Glastonbury - Thursday

At 7:00 p.m. on the first evening and with a menacing darkness creeping across the Somerset sky, Glasvegas open the festival proper in the confines of the tiny Queen’s Head Tent. Two channels of fans trail from the exits, cramming in to witness the band – who some are prophesizing will become the greatest of the decade – play their first Glastonbury chord.

Hiding behind horn-rimmed shades, James Allan uses performance as a means of cleansing himself of the filth and shame of painful childhood memories and the bittersweet tang of failed romances. It is devastating. Sensibly the schedulers have chosen to intensify the band’s stratospheric sound and emotionally cathartic songs by placing them within the confines of a small tent stage (repeating the trick for their second outing the following day). Experience Glasvegas first-hand and you’ll believe us when we say that what they do is felt in the very nucleus of a person. The Dalmarnock quartet provide for an auspicious beginning to the greatest music festival on Earth.

5 hours later, an increasingly fierce downfall has turned the makeshift music-city to mud, the only sound heard above the torrential din being that of Michael Eavis, grinding his teeth.

AU watches the rain as it attempts to wash the filth and the shame from Glastonbury’s own dark heart – the infamous Trash City – Mad Max meets Moulin Rouge – the only Steam-Punk-Pan-Sexual-Burlesque-Vampire-Rave to be had after hours! Within ‘The House of Dolls’ tent, a group of sodden revelers stand transfixed by a zombified Victorian Doll ballet, the whole bizarre spectacle soundtracked by what’s described as ‘Mash-core’: epileptic head-fucking ‘dance’ music containing… well almost everything, except rhythm.

Outside, from the tentacles of a rusting rocket ship / DJ booth, as techno thump thumps, 30ft high flames are released into the watery heavens and light up the adjacent ‘Download Club’; a fully recreated NYC Eighties gay bar. Momentarily stalked by a unicorn carrying a can of McEwans lager, we manage to duck behind a passing herd of tittering trannies who are en-route to the ‘Dragstrip bar’, to perform god-knows-what with god-knows-who. As one freaky cat once remarked: ‘There was madness in any direction, at any hour’. We had arrived! John Calvert

Issue #51 - I Told You This Would Be A Good Issue

Featuring Biffy Clyro, Of Montreal, Duke Special, Frightened Rabbit, Cold War Kids, Jay Reatard, Pat Mills, and more.