Entertainment For Lively Minds
Flags of our fathers
I'm just watching Blur at Glastonbury. They're playing 'Tender', and I don't intend to comment on Alex James's oh-so-precious double bass playing (save to wonder whether there has ever been a popstar with a more slappable face).
No. What strikes me is the flags being waved by the crowd - and a couple of questions spring to mind. 1) Why? Who are you waving the flags for? Is it for the benefit of the TV viewers? Of for the people behind you, to bring a smile to their faces? That brings me onto 2) Who started this? The technology behind these things now is incredible, all 30 foot long carbon fibre fishing poles and the like.
More than anything else, isn't it incredibly annoying to turn up to watch a band and find you view blocked by the standard of a few backpackers from South Africa, waving it in front of Damon Albarn as you try to watch their sour faced bad-vibed comeback gig?
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bad-vibed?
Looks like they're havin a ball!
Funny you should say this
Got a text from my lad at the festival and he was half way back at Spingsteen and he couldn't see anything for the flags. Some of them were huge!! Especially the Sausage one!
Couple of lads there were up for going down and surgically inserting them into the owners.
Something has to be done before next year otherwise they'll get bigger and multiply.
Fuck me!
My wife just said "who are all those flag wavers? Are they being paid?"
Good point Jason, how pissed off would you be if some flag waving twat spoiled your view of Blur?
Well....
It's to help find your mates in the crowd. If one of you leaves the group to get food or whatever, you've got little chance of finding them again. However if they've got a flagpole featuring a distinctive flag it becomes a lot easier.
And that is pretty much
The correct answer.
Just got back myself, and can assure all the people moaning about the view from their sette, that they vital in re-finding your mates.
Not easy finding 4 bodies amongst 80k people.
I admit that some flags get a bit too big - but if you go to Glastonbury for a good view at a gig then you are an idiot.
An idiot speaks
errr actually I do pretty much do want to see the band thank you very much.
Anyway, how come all the people who need flags to find their mates seem to do so right in front of the stage?
You rarely see them in the middle or at the back of the crowd, or for that matter see people wandering around the Green Fields carrying a flag searching for their friends.
Could it be that they just want to get the flag on TV?
In my years of festival going, mostly prior to the blanket TV coverage, you rarely saw flags at all and we all found our mates OK.
another idiot butts in
Me too, Retro.
Back in the days before 30 foot carbon fibre, it was all bamboo 'round here, and even then, toting a flag at the front at a big gig could easily earn you a placcy bottle of piss in the back of your head. Harsh perhaps, but arguably rightly deserved for such inconsiderate, selfish behaviour.
It's either a testament to the Glasto spirit, or the increasingly mainstream conformist nature of the Glasto audience, that nobody's yet received a clout from a quart of warm secondhand cider.
"or the increasingly mainstream conformist nature of the Glasto
This,that,them.
Of course when I first went it hadn't been invented by Radio 1 yet. [/used2bealltreesroundhere.com]
No trees but two main stages...
He's right though, surprised some of those flags weren't stuck in some painful places by other irate punters. Does show a remarkable camaderie and tolerance though I must admit.
I do remember the ill fated experiment at one Reading Festival where they tried to have two main stages right next to each other to speed up the set-up time between acts.
I think it was 1987 and The Stranglers were playing on one stage followed by Alice Cooper on the other - of course the audiences were divided in two and it didn't take long for an almighty dust up to start between Punks and Bikers. It was part wild west bar-room brawl and part battle of Agincourt what with all the hundreds of bottles flying back and forth between the two sets of fans.
Funnily enough I think they scrapped the idea for the next year.
Two Stages
They did that for years, I think. They were certainly there in '83, but I'm pretty sure that twin stages had been used since the mid-'70s.
I think '86
was my first Reading, I can't remember if there were the two stages then or not to be honest, I do remember the Stranglers/Alice Cooper one in 1987 probably because it turned ugly.
There was a great photo in one of the music papers of that Festival of a Punk caught in the act of hurling a huge bottle and on the back of his jacket he had a CND logo and something like Peace and Make Love Not War!
It does seem that thankfully throwing bottles at bands on stage at festivals has gone out of fashion too.
'86
There were two stages. Weekend tickets were just £17.95.
Cripes...
I just checked the line-up...The Mission, Balaam & The Angel, March Violets, New Model Army, Dr & The Medics, Zodiac Mindwarp...help, does this mean I was a Goth!
No wonder I'd tried to erase it from memory!
Well...
