Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture

Glasto ‘too middle-aged’: Michael Eavis

I have to admit, I don’t really bother much with Glasto these days as it has lost any appeal for me. Nowadays it is so similar to the other festivals out there, just with added mud…which is fine if you like that sort of thing. Luckily, it is run by Michael Eavis who seems to agree saying it has become, “too middle-aged” and “respectable.” Adding “We’re trying to get the youngsters back — the 16, 17 and 18-year-olds — because numbers were down this year.”

He has suggested making more tickets available through phone-lines rather than the internet as the middle class types have better access to t’internet (this actually says alot that it is now assumed that the older generation have better technology than the young whipper-snappers!) and the phone-lines will allow kids to use their mobiles to get through and order tickets. This maybe true, but you are not looking to encourage a different crowd to book tickets, you are looking to disuade a certain crowd. How to do this though?

Well firstly you can always try discrimination. I know kids will have to use their parent’s credit cards, but howabout simply stating there will be an allocation of 30 000 cheaper tickets for under 18s? They already have to have more ID to get into Glasto than France, so it won’t be too tricky to check this too. Failing that, how about a change in the music policy? Right now, with Rap and R&B doing a remarkable impression of the 80s rock music scene and descending into a self-parodying world of excess cash and dirth of talent, we are seeing a resurgence of bands with guitars. Even the so-called ‘new ravers’ are wielding them. This means that it is really not too difficult for old farts like me to get into these new bands as they have a heritage that follows a straight line back to the likes of The Stone Roses and The Smiths (and beyond, but the middle aged, middle classes that Eavis mentioned grew up listening to that era) So it’s simple, start booking up the acts that are not related to those. It’s only in the last few years really that Rap and R&B crossed over to become the ‘voice of youth/council estate’ as heard in every body-kitted Citroen Saxo across every town centre on a Saturday night. OK so Burberry and Bling might not be exactly the crowd to indulge in mud and face painting, but it will sure get rid of those pesky middle classes.

Essentially the problem is that the generation gap has largely vanished. Parents don’t want to act like, well parents. Remeber all that stuff about the 60s being a time when kids dressed like their parents, which was why the whole Mods and Rockers thing was such a landmark? Nowadays you wander around and you are far less likely to see the kids dressing like adults as the adults dressing like kids. We are the generation that grew up with a pop music heritage. Those that reached puberty in the 60s and 70s did not have this. Nobody could study it to figure out what was cool, you either got it or you didn’t. Nowadays you can study it and make a pretty good approximation of cool, enough to pass a cursory glance anyway, which the New Labour generation have done with aplomb. There hasn’t been anything that has genuiely forced a generation gap since the early 90s with those evil raves and their ’repetitive beats’ and when rap first made itself known to the Daily Mail via the likes of Public Enemy and NWA.

As much as I like many new bands and new music. I am now well into my 30s, I shouldn’t. I should not ‘get’ it, there should be something new that I don’t understand or like, but the kids ‘get’. It’s been over 15 years since anything like that really happened and until that changes, Glasto is doomed to a future of middle classe audiences.