It's April 29, 2024, 04:41:52 PM
at the barrier @ front of the pyramid stage and we’re in clover… well, in straw, actually, as there’s been very liberal sprinkling of fresh stuff to sop up the remaining mud up front and make us all cosy-like. it’s impossible to see the full area behind you. stretch, crick your neck and you can see there’s no open space right up to the path way way back up the hill. the audience is big. very big. for a sunday afternoon, it outdoes audiences for night-time headlining acts. it’s very, very big. and beautiful. and loud. and happy. ecstatically happy. and here to see brain wilson. i’m chuffed to see several bw / smile / bb / pet sounds t shirts smattered about earlier in the day. we’re not the only geeks, then, ashley and me. there’s others who’ve already been touched by brian’s shows. glastafarian’s tricolour flag was over the other side –just impossible to make contact and say hello. just tantalisingly out of reach. ‘hello’ anyway, pat. throughout the afternoon the crowd was building – that blunt fellow was lucky to be boosted up onto the bill and get that kind of audience. jools holland’s is always a crowd pleaser and we watched and shuffled our bums in time on a concrete sleeper. then… seize the time… whoomph… in we went to get a spot for van morrison. and we got van. we got a set that was workmanlike (the old chap’s merely plying his trade… and we got plyed with). seen him do better. far better. many times… not that he was bad. just good. and that’s not enough, really. so you never got him on the telly? shame… but thereagain… i’ve hummed and ha’d about which is my favourite all-time / contemporary musical artist. my all-time favourite album… both artists very different in approach and execution, but equally driven by passion: the one’s music intricate, pinpointedly fashioned and recreated with a frontman who has re-emerged into a deserved limelight; the other mercurial, sometimes wayward, changing setlist nightly, changing arrangements, sometimes charged, utterly brilliant, sometimes, er, not so. as of now (and, truthfully, for a few years) a certain brian wilson knocks the spots off of van’s current live offering. no question. as van sings ‘brown eyed girl’ scott bennett runs out front, camera in hand to catch the end of the show. we wave at each other quickly, no chance to speak. and then they were on. the bw show? a bit good. a bit more than a bit good. ’so, what does he do? can you point him out to me when he comes on stage?’ asks a young woman behind us as we are pressed against the barrier. i tell her ‘i think you’ll notice which one is brian’. she’s intrigued by my ‘smile’ t shirt, delighted to be in the throng, but fears she doesn’t know any of his songs. she proves herself wrong on that account – many times over. ‘gosh, i love this one’ she explodes as the opening bars of ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ hit us. by ‘good vibrations’ she’s beside herself.. and beside us. there’s young girls, old fogeys like us, lads who’ve instantly lost their studied cool as the show opens, all singing along and whooping it up. the show hits with hits thick and fast. no flagging (plenty a’waving in the crowd). the coupling of ‘our prayer’ into ‘h&v’… well , they should have done that @ hampton court. sublime. paul mounts the crash barrier during a sax solo ‘little saint nick’ - brian’s well amused by the absurdity. hey, we need this as an xmas single – complete with glasters footage (go on, you know you need to, brian and co – it’s a sure-fire hit!).we get the ‘how loud can you shout’ bit twice – and the decibel levels increase. we get an extended ‘row row row your boat’… but no round from brian – it looks like they’re all gobsmacked by the response and let it roll. . no ‘breakaway’ today – the set’s an hour and a quarter and runs on past that. it ends without ‘love and mercy’ – no dampening of the sheer audience buzz… but it’s missed (by me, at least). earlier on, there’s the sight of two surfers (not just the girl the tv picked up on) being borne aloft on boards across the crowd – surely a first! – and eventually deposited into the arms of security at stage front, boards confiscated and hustled grinning back out into the melée. jeffrey foskett grins at the sight. if brian notices, he doesn’t remark on it. he’s not somewhere else, he’s right there lapping up the occasion, but… well, y’know… in his own stylee. can’t say his nervousness didn’t show through at times, but he handled loss of monitor sound pretty well, pointing it out and making sure it was fixed (that accounts for jeffrey’s gestures noticed by a poster below). they’re bussed in and off site pretty quickly, no doubt, but brian – you gave a performance that is, without any doubt, a defining highlight of the glastonbury festival history. never meant to be a set of esotericfulness. but it’s a perfect set to bring any audience to the boil (except, it appears, a few grumpy buggers who post here and make van the man seem positively full of the joys of spring). i’m so well pleased we were there. oh, yes… we were there! now, if only i’d got the chance to berate that nice mr leaf again about that dvd…
Was Brian singing off an autocue though?
Still haven't been able to find that DVD that you recommended in any shops, I'm going to start searching online, see if I can get it on the cheap.
Seer, without a shadow of doubt there is no Glastonbury in 2006. The U2 thing, the fella who books all the acts says since some smaller, lesser known bands made such a good impression this year then he isn't going to bother ringing up U2 and asking them to play from now on, if they want to play they will have to ring him.
Don't you see those sweaty student types on the TV caked in mud on the first night? Hate people like that, what the fuck do you get out of dancing around in mud and raw sewage eh? Pricks.
Another thing, people who play Glastonbury don't get nowhere near the same amount of fees that they could get for playing other festivals. You have to commend big artist for not copping out and going somewhere else for higher fees. That's the reason Rolling Stones have never played, and why U2 are so unwilling to.
who´s Brian Wilson name some of his best songs and i´ll check em out coz i´ve never heard of him before.
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