I love Glastonbury Festival...don`t get me wrong I`m as worried as the next person by the fact that the proportion of tattoos and facial piercing to trainers and cagoules has been steadily declining for the past ten years...since the double fence in fact...but I simply can`t get away from what an incredible event it is.
The green fields are a fantastic testimony to creativity and what matters, Lost Vagueness to weirdness and what doesn`t. The circus fields are over flowing with talent, and then there are some great bands....even if you think most of them are crap or like me you wonder why bands like Seize the Day don`t get shown on the BBC coverage(!)....you will, without fail, see something awesome at some point during the festival.
For my sister two years ago it was a group of people pretending to be giraffes...they walked for miles all round the festival with their arms above their heads, looking for all the world like a bunch of people with their arms above their heads....but it still cracks her up now and that`s worth a lot...
So what was Glastonbury like this year? Bloody hard work... Officially it was the worst weather ever...and yet all around me there were people having a great time!....what is it about being British and adversity?.....perhaps our very love of a crisis will be our saving grace as Climate Chaos bites deeper and harder!
I worked as part of the information team this year and I loved it...
The people who run the information services at Glastonbury festival are a really fantastic bunch. They`ve been doing it forever and have it down to a fine art...there is even a `bible`....with (almost) every question anyone could ever want answered in it.... Everyone was upbeat and friendly; our core worker Adam was fantastic, even cooking breakfast for us on the Monday...I love that in a boss!
All that said getting up at 7.30 three mornings of the festival, wading through increasing quantities of mud and being on my feet for 20 hours was hard, especially when added to the 5 gigs we did, rehearsing, CD making and playing with Rosa....well, it was a total whirlwind!!
Did I enjoy any of the festival? Of course I did...Mika and Shirley Bassey were great ..Rosa loving the mud was great, hanging out with friends...seeing people you only ever get to see at Glastonbury, fabulous organic food...all great!
...but my absolute highlight, was standing in the rain, on the Railway Line... near the toilets we`ve been putting stickers in for ten years... singing my heart out with Theo and Ali. Singing to a crowd who were absolutely loving the fact that something live and exciting was happening close enough for them to touch.
I love playing late at night....I`d forgotten how much I love it and how great it is to be entirely spontaneous...it filled up my spirit!
We did four other gigs...two in the fantastic Moonbeams cafe, such great food...such great people!
One in the techno-dome in the Greenpeace field...without any warning or telling anyone we were doing it...I reckon most of the audience had never seen us before and nothing sharpens our performance like trying to keep an unfamiliar audience.... (Although there were some well known and loved faces there by the end!) ...it was loads of fun...and thanks for the help and support we got organizing it at such short notice!
Our main gig was at the phenomenally well organized solar powered`Croissant Neuf` venue. Andy arrived in a four wheel drive to get our instruments to the gig...on a stage beautifully carpeted and entirely free of mud...we had plenty of time for a getting ready and started almost exactly on time to an almost packed tent. It astounds and humbles me when I see so many people have made the effort to wade through such huge amounts of goo to come and see us...Thank you to all of you who came! I can`t say it was our best gig ever...we all made mistakes and were struggling a little to hear each other on stage...but the audience entirely made up for that!
The Croissant Neuf crew are having a summer party this year and it promises to be one of the very best festivals of the summer... www.partyneuf.co.uk ...and tickets are selling fast! We would so love to be there....but, typically, we`ll be at Heathrow at the Climate Camp performing and trying to make a difference as usual www.climatecamp.org.uk ... I`m really looking forward to the camp...I always see people I love, I always get inspired by peoples courage...and I love talking to police...and my guess is there`ll be plenty of them around!
...You know what? ...sometimes we need to take care of the world and sometimes we need to take care of ourselves...these are my top tips for that weekend, this summer...and maybe forever!
So another Glastonbury has been and gone...No other festival is quite like it ...long may the Green Fields thrive to inspire....and one day the media will bring one of their big ol` cameras up to those little ol` stages and we`ll be ready...
Oh, and by the way Banksey, it was one of our stickers in your Portaloo Sunset!
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
It was cancelled just after I turned off the A303 on to the only road in and out of the site. A road that is over a mile long and which had to be cleared in order to begin the process of evacuation.
By Mark Lynas, Telegraph Online, 24/5/07
In 2005 the American environmental writer Bill McKibben issued a challenge to the artistic community to start engaging with global warming.
"Where are the books? The plays? The goddam operas?" he demanded. "Art, like religion, is one of the ways we digest what is happening to us, make the sense out of it that proceeds to action."
McKibben might also have asked where the songs and songwriters were: music which in any way engaged with this issue - even then acknowledged as the most pressing challenge to face humanity - seemed just as thin on the ground. The climate crisis, it seemed, had hit us in the head, but had failed to engage us emotionally, in the heart.
Through a concerted effort and in a very short time AliB managed to rally the troops to release a new website !
Singer Theo was arrested while blockading the Gate to the Faslane Trident submarine base on Tuesday. He had joined the 2nd "Power Of The Word Blockade" with other performers and writers supporting the Faslane 365 campaign to close the nuclear misslie facility..
The video of Shannon's song "Flying", from the album "The Tide Is Turning" is being shown online as part of the "Alive Earth - Performers against a climate in chaos" website.
The band are off to Glastonbury festival for the week - if you can't catch us there, why not check out our new "BURNING BUSH" video, at the following link.
Media in Wales predicted a summer of Climate Change protest actions, as singer Theo joined protestors and locked onto machinary at the Aberthaw coal-fired power station near Cardiff. The blockade of the power station on April 3rd followed a similar action at Ffos-y-Fran opencast coal-mine near Merthyr Tydfil on Fossil Fools Day April 1st. The protests were to highlight the apparent hypocracy of the UK government, which claims to be taking climate change seriously, while approving new coal-mines and coal-powered power stations.
Returning from the climate camp in Kent, singer Theo says he’s been inspired by what he sees as “the birth of a new climate change movement”, following a week of discussion and protest action at Kingsnorth, where the government plans to build a new coal-fired power station.
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