It was 23 years ago today...

Well, almost 23 years ago today. Yes, way back in 1995 I went to my first ever music festival and started with the granddaddy of them all, Glastonbury. Coincidentally Glasto and I are the same age, although Glasto's probably in better shape than me.

My memories of the whole thing are a little hazy but I remember we were hopelessly ill prepared for it (well, we didn't buy our tickets from HMV in Brum until a week or two beforehand...yes, really). We hardly took any booze (fail), food (fail), money (mega fail...this was in the days before mobile cash points) and 1995 was hot, hot, hot.



We didn't even take any roll mats so slept on the rock hard ground. I've still got the bruises to prove it. Remarkably (I say remarkably as 'smart' phones hadn't been invented...imagine that eh kids?) there are a few homemade films of Glasto 95 on You Tube and it looks like a different world (mainly due to the absence of the aforementioned 'smart' phones that seem, along with the internet, to have sucked much of the living in the moment fun out of the world in my humble opinion). Here's a delightfully 'old skool' Super 8 film of a bunch of lads from Caversham. I love the caption at the end, 80,000 people attended and tickets were £65. Good grief. I bet you couldn't get an organic emu burger for that these days. 



Oh yes, who did we see. Good point. Well we certainly saw Pulp, Dodgy, Jamiroquai, Supergrass, Billy Bragg. I have vague memories of watching at least some of Jeff Buckley's set and seeing Captain Sensible in a tent up in the Green Fields. We watched a lot of circus stuff, a little comedy...did we see the legendary Malcolm Hardee?...hmmmm, maybe. I'm ashamed to say that we were so battered and broke by the whole experience that we came home on the Sunday evening but valuable lessons had been learnt and when we do make it along to a festival these days we take enough food and drink to keep a small army satisfied for a week. And wet wipes. ALWAYS take wet wipes.