Leave Glasto to young ones, not us oldies
Once seen as a threatening counter-cultural gathering, the Glastonbury Festival now has more than a whiff of Antiques Roadshow or Last Night of the Proms about it.
As well as the endless BBC trailers and cosy fondness for ‘Glasto’, it’s the vintage of some of the main performers, who still seem to be aimed firmly at people my age (ie roughly the same age as the festival itself).
Surely we’ve reached a time where the youngsters should be enjoying the occasion without their parents getting in on the act all the time?
In the nicest possible way, my dad would have been the last person I wanted to see at a festival when I was younger.
He would also have been the last person who wanted to go.
A bit like Facebook,
Glastonbury has been hijacked by middleaged people (look out for all those posts complaining about substandard toilets, poor customer service and that annoying man who kept talking during The
Killers). I’m sure some young people also like
The Cure, although it’s a safe bet that most of the audience at Worthy
Farm won’t have been seeing the veteran goths for the first time in their lives.
The most controversial of this year’s headliners was the grime act,
Stormzy; controversial on the basis that - to his credit - he hasn’t won a Grammy or been inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. Stormzy has apparently had the temerity to claim the headline slot despite only releasing one album in his life and being largely unknown by the Saga demographic (apart from those who still try to be ‘down with the kids’).
I’m not sure why you now have to earn your place on the main stage at Glastonbury like some long-service award, rather than just being popular. I’m genuinely cheered when I look through the BBC’s exhaustive coverage and see an act I’ve never heard of.
One less thing to watch, for starters. It also means the younger festival-goers can actually enjoy a performance without some boring older relative saying “they don’t write them like this any more”.
Surely we’ve reached a time where the youngsters should be enjoying the occasion without their parents getting in on the act all the time?