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Vice Blog

A short story about life at Glastonbury

D
by Dan

Glastonbury is a big messy event in the countryside which lots of people attend in order to celebrate music. Like almost everthing else in the musical calendar, everyone likes to claim it's rubbish, but actually, provided you don't have to watch Niel Young, it's definitely more fun then all the anti-Glastonbury club nights people put on in London with hopeless bands.

Fucked Up played on Friday. It turns out that even on a farm grown on the bones of hippies whose tepees were buried in mud in 1973, there are hardcore fans. Pink Eyes spent two thirds of the set in the crowd starting circle pits and climbing scaffolding and then got the crowd to applaud the security for "being cool". The band arrived in the funniest van on site…

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Apparently the inside was all decorated in ghoulish red fur like Tim Burton's house.

This happy chap is Florence from Flo and the Machine's dad. He was brimming with pride and cider. While we were talking he saw Little Boots walk past and got very excited about how short she was, and how she was wearung boots.

Glastonbury is a place for protest, all the holidaying Israeli military and indie plutonium manufacturers were being dealt a big blow of truth by this patchwork protest wall.

Glastonbury, it seems is also a place for rugby fans. All these douchebags were stood in the middle of the sun watching some international Rugby sport. A lot of them had brought little chairs with cup-holders. They booed us when we walked in front of the screen.

This bubble guy kicks the shit out of the rugby dudes. He was hiiiiigh, just staring at the bubbles like they were talking to him. What a waster.

The Klaxons played a secret show and everyone started dancing. Except that girl with the flag, she was hitting everyone twenty feet away with and whenever they told her to stop she just glazed over like she was in a trance. Maybe she dates the bubble dude.

The Guardian have their own little tent where bands turn up to sing acoustic versions of their hits. I'll be honest, it's not that exciting in here, though you could buy a newspaper, provided you wanted to read three million pages about Michael Jackson. Speaking of which, finding out about that here was odd.

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Twitter, tool of the revolutionary and scourge of the technophobic totalitarian, took a break from pissing off Iranian dictators to let Glastonbury know about poor old Wacko. At first everyone thought it was a joke, and then the whole issue got confused when people started claiming Michael Stipe and Michael Eavis had died, or that Michael J Fox had been done for child porn, but eventually the news got through to everyone and the site was united in horror and misery. Look at these free spirits giving the King of Pop a grand send off. It makes death look worth it.

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Glasto hearts Jacko.


Everyone says it's hard to sneak into this festival, but my friend Jo did it with this passport. Aaron Lasser's passport. Who is Aaron Lasser? He speant the weekend filling it up with the signatures of his favourite super-stars. He got Russel from Bloc Party, La Roux, and…

Jamie from Klaxons and Corey Kennedy from America. Which he was pretty hyped about.

Bruce Springsteen played a set, but it was pretty boring. No-one in England knows about The Boss, but The Boss don't know that. This is a picture of Florence Welch climbing onto her manager's shoulders during Springsteen's set. Her manager looks a little put out.

VICE snapper Ben Rayner met this man in a bin.

It can get very dark in a field at night, and while I was having a piss into a push I stung my dick on these nettles, which wasn't a high point.

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VBS matron Alison met Jarvis Cocker. I think at this point she was blaming him for Michael Jackson's death. The King of Pop just never got over the Brit Awards incident. She also told him about a dream she had recently where he was gay.

This is the obligatury 'Weirdo at Glasto" photo. What a weirdo.

Everyone loves The Prodigy right?

This is the pivital photo of the Glastonbury story. This girl decided to pour poppers over her leg to see what it would do. It made a big burning red mark which, apparently, is still there and getting worse. Anyway; Lordy what a festival.

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Twitter, tool of the revolutionary and scourge of the technophobic totalitarian, took a break from pissing off Iranian dictators to let Glastonbury know about poor old Wacko. At first everyone thought it was a joke, and then the whole issue got confused when people started claiming Michael Stipe had died, and Michael J Fox had been done for child porn, but eventually the news got through to everyone and the site was united in horror and misery. Look at these free spirits giving the King of Pop a grand send off. It makes death look worth it. Glastonbury truly is full of music's most passionate fans.