Some early Facebook reaction to this year’s Glastonbury line up:
- I haven’t heard of any other act on there except Coldplay. All after my time
- Not very impressive
- Wokenbury
- Boring
- Worst line up ever???
- Awful line up except Coldplay
- Worse line up they have done ought to call it a day at this rate
- Apart from Coldplay and Shania Twain, who?
- Shania Twain is playing Glastonbury – That don’t impress me much! (a half-decent joke in 1997 when the song was released, but in 2024? Really?)
I could go on, but what’s the point? It’s Facebook innit and Facebook’s demographic is elderly folk, like me, and we’re the boomers who think Jools Holland’s Hootenanny is at the cutting edge of music. All the whingeing is due to a serious medical condition called Old Folks Syndrome. Old music great, new music bad.
I am living proof that at least when it comes to music, Old Folks Syndrome is not terminal. I admit to rather losing interest in the awful 1980s, the decade when the music almost died, and I was in severe danger of being a ‘Music-was-so-much-better-in-the-old-days’ bore. You see, my formative years were spent listening to and being obsessed by American rock music and little else. Nothing could be better than that, so why bother to search anything else out?
Apart from the middle class, middle aged luxury RV brigade at ‘Glasto’ who will doubtless be yearning for Lionel Ritchie and Tom Jones, I suspect most music lovers will be delighted by the bill on all the stages. And the smaller stages are where the really great stuff is, in my opinion. I would be wherever The National, Jordan Rakei, Confidence Man, Jungle, Corinne Bailey Rae, Barry Can’t Swim, Sofia Kourtesis, Fontaines DC, Arooj Aftab, Jamie XX and Sleaford Mods were playing. How in God’s name is that list of great acts ‘boring’, ‘worst line up ever’, ‘awful line up’ etc ad nauseum? And if you have never heard of anyone on the bill, except Coldplay, then whose fault is that?
The Glastonbury Festival is ‘a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts’ which is actually held in Pilton and not Glastonbury at all. You can read what you like into that, defining contemporary as brand new or since pop music was invented, but it wouldn’t be that impressive if every single year the stages were packed with nothing but oldie bands and generic rock acts, other than to those who resent the fact that most of the music you will hear comes from this century.
Old Folks Syndrome demands that you hold the view that today’s music isn’t as good as the music from the past. That’s a fair view to hold, particularly if you have not listened to any new music at all and while I don’t think it’s true, I suppose if you feel that way then it’s your truth. But for every Beatles and Stones, there was a Bay City Rollers and a Lieutenant Pigeon (one for the teenagers, there).
I happen to think we live in the best time for music ever. We have the new music plus all the other music that has ever been made which makes us the lucky ones. But if you don’t like the line-up and haven’t heard of most of the artists, then no one is telling you to watch, are they? If you want the old stuff instead, it’s all there on commercial radio and at the BBC via Radio 2 and old episodes of Top of the Pops.
