There was an awful lot of negativity over the line up for this year’s festival and many people blamed the slow ticket sales on the choice of headliners. To me the fact that the popular press and people in the music industry who really should know better felt the need to make such misinformed comments just displays a huge amount of ignorance over what Glastonbury is all about. It’s a “Performing Arts” festival and as such there is none better – Anywhere! There are other so-called “festivals” in this country that will probably give you more bang for your buck in the way of big name acts. But none of them can ever come close to the diversity of entertainment on offer, or the sense of escapism, or the totally immersive experience that one gets at Glastonbury.

The official programme gives line up details for more than 40 stages and entertainment venues. But if you add to these all the bars and cafés which have bands playing and all the outdoor spaces where you can so easily be distracted by all manner of weird & wonderful performances, then this figure could quite easily be doubled. If Groundhog Day were a reality you could attend the same Glastonbury every weekend for a year & still not see the same thing twice. I’d challenge anybody not to find something to their liking among that lot no matter how blinkered their tastes!

I’m not a massive fan of the big stages & I’ll very rarely watch a performance there from start to finish. Seasick Steve was the one exception to that rule this year. In fact I’ve not seen a single headline act on the Pyramid Stage at any of the last 6 Glastonburys. I’m always much happier wandering the many & varied areas that make up the festival & embarking on my own little journey of discovery. The entertainment on the Jazzworld Stage was especially impressive and my one “must-see” performance from Balkan Beat Box certainly didn’t disappoint but there were many others that will equally stick long in the memory. With the solitary omission of Squarepusher, whose constant strobe lighting & banks of laptop computers made photography virtually impossible, this is what I heard & saw…