Glastonbury Highlights

Even though this blog is about Glastonbury, I should make it clear that I didn't actually go to the festival this year. Being a secondary school teacher entitles me to thirteen weeks of holiday a year, but it doesn’t entitle me to take time off whenever I want; as a result I have never been to the world’s greatest music festival. I once worked in a school where a colleague did go to Glastonbury, saying he had a ‘wedding’ to go to on the Friday. On returning to work on the Monday, he bore more resemblance to a funeral: his deathly pallor and sunken eyes acting as an open coffin warning, fuck with the Gods of the term-time calendar and they'll come for you. Heeding this, I've never been on a Glasto' weekender.

So each year I set up camp in my living room and watch the highlights. Upset that I could never go to Somerset, I used to try and imitate the world of Worthy Farm by bringing mud into the house and pissing into a bottle, but since courting I’ve been told that this behaviour is both selfish and bizarre. My girlfriend tells me that instead of re-creating the physical terrain of the festival, I should replicate the financial burden of going; thence she now charges me £200 to watch the highlights, alongside £6 for a pint of beer. Next week, she is taking her friends away on holiday.

Mud.

Anyway, the best bands I saw on the old telebox were LCD Soundsystem and Coldplay. Fans of mainstream music will politely say they are unaware of the first, but love the second. Fans of alternative music will love the first, but impolitely say the second are a Chilcot inquiry against music. That 2.6 million words is not enough to cover all the auditory crimes the band have committed. That sending Chris Martin and his cronies to The Hague would not be a suitable enough punishment for all the harm they have committed. That Coldplay should have a tow rope pulled taut to their ear and be then dragged kicking and screaming down the street in a symbolic reenactment of the pain they bring to us all. Then when their lobes are ripped raw from their heads, a Greek chorus will assemble round them to sing, ‘Fix that you fuckers.’ 

I guess what I’m saying is people hate Coldplay.

I’ve always really liked them. They were the first band I got into in a big way. Their first album Parachutes was a massive hit that earned them critical and popular acclaim. A lot of Coldplay detractors would cite this as the band’s best work, offering as it does a quasi-covering of Jeff Buckley and Radiohead’s best acoustic moves. Alan McGee, manager of Oasis, described it as ‘music for bedwetters,’ so it wasn’t for everyone. I loved it because it had a commercial sound, which was easy for my young teenage ear, alongside a vulnerability that meant it wasn’t for the ‘lads.’ Over the years their sound would grow more anthemic, encompassing the muscular Rush of Blood To The Head, the mess that was X and Y, the transitionary Viva La Viva, and the colourful outpourings of Mylo Xyloto and A Head Full of Dreams. It is true that Coldplay don’t re-invent the wheel when it comes to music, that their have been missteps, times when their sound has been over-earnest, too heavy on platitudes, too light on attitude; but the ubiquity of their music proves the wheels show no signs of coming off.

Alan McGee: a grown man that still does this.

So to their Glastonbury performance. The band have headlined the festival before and know how to do it. This isn’t an easy thing to do. Many big bands have tried and failed to conquer the Pyramid Stage. Whereas Coldplay wet the bed, other bands shit themselves when it comes to playing in front of 100,000, along with the millions watching at home. For example, Alan McGee's Oasis were so bad at their headline spots that years on those in attendance are still unable to wash the stink from them. Even people that hate Coldplay appreciate they know how to put on a show.  Their set begins with Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator calling on men and women to unite – an important message given we're just a few days after Brexit. Then, we’re into the tunes. Arms are held aloft whilst mouths mouth to the words. Both stage and fans are awash with colour (the wristbands of attendees glow with colours to fit the mood). Chris Martin jumps and jives around the stage like Michael McIntyre put to music, whilst the other nondescripts chime out the melodies to their hit sounds. It’s all very easy listening, but it’s joyous and communal – which surely is no bad thing.

Look at all the pretty colours.

