Picture from The Independent
The television coverage of this year's Glastonbury Festival has got off to a piss poor start with BBC3 hardly bothering and BBC2 giving us arbitrary highlights. Red button coverage basically just gave me the option to select either BBC2 or BBC3, bloody hell. I watched a lot of episodes of Family Guy and American Dad, the only real reason why BBC3 is worth keeping. When it comes to television presentation, the BBC have a weird idea of suitability and still insist on employing inappropriate people from the world of children's television. Lauren Laverne of course is suitable of course, as are Mark Radcliffe and Jo Wiley, but this is when we realise we miss John Peel (not that we needed reminding) and Mark Lamarr (whatever happened to him?). I know it isn't an 'indie' festival or something specific for BBC 6 Music listeners, but I think that the television coverage needs people who are known for taking music seriously. Incidentally, I have offered my services for the last few years but they have obviously not taken me up on this, perhaps they just want to eventually do away with music savvy people; Danny Baker got shown the door and Mark Lamarr quit his Radio 2 show because of the station's lack of interest in non-mainstream music. John Peel was shifted from pillar to post until he eventually just had a couple of hours a week to educate the true music lover.
Although I channel surfed between sets by Hot Chip, Super Furry Animals, and out of a morbid curiosity I even watched a bit of Florence and the Machine. Only a bit.
BBC4 showed a film about Motorhead which I watched and this coincided with one of the channels showing their afternoon set. Lemmy is nearly 70 and could teach a lot of today's rock starts how to do it, and I am always interested in the audience when they have the older acts on. There was a good cross section of ages as there always seems to be and they weren't just there to sneer they were genuinely into it. The biggest relief of the night of course was that Florence Machine didn't join them on stage for a duet of 'You Got The Love', isn't that what Glastonbury is all about?
The Sunday Alternative Podcast #43 (Saturday edition) is available from here.
The Sunday Alternative Podcast #44 is available from here.
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June housekeeping
The audio book of Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be released on August 31st. In the meantime the book can be downloaded to your Kindle from here.
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