Glastonbury 2010

I’ve been to Glastonbury for the last 4 years and it just gets better every time. This year, the 40^th anniversary of the festival’s birth in the 1000 acres Somerset fields making up Michael Eavis’ legendary farm, was no exception. Who would have thought that something which began as “Pilton Pot Festival” which cost £1 entry, with free milk from the farm itself, could have become the amazing and renowned event which over 177,000 people attended this year?

There’s no doubt about it: Glastonbury is amazing. With 27 official stages, a cabaret tent, circus, cinema, theatre and countless smaller venues for bands and DJs to play, Glastonbury is a thousand acres of glorious chaos and has everything you could possibly want from a festival. Where else in the world can you sing your heart out amongst a 100,000 strong crowd one minute and then dance around a lit-up band stand to what can only be described as “folk music on crack” with about 20 people (including a body-popping ten-year old) the next? You can watch the sun rise sitting at the stone circle, wander the healing fields where a friendly hippie will comment on the strength of your “energy”, see a whole family dressed up as bees, an eighty year-old man dressed as superman, meet an old, greying man dancing to Dubstep who genuinely believes he is Jesus, dance the night away at a club spurting out fire, drink cider from a double-decker bus, go for a cup of tea in a solar powered tent at 4am, and have an epiphany about the world whilst dancing to your favourite band in a field. And that’s just in the first 24 hours. The most amazing thing about Glastonbury is that it is in no way just a gig: it is a lifestyle. Everything, from the places you eat in (whoever thought Goan fish curry would be tasty?), the stalls you wander through and the hundreds of bands that are performing, is incredible. You can’t help but get soaked up in it entirely.

It’d be more than easy to talk for hours about Glastonbury but instead, in a series of blogs, I will share with you the musical highlights of my festival this year.

Marina and the Diamonds

I went to watch Marina and the Diamonds in the John Peel tent, the new bands tent and my favourite Glastonbury venue, with little knowledge of her music and even littler expectation. And I was entirely blown away.

The sultry but equally strong allure of Marina’s (real name Marina Diamandis) voice captured me from minute one, veering from beautifully controlled and deeply personal one minute to strong and even shout-y the next. Her sound and sense of individuality caused me to draw similarities to Regina Spektor, whilst her lack of inhibition and her obvious personal connections and ability to throw herself entirely into her music harks back to the likes of Janis Joplin.

There were a few Gaga-esque quirks thrown in, such as donning an American baseball jacket and holding a burger triumphantly, portraying the American Dream, for her song Hollywood and a pair of Heineken glasses for Shampain but, her performance mostly relies on the unique quality of her voice and her individual and clearly self-inspired lyrics. As a performer, and what we see of her as a person, she is refreshingly down to earth and, more than anything, it is obvious that she is just up there doing what she loves for no one but herself, with no regard for conventions or especially the “fame” culture that has sprung up recently among many female singers.

The highlight of her performance, for me, was not the sing (or shout) along lyrics of her better known tracks but in fact the choice of cover song she performed halfway through her set; Starstrukk by 30H!3. She performed, in my opinion, the kind of transformation to this song that is the mark of a true artist. Her slowed down, chilled out version of the upbeat club song was beautiful, haunting and even sad, showed the beautiful capacity of her voice and transformed the song into something that was entirely different to its original and entirely her own. On the strength of this song alone, I would have said she was one of the best new artists I saw at Glastonbury.

At any rate, this girl is definitely one to watch; tipped as runner up (to Ellie Goulding) in the Sound of 2010 poll, and especially in the current climate of quirky female singers, I suspect this is only the very beginning of her rise to stardom.

Watch the Marina and the Diamonds cover of “Starstruckk” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIKcf8eqFLs