Glastonbury, What Has Gone Sooo Wrong? - An Opinionated Rant on Music

When it comes to music I get a bit fascistic - the music I like is better than the music you like, you are wrong and you should like what I like. Ok that's an exaggeration but not a million miles from the truth..

Last night I watched Glastonbury on TV and attempted some live on iPlayer but suffered an annoying buffering problem on that. Glasto has changed so much. It used be very much an alternative festival but now is just a big corporate jamboree with £5k+ to stay in a yurt. The audience is typically my age, because many young folk can't afford it, and the music has gone more mainstream. Don't get me wrong, I rather like the Rolling Stones but they're not who I would have wanted headlining. I like the widening of the music type, Dizzy Rascal looked and sounded great for instance, but it was always something of an alternative festival with little of the music being mainstream and the balance has changed.

Some of the bands who I really loved have become, in my opinion, rather boring, middle of the road and up their own arses. (Yes I do mean you Arctic Monkeys, I know you can play but can only assume "Fake Tales of San Francisco" was played ironically to match Alex's fake accent.) Nothing new there though.

Many of the "Indie" bands are just cloned Indie-pop bands that are merely interchangeable as this has become a popular genre. Again nothing new as something similar has happened through the ages.

I can only agree with Gazette sports journo Anthony Vickers on Twitter yesterday evening, a man who I knew well in my late teens and who had a tremendous collection of punk and alternative music - "did we fight the punk wars for this?"

Having now got my rant off my chest there were some gems. I'd never heard or seen Goat before and this bunch of Swedish mental people (or so it seemed) sounded and looked brilliant, Portishead were great as always and my faves The Horrors were sounding good on iPlayer until I gave up due to buffering problems.

I know I'm old as I now sound like my Dad - music's not been the same since Glen Miller died.

So what have we been up to work-wise? Much of the week has been spent on a project that we're white-labelling so I can't really say much. We're also working on developing the Rock and Rollabilia website and some materials for Serco which I'll finish off today.

Over June we have had a charity month where 20% of the value of new contracts (pre-VAT) will be donated to Teesside Hospice once we have been paid. This is just for new contracts signed up for this month and doesn't include renewal contracts such as hosting, SEO and the like. The figure we shall be donating stands at £1269. There's still a couple of days left so if you want a website sign up today!

But for now it's the Lions build up and everything stops for a tense rugby match including looking out for Richardson Removals head honcho and fellow semi-blind fat bloke, John B, at the match - lucky bugger.