the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Anyway, here is one of my favourite ever Glastonbury moments. I was there, along with a few hundred other people, the mud and the rain. Just before Faithless had come on it had hammered it down, that’s why everyone is wearing waterproofs and why you can see the rain dripping off front of the stage. But more importantly, much more importantly, the crowd is well up for it, going totally banana’s, and then going a full fruit salad after 5.50. A few years later, when they were bigger name, they played the Pyramid stage to a far bigger crowd but to a much, much less enthusiastic response.

As far as I’m concerned, those who knew knew, but those who came later had possibly only read about Faithless and because they were told they were good and it legitimised them. Those people had no yardstick upon which to base any judgement of if something was good or not, never having been into dance music in any of its forms. They relied on the opinions of others, with more experience, cultural commissars, to do it for them. This partly explains – well to me anyhow – the curious and long-lasting reverence which some have bestowed upon ‘Aphex Twin’. Because no matter how good his press is, no matter how how many laurels the critics put on his wreaths, after one listen to most of his many tracks, most people would be hard pressed to want to listen to anymore.

But those who knew where he came from, had danced to some of the same tunes he had, had some of the same musical influences he had, would know. They’d discern in his music threads of a rich and ever expanding aural tapestry, one that they didn’t need a music critic to explain to them what colours were his. Because, as I wrote in the previous post, we are as much defined by what we don’t like as what we do, and no-one better exemplifies that musical truism better than ‘Aphex Twin’

I know that recent my post about Coldplay was a not exactly what you might call positive about them, but as there are more members in the Coldplay than actually read my posts, there aren’t that many people to call it anything.

But that doesn’t matter, because Coldplay perfectly exemplify my feelings about music.

One is as much defined by the music they do like as much as the music they don’t. Thinking about it, can anyone just ‘like’ music, is that even possible? And even if it were, would even one want to be that kind of person? Not me! No, one either loves a particular type of music or one hates it. There is no like, no easy going toleration, no passive acceptance, no patient indulgence. If someone smacked you in the mouth, you’d have them arrested, wouldn’t you? Why this doesn’t extend to GBH of the earhole is beyond me. I’m also equally aware that some may hate the music that I love and that’s fine, as long as they love some other type of music. If hell existed, people who claimed to like all ‘kinds of music’ would be in there for sure.

Anyway, I’ve always hated jingly-jangily guitar music (JJGM) even before I gave it a name. It was the sort of music ‘The Smiths’ made. Them and ‘U2’, ‘The Cure’ and for those who believed those bands had become too commercial and thus didn’t want to tainted by association with, ‘The Jesus and Mary Chain’ No prizes for guessing that I went to an all boys secondary school, notionally a Catholic one, despite everyone seeming to worship Morrisessy. The way I saw it, if music didn’t make you instinctively want to dance, then it was dirge, an aural pollutant that came in many forms.

School disco’s were therefore hilarious. Sixth-form girls from the local convent school were invited to add to the youthful angst. The smell of wet look hair gel, Clearasil cream and Paco Rabane was overwhelmed by the sweat that only young people can produce when finding themselves at a social gathering where the opposite sex is present and dancing is expected, realise that whilst JJGM had taught them many things, dancing wasn’t one of them. Had I known then what schadenfruede was, I may well have thought it had a sound as well and that sound would be, ‘Walking on Sunshine’ by Rockers Revenge. Or the 12″ version of ‘I.O.U’ by Freeze. Or, or, or. There were just so many great tunes, almost as many as there were bad haircuts on show. It was a harsh lesson, that of the signal importance of being able to dance, was one better to be learnt early on, especially with rave culture on the not too distant horizon, that dancing was, is and always will be an vertical expression of a horizontal intention.

But rave culture, great as it undoubtedly was – and it was – could not have happened without all of the great music that went before it. Disco, funk, electro, the shoulders upon which the great dance music of now is built. And it is great. Old people like me are meant to shake their heads in despair when we hear it. Muttering things like,” It was much better in my day.” as we do. That’s our job. Young people, by contrast, are meant to be young people while they are young shake their tail feathers, while they can. That’s their job. Then they become the old people and find themselves shaking their heads.

And you can’t do that to JJGM. I mean, you can, of course you can, and good luck to you, but really?

I was thinking about this, thinking about how it is the job of people my age to bemoan modern music as much as it is the job of young people not to care. I didn’t when I was young and my parents wouldn’t even have bothered pretending to know who Africa Bambaata was, and even if they did it would’ve been embarrassing. But the organisers of Glastonbury 2023, are clearly stuck in a bizarre musical graveyard if their headliners are anything to go by.

Guns n Roses are headlining on Saturday night and when did they last bother the charts? Same goes for Elton John on Sunday night. I know that the headliners aren’t the main reason people go to Glastonbury, but with the lineup being announced well after tickets have sold out, I just hope that the other reasons compensate for being trapped in a world of outrageous markups, disgusting sanitation and sleep deprivation. The first time I went to Glastonbury I bought my ticket three days before we planned to set off and then only after Eavis’s had grudgingly conceded that yes, as young people wanted to dance, they were going to have dance tent. There was still loads of JJGM ear botheration to contend with then and it seems there is now. Blondie is causing yet more racketeering there I see. Again, when did she last bother the charts? Although she did once gave me an unforgettable Glastonbury moment, not like that!

It was one of the years of the mud. Mud so thick it could suck the shoes off your feet, mud so watery it was like a sea of brown porridge and mud so everywhere that it was like being in the Somme, but with incessant JJGM instead of German artillery. Some of us had found a tent that not only was selling tea, but crucially had lashed together a Heath-Robinson type seating affair. It was the first time any of us had sat down in what seemed like living memory, and everyone in there felt the same, because we had to wait ages to get a seat.

Anyway, this bloke comes in, dressed like he’d stepped out ‘The Matrix’ – dark suit, shaven head – goes up to counter, has a conversation with the proprietor who shakes his head and walks away. Then blokey approaches everyone, has the same conversation which elicits the same response. We wait our turn. When he finally gets to us he asks, “Debbie Harry is outside. Would you give up your seats for her if she came in

Anyway, here is one of my favourite ever Glastonbury moments. I was there, along with a few hundred other people, the mud and the rain. Just before Faithless had come on it had hammered it down, that’s why everyone is wearing waterproofs and why you can see the rain dripping off front of the stage. But more importantly, much more importantly, the crowd is well up for it, going totally banana’s, and then going a full fruit salad after 5.50. A few years later, when they were bigger name, they played the Pyramid stage to a far bigger crowd but to a much, much less enthusiastic response.

It was exactly what Danny meant in ‘Withail and I’, when he observed “They’re selling hippy wigs in Woolworths.’