‘Charlie. E. Powder,’ said the friendly, helpful man working his way through the crowd during the mindblowing Friday-night headline set by the American dubstep DJ Skrillex. I looked wistfully at his man-bag of chemical enhancers. Skrillex was good. Maybe the best electronic act I’ve seen in 24 years of Glastonburies. (‘Slivers of mutant dancehall, booty house, Daft Punk arpeggios and big pop choruses, all mangled into oblivion with his signature sub-bass wobbles,’ as the Guardian’s critic so rightly put it.) But imagine just how much more trippy that Transformers light show would look if…‘Dad?’ said Boy, next to me. ‘I’m really tired. Can we go soon?’
Yes. There comes a time in every father’s life where he has to put away youthful irresponsibility and pass on the baton to the next generation. Even if it does mean missing the apparently incredible bit at the end where Skrillex’s console spectacularly transformed itself from a sort of dinosaur spaceship into a ginormous metallic mask, the like of which Dad will probably never see again before he dies. Grrr!
Still, there are definitely compensations when you take your progeny to Glastonbury. Like seeing this glorious, magical stretch of Somerset heaven through a fresh pair of eyes, amassing a new collection of shared perfect festival moments, then ranking them later in order of total amazingness over a mug of chai or a woodfired pizza in the Green Fields as you shelter from the rain and survey the waterproofed freaks as they trudge past like human condoms.
Robert Plant and his new band doing five — count ’em — Led Zeppelin tracks. That would have come pretty high, not least because Plant is generally so stingy with his older back catalogue.
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