. I've gone full trendy dad tonight and watched The XX and Lorde, and enjoyed both a lot, have seen the former recently and will see both later in the year. Now I've lost all credibility by switching off to watch Nashville, but look Rayna was in a car crash at the end of the previous episode and I wanted to know she was ok, ok?

[Benjm]

Why only watch on the website, when it's pretty much wall-to-wall coverage on BBC Four and Two?

I haven't watched any yet, as I just got back from Kraftwerk at the Royal Albert Hall, but in previous years it has been noticeable how much repetition the BBC manages across the TV coverage, greatly to the detriment of giving any sense of the variety on offer.

Talking of Kraftwerk, why aren't they on the bill? They played the last show of a two week UK tour tonight.

[Ray de Galles]

Their 3D show wouldn't work outdoors, surely?

I took my mum and younger daughter to see Alfie Boe and Michael Ball at Hampton Court Palace tonight in an attempt to do the most un-Glastonbury thing possible.

[Various Artist]

in previous years it has been noticeable how much repetition the BBC manages across the TV coverage, greatly to the detriment of giving any sense of the variety on offer.

Oh gawd, yes, this. "We've been telling you all day how great [x]'s set was last night. We've only shown clips of their performance four times since it went out live, other than looping the highlights for nine hours on the red button overnight, oh and the whole thing is on iPlayer plus the same cherry-picked highlights are all over our website... so if you missed that then here it is again."

[Benjm]

Kraftwerk are archived up to the hilt; I'm sure the 2-D visuals are still available if they need them.

Boe and Ball, eh? Did they get round to singing anything? I saw an advert for their album that was just 30 seconds of them laughing like they were doing Brian Blessed in a pop classical remake of The Trip.

[Various Artist]

How was the Kraftwerk show at the Albert Hall, by the way?

[Ray de Galles]

Kraftwerk are archived up to the hilt; I'm sure the 2-D visuals are still available if they need them.

Boe and Ball, eh? Did they get round to singing anything? I saw an advert for their album that was just 30 seconds of them laughing like they were doing Brian Blessed in a pop classical remake of The Trip.

The Trip is a good comparison actually. Their easy rapport is definitely part of the appeal and they got a little Morecambe & Wise as the night went on.

They were very entertaining actually, best when they stuck to the showtunes but the Bond medley and a couple of reworkings of more recent pop songs were good too. Could have done without the Elvis medley and 'New York, New York' where it got a little too cruise ship.

The set-closing 'Les Mis' medley was astounding stuff obviously, in tears for that. An encore of 'YNWA' shouldn't have worked but did.

[Benjm]

How was the Kraftwerk show at the Albert Hall, by the way?

Fantastic - they even played Geiger Counter!

The 3-D works well, although the effect depends rather upon how much of your field of vision is filled by the screen. I watched one show from the gallery and one from the front stalls. Stalls had a better view/3-D effect but no-one stood up, at all, all through the show. In the gallery you're standing anyway so can do a bit of robotic toe-tapping.

I'll aim to expound at more length on the gig thread.

[Various Artist]

Will look forward to reading that then!

[Benjm]

I'm off to Walsall for four days tomorrow so there won't be too much to distract me from delivering a report!

[Snake Plissken]

Just watched Elbow's set (on BBC). Guy Garvey plays good music as a DJ, but Elbow are really really boring. All their songs are plodding and lack any spark or syncopation, and his voice is awful. Their success baffles me. If I had the energy I'd turn the TV off and put some good music on.

They have a certain something that makes them very good for festivals. Have a few beers, sun going down, on come Elbow to do their slightly melancholy with the uplifting finishing singalong stuff. It works and they've mined that seam for all it is worth.

[Auntie Beryl]

I saw Kraftwerk headline Latitude in 3D, specs were handed out to all.

The revelation of last night for me was Anderson Paak, amazing musicality.

[Lang Spoon]

I do not like the Foo fighters at all. Can't put my finger on it, but they just rile me in some way

[Snake Plissken]

I thought it was a brilliant set and Grohl pretty much met his match in terms of crowd interaction. They do what they do really well (a much better live band than on record, IMO) and I'd rather have ten minutes of Foos at a festival than Radiohead deciding that even the act of appearing on stage is fucking beneath them.

[Artificial Hipster]

Just watched Elbow's set (on BBC). Guy Garvey plays good music as a DJ, but Elbow are really really boring. All their songs are plodding and lack any spark or syncopation, and his voice is awful. Their success baffles me. If I had the energy I'd turn the TV off and put some good music on.

There may be an element of irrational hatred here.

If the music was merely plodding that would be bad enough, it's the fact the man and his music plod so earnestly that makes both unbearable.

Never actually having heard him before I gave Ed Sheeran a whole three songs last night to allow me to form an opinion on him. So obviously I now have no need ever to listen to him again but I couldn't find anything particularly offence in and of itself about his chummy strummings. I'd take them any day over Garvey's calculated and bloodless efforts to evoke emotions in the listener, the only one he succeeds in evoking in me being rage.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

In part proving my earlier point about Elbow and the BBC, one of the first songs I heard on 6 Music this morning was a track from Elbow's set. There must be something in Guy Garvey's contract, that he does a show for them in exchange for a minimum amount of airplay.

I'm not going to comment on what happened in Friday's episode of Nashville though.

[Jah Womble]

There may be an element of irrational hatred here.

If the music was merely plodding that would be bad enough, it's the fact the man and his music plod so earnestly that makes both unbearable.

Never actually having heard him before I gave Ed Sheeran a whole three songs last night to allow me to form an opinion on him. So obviously I now have no need ever to listen to him again but I couldn't find anything particularly offence in and of itself about his chummy strummings. I'd take them any day over Garvey's calculated and bloodless efforts to evoke emotions in the listener, the only one he succeeds in evoking in me being rage.

Garvey just about survives the gallows for Elbow's 2001 debut album, which had some nice moments. Ever since he became the BBC's pet, however, he's become increasingly tiresome. Permanent incarceration will have to suffice.

Sheeran can go hang, however.

[pebblethefish]

How can anyone hate Ed Sheeran? Surely to hate something you have to know what it is? Whereas with Mr Ed, he is so bland and forgettable that I can forget his songs even when I'm in the middle of having one played at me.

[Jah Womble]

I don't 'hate' him, as such. Just wish that he and everyone connected to him would just disappear forever.