The end.

The rain held off. The headliners kicked ass. What more could you want?

Well, I'm glad you asked that. How about:

1. More support for Zimbabwe in the United Nations. As Dickie Ashcroft had it: "Shame on United Nations!!!". Dickie has watched Sky News, and he is not best pleased by you, Mr Putin. So sort it out, or else he's doing 'Keys To The World' as a ten minute jam-encore.

2. MGMT to be upgraded to the sort of tents that you can get into. They packed-out Glasto. Everyone knew today was gonna go to overspill again. Sawt it aht, bruv.

3. These men to come raving with us more often.

Dance tent, you'd think? Nah, this was at Joe Lean and The Jing Jang Jong.

4. The Chemical Brothers, generally-speaking. Their sound was approximately twice as loud and three times as pristine as anything else we saw on the second stage. And their bad-acid screensaver visuals on their 60-foot-high LCD screens are head-splitting, a genuinely trance-inducing marriage of image to music that they must have spent an age plotting out. Mad props to the syphilitic clown motif during 'Do It Again'.

6. World Peace.

7. That you'd never seen this, the grimmest road safety ad ever.

8. Sleep. G'night.

So We are Scientists rocked out. Corporately-speaking.

Between-songs Keith & Chris invented a game called "Let's namecheck as many of the side-of-stage stalls as we can".

Apart from giving shout-outs to Rumbles Restaurant ("the best squid in town") and dedicating 'Cash Cow' to The Japanese Food Kiosk, they went on an extended riff about 'Bar ID Required'. This is the latter part of it:

Here are some of the stalls a bit further back he may have missed... THIS...

AND THIS...

I don't know about you, but Christian imagery is the sort of stuff that really gets me going on the dancefloor.

Read more...

Is it compulsory for bands to do cover versions at festivals? So far nearly every act I've seen has dropped a cover into their set.

We’ve had the Manics doing Rhianna and Nirvana; Feeder getting off on the Foos and Pixies; Sugababes doing En Vogue; Amy MacDonald mauling The Killers and Winehouse doing 'Valerie', while Bell X1 tipped their hat to The Flaming Lips.

Backstage it's been all covers of sorts too with a load of horrible cheezy pop karaoke from the various liggers backstage. I mean honestly, there’s professional musicians (and Amy Winehouse) on-site all weekend and there’s crowds of 'VIPs' sat there listening to someone maul 'Sweet Child of Mine'. Now if the bands got involved......

Quick reflection on last night – It was all a bit 1997. I went from a fantastic Manics set via The Prodigy (Keith, I mean really isn't it time?) through to The Verve.

Maybe I've been listening to Neon Neon, but Jesus did it seem like a time warp. Which is fine. The Verve are well and truly back. Awesome last night it's great to know that Ashcroft is as mad as ever. Mugabe is shitting himself.

As for the beer. an extra euro for a full glass. What's that all about?

This is Richard Hawley's gig on the Pet Sounds stage, as seen from space.

Read more...

The Economist has something called the Big Mac Index, which it uses to measure purchasing power in different countries, via the international currency of hamburgers.

Read more...