Glastonbury Diary: Joe Rooney and the burning phoenixes

Myself and my daughter went over really early Wednesday morning, only had an hour’s sleep. Putting up the tent was tough work - it was the hottest day in years in Britain. I was sweating buckets. My son joined me after he finished his Leaving Cert, he did his last exam and I picked him up on Thursday.

We were in the performer’s area, I was kind of there last year but it was completely the opposite - lashing, cold and muck last year. This time when I arrived I was thinking I prefer muck to this heat! I wandered around anyway and lots of people were just lying under trees, it was so hot. We kinda got to know the layout of the area, we went up to Arcadia and later that night we went to the stone circle, to the fireworks - a big, huge display - and they burned three phoenixes in a row. It was the solstice, so there was a lot of that vibe going on. The whole kind of hippy vibe of it, which you don’t really see on TV was evident there. That was kind of the opening of the festival, really cool.

My first year was last year. There’s a real friendliness - there’s no heavy security. I expected heavy security after the terrorist attacks but a lot of the people on the gates are local people from Somerset. There’s something about it that I haven’t experienced at any other festival, a real sense of community and friendliness from the moment you get there.

It’s more than just the big bands - all these little street entertainers, mad people, nuts people who seem to live for festivals. There was a guy called Rumpelstiltskin who was dressed as a clown - but he’s always dressed as a clown, introduces himself as Rumpelstiltskin as well. Just these mad characters. I love watching them doing their act and coming up and messing around and picking stuff out of your hair. These other people are birds and the come out and are pulling at you and poking at you. It’s hard to explain this stuff!

I did my first gig in the Astrolabe Theatre at half two on the Friday as part of Steven Frost’s Improv Allstars, with Phil Jupitus. It was brilliant, went really well - improv is great craic anyway, we had a full marquee, got a really good response. On the Saturday we did the same slot, both of them went really well. You can just go mad with your improv, people are into it. There’s a very kind of experimental vibe anyway, people are doing that, you’re not going to out-mad them!

Then Saturday night I was compere over at the Cabaret stage which is the stand-up comedy tent - half ten to 2am. Earlier on there was very few people in, Foo Fighters were on, but it much more lively as the crowds came in after 12 - it was the opposite of what you might think, it got much better as it got later.

The Cabaret tent - or any tent where you can come in and lie down, as a performer you have to get used to the fact that people are wrecked and some people are asleep! I’ve done the same thing myself - and it’s actually really cool to just lie back and watch some comedy. As a performer you’re only going to get a big response as it fills up. People are enjoying it, as I did when I was in there, but they’re just wrecked after a whole weekend of partying.

I remember last year, the night before the Brexit referendum, there were all these banners there, just vote remain and all that. I felt like, it looks like there’s definitely gonna be a remain vote! That’s the vibe you would get from Glastonbury. There was a lot of doom and gloom about the place the next morning.

This year was completely the opposite. During Radiohead when there was a bit of a lull they all started singing “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” and there seems to have been a complete turnaround in events in the last few weeks in Britain. I went then to Leftfield yesterday to see Billy Bragg - he lost his voice, he wasn’t able to sing, so the crowd sang ‘New England’.

The @GlastoFest crowd spontaneously starts singing 'Oh @jeremycorbyn'. Something extraordinary is happening in this country. pic.twitter.com/mwmuPV8PW5

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 23, 2017

My daughter is vegetarian and I did end up eating a few vegan tacos - they were grand, but every now and then I’d go mental on sausage and bacon. I started every day with a fry and a cup of tea.

I went down to this kind of vegan place in a wooded area - the food was really good, but there was no choice, only one dinner. The staff were unbearably happy. There was definitely something wrong there - they’re in denial, something in their past they’re trying to block out.

There was a few things I didn’t get to see because of the whole practicalities of checking in, doing the soundcheck, putting up your tent and stuff. Thing is, you bring teenagers and they don’t fuckin help you!

I would’ve liked to have seen Alt-J but I did have to focus on what I was doing and I had four really brilliant gigs and that’s more important in a way. You also wanna hang out with people you haven’t seen in awhile. There’s lots of people who don’t even go outside the Cabaret area and just enjoy the craic of it. You wouldn’t come across on TV that whole carnival atmosphere. I felt last year I was going to see the big bands too much so I thought this year I’d kinda just enjoy that part of it.

Sometimes with the bigger bands it’s weird because you’re relying on the screens, and with Radiohead the screens were showing a very abstract version of what was going on - not great when you can’t actually see the band.

I went up to Angel Olsen - she was good, but she seemed a bit blasé about the whole thing, the music was really good but I wasn’t mad about her interaction. I saw The National, they were brilliant as well - I’d never seen them before. The Pretenders were brilliant too on Friday morning.

I saw a band named Strong Asian Mothers - I thought that’s a good name - they were in a little room called the Pussy Parlour, there was about 60-70 people in there. They were brilliant. I don’t think they were Asian, the name was misleading. They were like dance, hip-hop style, there was a lot of samples - but there was a trombone and brass section as well. They seemed to be sampling stuff that was happening live and playing it back which was brilliant. They were great fun - the singer came right out into the audience. Definitely my find of the festival.

Keep up with the adventures of Joe Rooney on his Pod-a-Rooney podcast where he talks to friends and acquaintances that he’s met and worked with over twenty years in the entertainment industry.