As Duffy’s been pointing out for the last few months, the multi artist jamboree live things are struggling a bit in the US this year. Over in Blighty the opposite’s true. Glastonbury, taking place this weekend, sold out 105,000 tickets in something like 18 hours, and yeah, my underestimating the fervour of the average Radiohead fan means that I’m working this weekend instead of standing in a field watching a band a couple of miles away.
It’s not just Glastonbury. The other festivals all sold tickets swiftly, although the Glastonbury sellout obviously had a knock-on effect. Once you know that one of the festivals is sold out, you move your attention to the other one, and so on.
Getting back to the main point, over the next three days, hundreds of bands will be playing the festival. Some of it is going to feature on BBC Television here in the UK, so it’s possible that it might pop up on BBC America in a few months.
Until then, you can follow it using the microsite at the Guardian, incorporating a festival diary, and there’s a lot of stuff at bbc.com.
My favourite story so far is the one about Idlewild rejecting a headlining slot on the second stage, because it would have clashed with REM and, as big fans of the Athens legends they wanted to watch their set.
And swipe some moves.