Reverb-TV Matt Lidis Column

"Yes yes yes it's the summer festival, the truly detestable summer festival." sang Edwyn Collins on his second-wind album Gorgeous George in 1995. And, in 2009, I'm inclined to agree. Yet, when post-Orange Juice, pre-stroke Edwyn penned those lyrics fourteen summers ago, the summer festival he was moaning about was a different animal entirely.

These days the festival goer (read 'those responsible for the careers of The Killers and Jack Penate') has a choice of sheer bewildering proportions. A quick trawl across that internet will reveal that every single weekend from Easter 'till the clocks go back, bears the questionable opportunity to sod off somewhere not-near-anywhere to live outdoors for a few days. Just look out for The Plaistow Electro-Buckaroo festival ("Now in it's first year"). Anyway, enough about the modern musical camping trip until later. To fully appreciate where we are, we need to look at where we were.

When I was a teenager, your choice was Glastonbury, Phoenix or Reading. They were truly terrifying, exciting and potentially life changing events that happened in a massive field somewhere in the imagination of some acid frazzled hippie. Or Reading, if you went there.

My fist experience of Glastonbury was every bit as mystical and insane as a teenager could've expected. Well, I say that, but I went and got pissed and stoned in Somerset for five days - the same as every other one of the (what seemed like) 14 million other people there. But, what made my first Glastonbury so special, was the prevailing sense that something wonderful was happening; a glimpse into some dreamy reality where fat old women rode around naked on push bikes because they could - and nobody gave a flying fuck about anything, because all the people who didn't were in a big field. Together! Oh, to be a teenager again.

And how much did it cost to be a part of this mind expanding experience? £Nothing. Me and my mates, along with anybody else who fancied Glastonbury but didn't have the spare hundred quid to get in, went that year because we knew we could get in for free. The place was rammed full of every kind of nutter imaginable. Exactly the kind of people who don't have a spare hundred quid in June. Chuck a load of these folk in the same place with a lot of drink, a lot of drugs and a lot of things to dance and shout about and you will create an atmosphere like nothing in the world.

Anybody who would argue that the lay-lines in that particular part of Somerset are responsible for any sense of good vibrations at Glastonbury obviously aren't familiar with the idiom "It's not where you are it's who you're with." And, more importantly, they've not been to Glastonbury since the fence was put up. Put simply, it's rubbish.

The Orwellian impenetrable safety fence, first erected in 2000 AD, was Glastonbury's 25-mile headstone. The reasoning that the festival was becoming too overcrowded by fence jumpers to carry on without a bigger one was one obviously rooted in pound signs, not safety concerns (If it was becoming too overcrowded, why couldn't they just spread the stages apart?). The fence meant one thing, if you wanted to go to Glastonbury, you had to part with cash. And lots of it. Whatsmore, the sudden creation of a need for a ticket meant demand for the previously superfluous bits of paper shot through the roof. So, if you did happen to have the £135 now necessary, how did you get one? I'll tell you how - you needed to be set behind a computer with a highspeed broadband connection at 9am on a Thursday morning. So, you needed a desk job. Not the best guest list…

With a heavy amount of cynicism, a heavier desk job and a far lighter bag of marijuana I set off for Glastonbury™ in 2005. It was awful. The intervening seven years of corporate thumbscrewing had obviously taken its toll on me, but its effect on my favourite festival experience was devastating. The convention-challenging atmosphere of mad rebellion had been replaced with that of a primary school summer fete and the clientele would not have been out of place wandering the aisles of a home counties Waitrose. The bar (former beer tent) was selling Pinot Grigot by the tankerful and I couldn't wait to leave.

So, I might've been tarnished by seven years of ordinary workaday life, but I know what I saw. And so did the band Doves. Their "Hello Glasto!" was met with depressing indifference. After a tight opening three songs the crowd's reaction was equally dim. "Right, we're called Doves and we're going to play a song called 'There Goes The Fear.' If anybody knows this song please scream as loud as you can - now!" The crowd did nothing. I walked away.

You don't have to believe me, but if anybody is qualified to judge the disturbing changes at our best festival, it's Michael Eavis, speaking in 2007: "The problem with the clientele at the moment is that they're becoming a bit older and a bit more clever and they've got the gear to buy the tickets as they have fast access to the ticket system and can buy more", he said.

"These people are perfectly nice and adorable, but we want the late teens because they help to make the character of the festival so it's really important to get them on board."

They can't afford it - that's why they aren't coming. And that's why 64-year-old Neil Young is headlining on Friday night.