Festival run down

3 festivals in 3 weeks must be a world record. I had not been to any of them before so here's a pocket-sized review:

The Big Chill, Eastnor Castle
Quality of Music: 8/10
Toilets: 7/10
Price of a pint: £3.50
Queue Factor: 4
Summary: Lovely setting in the Malvern Hills, pretty much everyone dressed up and a fantastic vibe. Not so much about the music as the party atmosphere.
Highlights: The heard of human zebra, Kruder & Dorfmiester, Hexstatic and Norman Jay getting the whole place dancing on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Would I go back? Definitely

Field Day Festival, London
Quality of music: 0/10 (couldn't hear it)
Toilets: 0/10
Price of a pint: £3.50
Queue Factor: 10
Summary: Lots of uber-cool musicians in the fashionable heart of London's East End. Only 30 toilets for 10,000 people and over a 1 hour queue for the bar. When we did finally try and see a band the levels were so low we gave up and went to the pub, where we had a great time.
Highlights: None
Would I go back? Only to key the organiser's new Porsche which he bought with the proceeds from this year's event.

The Green Man Festival, Wales
Quality of music: 7/10
Toilets: 9/10
Price of a pint: £3.00
Queue factor: 2
Summary: Absolutely gorgeous setting surrounded by the Brecon Beacons. Mainly folk influenced bands, lots of tasty food and a tiny 6,000 capacity. Probably the closest you'll get to how Glastonbury was back in't day.
Highlights: Robert Plant (especially when he played Whole Lotta Love in the encore - aaaarggh!), Findlay Brown, The Broken Family Band, Vetiver, Richmond Fontaine.
Would I go back? Maybe. Great music and all, but after a while I was hungry for a riff and there was nothing to do once the music stopped.

We've just got back from a Central European road trip organised by Tom, Ben and Wadey for their collective 30th birthdays. 13 people on a mini bus was a bit of a squeeze, especially on the first day when we covered over 1000km from Ashford, Kent to Bautzen, Germany. Otherwise top notch fun. Highlights included:

• Visiting 5 countries in one day
• Auschwitz
• Krakow, Poland
• Levoce, Slovakia
• Frisbee Golf
• Budapest, Hungary
• Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Growing a moustache

Sign of the times

It was great to see so much coverage of Glastonbury over the weekend. On BBC 2 and 3 continuously with two more options on the red button this must surely have been the most televised live event in the history of broadcasting. Regardless of all the moaning about commercialisation and losing its 'edge', the popularity of Glastonbury and countless other festivals throughout the summer is something I see as a wonderful reflection of the creativity and positivity in the UK today. I'm old enough now to remember a rather different country, which was trying to bash youth culture over the head with a big stick.

I was going to have a whinge that it was a shame, with over 200 bands playing (most of them British :D), we got endless repeats of Lily effin' Allen, Mika and a BabyShambles set where the camera focused more on Kate Moss, but it could be a lot worse.

Whilst Sara was in the hairdressers at the end of our street on Saturday a nut nut decided to stab a copper in the chemists. Cue 20 police cars and a chopper. While they chased the man into the cemetery Sara was stuck in the shop. I was at home moaning about the noisy circling helicopter distracting me from inspecting the newly-seeded lawn. Once they caught the guy a fleet of "BicyCops" were dispatched to guard the crime scene. I played with the idea of nicking one of the bikes and instigating a low speed bike chase but, some may say cowardly, I took a photo instead.

I wish I got out to see live music more often, especially some of the hundreds of hopefuls which can be seen for a few pounds in countless venues across London. It reminds you that whether a band makes the big time or not is a fine, fine line which has little to do with the quality of the music, but more with what's fashionable this week.

Granted, the first band were rubbish (a homogeneous mash of Brit Indie from the last few years), but they played it well and was still ten times more entertaining than another night in front of the box.

The next two bands were altogether a different story. Beeches (fronted by a certain Mr Hayes), I had not seen since their second gig well over a year ago and was mighty impressed by how good they have got at banging out unashamedly unfashionable Pixies inspired punk rock.

Finally, Kill Electric, who I initially wrote off for looking a bit nu-electro, were cracking too. If you live in London, you can pay around £25 to get a glimpse of a big time group from behind the back of a 6ft dude with an afro (whilst dying for a piss because you've drank one £4 can of Red Stripe). Or you can go and see three or four bands (in arguably the best city in the world for live music) for a fraction of the price in a pub that sells beer in glasses. From now on I will be trying my best to do the latter.

"One each floor, on either side of a narrow communicating stair, a range of shadowy galleries opened out fanwise, along one of which came a chambermaid carrying a bolster. I applied to her face, which was in the twilight, the mask of my most impassioned dreams, but read in her eyes as they turned towards me the horror of my own nonentity."

Marcel Proust - In Search Of Lost Times

Nick Drake sits comfortably within my all time top five favourite musicians - I never tire of listening to his achingly beautiful (and incomparable) melancholy folk. Fontana are releasing a collection of his unreleased material on June 19th which has every chance of being a stack of deflating cast-offs that should never have be uncovered. However, if the rest of the tracks are anything like "Blues Run The Game" available as a free download on Pitchfork then I for one can't wait to hear them.