Glastonbudget on the edge?

This was my 4th GB and we have enjoyed them all as have the people who come with us. Last years event was a high, partly due to the weather when compared to the howling gales and torrential rain of the first two years.

This year it was like the weather not too bad but it could have been much better. However, overall the organisers need to make a profit for all their hard work and time, but of course happy punters will comeback and unhappy campers will not.

One point upfront I am not sure you can have a “budget” festival and have a VIP tent in prime position whilst your customers queue for beers in full view of it. This is wrong, crass and insensitive, let’s hope it disappears next year or goes back behind the scenes.

The toilets, hot showers and cleaning standards are light years ahead of the early years. Well done. The stewarding is also improved beyond recognition. You cannot have kids on shoulders in a crowd as firstly who wants to stand behind a nine foot person and they could easily get knocked over. Generally the stewards are on the ball doing their job looking out for bad behaviour, if you think they are a little strong you should have been their the year cans were sold and had to stand under a shower of thrown half full cans. Sadly once you allow some bad behaviour the idiots take it all too far.

Some have posted that you should be able to buy beer with cash, and you could in the early years but it does slow things down a lot. The major point here is the handling of cash, if I was running this there is just no way that you can allow temporary staff to handle large amounts of cash, people have to be realistic. The queue for beer can be easily solved with just more staff, and I think that the GB people need to make a judgement call here on the cost benefit for them. What they can see, hopefully, is that the ratios of staff and pumps to punters was not right this year.

On the bands, well on here I read that people were saying put the new bands on the main stage; well I think we have the answer now. This is primarily sold as a tribute festival, and if it was a new bands festival (for bands in the 20 mile radius!) how many tickets would be sold? I don’t think it is fair to people who travel and recommend the event, based on the tributes to then have to sit through bands that, to be honest, would be lucky to draw a crowd of 200 in the local pub. Sorry but true.

I felt both Saturday and Sunday’s line-ups were incorrect. Festivals are all about building up to the headliners for the night, this is especially true in late May when days are long and only the last band benefits from the night time atmosphere. I think both bands were wrong. Dire Straights have too few anthem and hi energy songs, the band was excellent but it just felt a bit flat. They would have been really good for the early evening and perhaps Blondie for the last set.

Ex Simple Minds, well I just felt that the promoters should being asking for their money back. They played obscure songs, and the rather sour Owen Paul seemed to think the whole event was below him. Perhaps they should have called themselves Money for Nothing!

You can see with the success of Oasish closing GB09 that the tribute bands, if they are out of the top bracket, don’t need to have back up of a real act. In the early years this might have been needed but not now. I don’t think if the “real act” was removed one single less ticket would be sold and the money saved could pay for bar Staff!

On the catering we got our gas (single ring one canister) cooker in, and a solution must be found for this. You cannot have such a large number of people in one place from Friday lunchtime to Monday mid morning without any cooking facilities. It’s a shame to see that so many people are upset over this. As for the BBQ area, well the family one is next to the toilets and if all wanted to cook their breakfast in there I would still be queuing now. Common sense please!

So, whist we had a good time I think GB10 didn’t hit the heights of last year, but I hope that the lessons will be learnt and the guys behind it have the success they deserve and we punters can keep the festival we like so much.