Clash Guest Blog: Emmy The Great (Glastonbury Special)

Glastonbury is the daddy. And since our Emmy is such a keen literary, we have split her review into two parts. What follows is a descriptive account of Glastonbury, bands eye view. Come back tomorrow for Saturday and Sunday.

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Emmy writes...

Glastonbury
Thursday

I drive to Waterloo to pick up my brother. He’s like our roadie, but he rarely carries anything. His jobs range from providing a helpful party atmosphere by milling about with a drink in his hand, showing up for five seconds in videos, and giving people high fives. This weekend he will be official cameraman for the next video, by which I mean he will be filming one of our shows onto his mobile phone. It’s not a big role, but it’s important that he comes. Glastonbury was the first thing that informed my life outside of school, and now that he’s finished his A-levels I want him to have the same experience. Of course he’s a lot more urbane and adult than I was, and he’s already been last year, but still, for my own personal enjoyment, I imagine I’m passing on some kind of secret baton. My first Glastonbury happened as an accident, and the people who brought me and showed me the ropes were people who had been going so long they were now a fixture of the festival. I see them every year, and it feels like family. I want my brother to see this. My brother would very much like to meet hot girls and get drunk for four days.

On the way home, I try to get 6music on my car radio, to listen to the festival coverage. My brother explains the concept of digital radio, but I tell him my radio is only 15 years old, and it always picks up Radio 4, so maybe it is he who is wrong. This war with technology is significant, because I am supposed to be helping start a Twitter campaign for Wateraid this weekend, and I cannot muster the will to figure out what Twitter does, or how it’s used. Radio, though, I thought I knew. “What about this button?” I ask, pressing something and discovering an exciting new channel called Capital, which is not even from the BBC.

The news comes on my new channel that Michael Jackson has been rushed to hospital in LA. Within minutes, my phone rings. It is our best friend Dan, calling to say that Michael Jackson has died.

“How can you possibly know before the radio does?” I ask him.

“It was on Twitter,” he says.

Great, I think, Even Michael Jackson is on Twitter, and he’s dead.

Friday

We have no shows till tomorrow, so meet at a leisurely pace in a bus park in king' Cross. This is our first time on a Nightliner, and our manager has celebrated by accidentally booking a Nightliner from 1978. It smells like school trips and puberty, and I imagine the sexual confusion of many a boy scout. People keep laughing and pointing as they walk past, not least since the company logo, emblazoned on every surface of the bus, is ‘Y-Not’. To me, it might as well say 'Y'.

There are three new members starting today, including two female singers, Jenny and Caroline. Sometimes on the road I am totally starved of female company, so this is amazing for me. We separate the bus into boys and girls, but the boys accidentally claim the section with the bunting in it, while we have control of the fridge full of beer. Not wanting to seem old-fashioned, we stick with our areas. The conversation drifts inevitably to Michael Jackson, and whether or not we should honour the occasion with a cover. Earth Song would obviously be the most fun, but someone else is more than likely going to do it better than us, and practicing would mean interacting more than we already have to. My suggestion is to just sing his contributions to We are the World, with all the gaps in between where other people might take up the verse. It would sound something like this:

…….

‘the woooooorllldlddd”

……

“yeah we areeeeeeeee…”

We stop at Westfield to get the Best of Michael Jackson. (History lesson – back in June 2009, this was still a novelty.) On the way back out we see Lily Allen.

"Is that your tourbus out there that says 'Y-Not'?" she giggles as she passes.

Later we discover that Lily Allen took a helicopter to Glastonbury.

After many hours, we arrive, and disperse, with the agreement that we will all make it to all our shows tomorrow, whether or not there is a clash with a band we wanted to see. I drift in the direction of Dead Weather, listen to an exuberant Jamie T from a distance, and end the night at the Strummerville campfire, missing Neil Young for Q-tip in a sudden urge to go against type. He does not play Earth Song, but I discover a huge talent for rapping.