A lovely touch in the show is the band’s decision on what to cover. It being the year of Prince and Bowie, you’d think the choice would be made for them. Instead they chose Viola Beach’s ‘Boys that Sing.’ If you recall, the band were killed in Sweden when their car plunged into the water at the start of the year. Martin and the boys respectfully coalesce their own version with the band’s video to give the young band a chance to headline Glastonbury. There will be some of you making the joke: if it isn’t bad enough they died young, they’ve got Coldplay playing a musical tribute to them. I think that’s unfair. The 'play are decent lads with decent tunes. They may not be the best band in the world but to my mind it's no bad thing they’re the biggest.

 And now for something completely different. 

LCD Soundsytem are the epitome of cool. Fronted by James Murphy, they are a glorious cut and paste of every hip 45 in High Fidelity’s record store. Formed in 2001 the band came to prominence with their hipster-baiting Losing My Edge (I hear everybody you know is more relevant than everybody that I know. But have you seen my records? This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry …) It is at once a piss-take of people who collect music to name-check and an acknowledgement that all musos do this to some degree. From there the band produced their eponymous album, boasting the hysterical thrash of ‘Daft Punk is Playing in My House’ and the sexual yelp of ‘Disco Infiltrator.’ Their greatest success though was reserved for their second album, ‘Sound of Silver.’ 'Sound' is one of my favourite records as it trades in the first album's archness for romanticism. It retains the groove of the first and adds an emotional honesty, meaning it connects with your heart as well as your feet.

I missed out on the opportunity to see LCD Soundsystem first time round. They were playing at my university in my first year, but I wasn’t in to them yet. By the time I had become an ardent follower, they had disbanded vowing never to return. Well, like all bands other than The Smiths and The Jam they have re-united; although for Soundsystem, still relatively young, you feel that this is as much musically motivated as it is money related. 

Live LCD are everything I hoped. Starting with Us V Them, my girlfriend walks into the living room and says, “they’re a bit repetitive aren’t they.” And she’s right, they are. But this isn’t repetition without purpose, filler to cover the cracks of no discernible ideas; this is repetition with motivation, the rubbing of sticks that brings about glorious, incendiary choruses. If Chris Martin is the Michael McIntyre of music, then James Murphy is the Stewart Lee, because by the time you get to the end of the song all the preceding layering makes perfect sense.   

Their set also boasts three of my favourite songs from the last decade. ‘Someone Great’ is a twitchy meditation to lost love, a beautiful lamentation that doesn’t understand why it isn’t raining when someone great is gone. It is Auden’s Funeral Blues put to electronica and is mesmerisingly beautiful. Another favourite that they play towards the end is ‘New York I Love You. But You’re Bringing Me Down.’ Just like his heroes The Velvet Underground, Murphy can do a piano ballad as well as Lou Reed. The song meshes the archness and romanticism I talked about earlier to be utterly scathing about a city that has sold its soul to billionaires yet utterly enthral to it too.  They of course end on ‘All My Friends.’ I get why some people don’t like LCD Soundsystem, but I cannot countenance a human being that doesn’t like this tune. It begins with a propulsive, compulsive rhythm akin to The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard;’ then comes the hit and run drum kicks of New Order; next we’re into Murphy’s vocals, a defiant rasp against the dying light. The closing triumvirate of driving guitar, pulsating keyboard and plaintive refrain, ‘If I could see all my friends tonight,’ makes it the song of the millennium. I just wish I were there in person to witness it.

LCD close the night, pulling the bed covers on Glastonbury.

So Coldplay and LCD Soundsystem, the uncoolest and coolest bands on the planet. Liking both: what does it make me? The uncoolest cool person or the coolest uncool person? Out of all the literary techniques, I’ll take being an oxymoron. Rather that than being irony. Imagine how insufferable they would be. “Hey, can you just give me a straight answer.” Weird way to end a blog by doing a riff on literary techniques, isn't? Ah well, it’ll do.

Both performances are available on BBC iPlayer.