...take sandwiches. P*ss in a bottle.
I jest. Quite understand why this goes on. But as sofa-viewer over the weekend the TV coverage was marred by it all.
C'est la vie. T'was a festival after all and is meant to be of itself and not for the telly.
May I suggest signal flares of differing colours fired off at intervals as an alternative for future similar events?
You can have that one. No need to thank me.
Pass? Puss? Poss?
Can we have a moratorium on mealy-mouthed asterisks? Is there anybody in the Massive who is likely to be offended by putting the correct vowel in piss?
Piss
Mealy-mouthed? No.
Asterisk use in 'dirty' word for (admittedly infinitessimal) comedic effect? Yes. I'm afraid so.
I've been saying piss regularly for some years now.
Ah...
I get it.
As annoying as it is
they would have been useful for a mate watching the Cure back in 94/95. He'd had a really late breakfast, as well all had, of sausages, bacon , mushroooooms etc and needed the loo whilst we all stood staring at Robert Smith's lippy. Having popped along to the hedge to relieve himself he ambled back to where he thought his supportive friends were only to find a number of goths swaying listlessly in the breeze. Cue some awful Cure dirge to which goth#1 turns to goth#2 and uttered the immortal line "this song always reminds me of when our sis hung herself." As you can imagine my friend's "mood" was slightly altered furthermore and he ran off to find his tent where he hid in complete despair until we all arrived back the next morning.
Lesson learnt. Never go back to The Cure.
consistently annoying for me
Anytime there is a shot from the crowd, all you can see is flags.
But I'm with Cole Porter - I like The Great Indoors.
I'm enjoying shouting at the telly, having a Bunnahabhain (as the red wine is all done), even if not everything on at Glastonbury is exactly to my taste.
I wouldn't mind
if the flags weren't so naff...
Not Flag-Content-Related
I would. (and do).
The flags could all be for nations/regions/causes dear to my heart and I would still think it was stupid.
(everyone else is entitled to their opinion, too, of course : the malts are open, the emergency services are on standby, move along now please, nothing to see here..)
They weren't all bad...
at least there was Spongebob Squarepants to up the intellectual ante.
It goes back to Agincourt..
..you see they..oh sod it.
This reminds me of fans who hold up signs at sporting events
In 30 years plus of watching sport live and on TV I've seen thousands of different signs. Only one is worth remembering. It said simply (and probably accurately) "The bloke behind me can't see"
My favourite sporting banner
Early '70's. End of the Rugby League Cup Final at Wembley. I can't remember the teams now. Eddie Waring is commentating. The camera pans around the stadium. Eddie spots a flag with his name on it. He starts shouting "EDDIE Warriinn...." the words die in his throat as brain catches up with mouth, while the watching millions read the rest of it which says "the Bionic Prat".
Fire
Once went to see the White Stripes at an outdoor festival and some plonker started waving an enormous flag which prevented 75% of the crowd not being able to see the band properly. This was remedied was someone setting fire to it with a cigarette lighter.
A dangerous solution i know but a correct one.
I blame Bono
God Hates Flags
In the olden days (mid-90s), the only flag you used to see in the crowd at Glastonbury was the Wolves one. Watching the festival over the weekend, I was slightly saddened to note it's absence, until it cropped up again during Blur's set. I really hope its the same people who take it every year.
T'were many Wolves flags........
Post 1979 evil Wolfie badge on a flag was in the way of The Gaslight Anthem and big old stylee Wolves "three wolf" flag bugging the hell out of me when Springsteen was on.
They should hand them out at the gates...
.... some tasteful ones so that it looks like a scene from a Kurosawa film instead.
Portrait of an alsation...
... including frame and string. This was being held up by some dork during one set I watched on TV (Status Quo maybe). Totally unfunny and inconsiderate for people behind him. At least most of the flags were held high and looked great on TV.
70's style 3 Wolves flag
never misses a Glastonbury. Used to be one of very few but it now takes a bit of time to spot amongst the plethora of others flags.
The alsatian picture bugged the hell out of me, but the one I found funniest was during Springsteen on Saturday when amongst the dozens of massive flags someone was holding up a piece of cardboard with "Racing in the Street" scrawled on it in felt pen.
Don't know what it is like for the people there, but the flags are a pain in the neck for those of us watching on TV!
Barenaked Ladies a few years back...
Some idiot in the crowd was holding up a Canadian flag. The band's response? "Get that down, if I went to see Elton John I wouldn't want to be looking at the arse end of a British flag all night..."