Sunday, 30th June 2024
Effie wakes up and says, “I want to be a mummy with boobies and three children when I grow up.”
Yesterday, she was looking at the photo of Mum and Dad, which is from before I was born. Mum is in long, blue dress with bells on it and Dad has his arms wrapped tight around her, they are young and in love. Ef wanted to know about her Grandad: ‘What did he talk like?’ I need to think of how to answer this. I told her ‘he had quite a deep voice, he told lots of jokes, and it wasn’t too fast or too slow.’ I didn’t feel this was adequate but she accepted it and then said, ‘did he like fishing?’
I’ve coined the term PONBAG (Pain Of Not Being At Glastonbury) because FOMO doesn’t really cut it. My cousin Sam feels this pain acutely - he’s even written a poem about it. I totally hate not being there but I’ve been getting updates from El so I can live vicariously and watching everything on iPlayer. El took part in Marina Abramovic’s transformation of the crowd into one, connected, silent mass of people wishing for peace. She watched P J Harvey move through ‘Let England Shake’ (2011) tracks, bedecked in a branch-printed robe strumming an autoharp, to build to the stripped down, raw ‘Dress’ from her debut album ‘Dry’ (1992). She’d taken off the branchy cape and got her electric guitar back on, looking just like she did the first time I saw her in 2003. I would’ve loved to feel that climatic ending with ‘To Bring You My Love’, every performer on stage projecting pure power.
El got on the front row for LCD Soundsystem, having found old friend Nick DP. Does anyone define the heady years of the late noughties more for us than this sound? This fast, bright building piano and synthesisers. They ended with ‘All My Friends’ and El messaged the group with our old friends from that time.
Next she saw insanely brilliant Fontaines D C with our Erin (meanwhile on telly, we watched IDLES on TV, only seen half a show of theirs once at the boiling Boardmasters of 2022 - the one Gary came to and we also saw Self Esteem together - and I adore them, they are coming to Bude next month! Mum wants to go!). Yesterday, El saw the perennially stunning The Staves, then the gorgeous Kiwanuka. Thank god El and Nick went for Beth Ditto and Gossip last night at Woodsies. Nice and really talented as Coldplay are, I think they made the right choice. I want to see the artists that show their growth, pain, sweat and scars more than perfect melodies and spectacle. I want to want to know the whole story of the artist in front of me, I want to believe they have something to say that is hardwon and ugly and beautiful at the same time. It’s not only punk rock like P J Harvey, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Skin, that can do this: Kae Temple being a good example. I don’t care what genre of music it is, I just want to feel like I’m digging through the dirt and slowly seeing the diamond revealed, flawed and dirty and unpolished.
I wonder what my little sis will experience today. She’s just messaged to say it’s the Birmingham Royal Ballet and then punk band Soft Play (formerly Slaves) later. So various, so beautiful, so new!
That’s the thing I need to tell Effie - your Grandad was as mad about music as well all are.
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Yes the rawness of their souls , stories and songs.