Glastonbury.... (yes I'm wading into the furore!!)

After literally wading around glastonbury last year i'm wading into the debate about the lineup, the removal of lost vagueness and the future of glasto if they don't get their act together.

the glasto lineup was announced yesterday and i'm shocked. It's moving further and further away from netting the best headliners in the world and promoting great up and coming new bands and edgeing closer and closer to... well.... V-festival who for years have put on slightly tired yesterday headliners and catered to the t shirt buying, lager swilling masses with the rest of the bill.

The lack of lost vagueness will definately be noticed at the festival, it was THE place that if you were still wasted and wanted to dance and look at random shit til 8am the nextday you could go. it was all rammed full of gurny mentalists. These guys were to wired for the green fields and to loud for the campsites, it kept the peace. yes there will still be the dance village but even (and perhaps especially) if you are on the verge of forgetting where you are completely you need some variety and to know you can stomp off somewhere else.

The biggest threat to glastonbury this year was festivals abroad. Last year the mud and the rain was HELL I insisted that it did not spoil my fun though and it was the bands that carried the experience. I tramped to the leftfield stage after having lost a shoe for Brakes, i found that one drop of rain could actually penetrate my leather jacket during Modest Mouse and I RAN over to the dance village for Klaxons. If Jay-Z or the Verve paid me to see them in the sunshine with tea and cake, i wouldn't really be that fussed. and as for the kings of leon, been there seen them last year at Benicassim, in the sunshine, with a beach and a go-kart track. there's no competition. Thats why Glasto this year should have upped its game, not lost the best headliners to other festivals like Beni and Primavera. Which is where i will be spending my festival money this year.

South by southwest

Alas i was not at south by southwest but earlier this month my delightful and gorgeous cousin Jess was, working for T.O.N.Y. she got a heads up for the hottest gigs and free booze way down in Austin, Texas. Here's what she said about it.....

Gerrybee: Hi jess tell me about what you've been up to at SXSW....
Jess: I've been working for Time Out NY, they have a showcase there. Ravonettes, Joe Lean and the jing jang jong, X and The Donnas are part of our show.
G: Cool, who were the highlights?
J: In our show the ravonettes were great, I also saw the ting tings who were really great too.
G: hmmm.... the ting tings? seriously?
J: Yes. ha!
G: who did you miss and why?
J: well i really wanted to see vampire weekend, but to get into the venue to see them we would have had to have got there hours, if not days in advance. its the biggest problem with SXSW, there is so much to see and do that you end up missing out if you wait in one place to see a band. Also they're really funny about capacities, because the venues are often brimming with people even getting back in after a cigarette difficult. The people i was with all got stuck outside after nipping out for a ciggy leaving me on my own!!
G: but all in all does SXSW live up to its reputation as being one of the best music festivals?
J: oh I don't know about the best, but its certainly different to the rural festivals back in the UK and it really does have the best bands, both brand new ones and bands like REM in much smaller venues than the UK's massive festivals.

As with everything the idea has evolved....

So as far as it goes a whole world of popmusic has faded as an idea. We've changed to doing a website giving out info and news for music festivals worldwide, this works best for me because I have friends and connections who go to festivals as punters, guests and artists all over the world.

As I type SXSW fest is in full swing and my lovey cousin jess is out there working for timeout new york, this time last year my friends were out there playing and i'll get some interviews and info from them about this years festival and what its like to play there. By all accounts its more huge scale camden crawl then your traditional leeds fest/glastonbury tented accomadation affair.Looking on the sxsw site you can see that there's an unbelievable amount of artists playing, I've had a look at tommorrows lineup and I would try my bestest to see Dan Deacon at the Knitting Factory, Jeff lewis and the Jitters at Brooklyn Vegan and Cut Copy at the Karma lounge, if i were there. But SXSW is more about finding brand new stuff you like and have maybe never heard and bringing it back home for summer. I wish i was there. get out! go see something new and exciting.

x

no. 1 it starts....

Here's a wee introduction for you to know why I'm blogging and hopefully give me a bit of direction in my thinking. If you read this first and than later find me going off on a wild tangent please tell me. I can get sidetracked, sometimes it is for good reason, more than likely I just have a whole whirlwind of stuff going round my head.

I have written little blogs on my myspace and facebook accounts but they aren't really that official and are intended to be less widely viewed than this one. This blog has been started for my Journalism course, and more specifically my online course in which we construct a website and link it to our blogs. We're making a website on pop music from round the globe. No, not world music just different pop songs and popscenes from around the world. Thats the idea anyway.

Hopefully i can contribute quite a lot to the website, through my blogging and digging around for articles and my love for indiepop songs and boys with funny accents. (Although from that last bit we could just end up with a page that says I LOVE THE FUTUREHEADS all over it, i'll try my best to get it a bit more interesting than that....). I'm off to new york city in March and I intend to hit some euro-festivals hard again this year. So there is potential for good things on here, well I think so anyway.

Bands and artists I love at the moment include...

• Those Dancing Days - Scandinavian high school girls with northern soul inspired twinkly pop songs. They look like they just robbed a topshop sample sale.
• The teenagers - french electro pop. ok so you're cringing a little bit, right? somehow these guys make it work. They've moved to London and despite still hanging out with justice and writing unmistakably french pop songs their frank and filthy lyrics poke fun at the naff french pop that you might be imagining.
• Tilly and the wall - more girl pop this time from Omaha, USA. they have a tapdancer instead of a drummer and they're currently recording some new stuff which I'm really looking forward to. a lovely summer band to get you out of the february durge.
• Jeff Lewis - Jeff Lewis writes comics in new york city. He also writes anti-folk songs and is supporting the Cribs and the Super furry animals round the US and Canada this spring.

Enough, now this is becoming less of an intro and more of me rabbiting on about bands I like. I purposefully haven't put any pics or vids or anything on here. I will, I'll probably do a post on all of these bands, and others. And it will (or may) be a multimedia whirlwind dropping you in a fantastic musical oz.

g