but I would love it if - just for once - the presenters could be honest with regards their opinions of the acts.

Edith Bowman: "Wow, Neil Young was AMAAAZING!"

Mark Radcliffe: "Now hold on a second Edith. Let's not get carried away. I actually thought Neil Young's set to be rather turgid and rambling, in fact rather less than amazing."

Now as it happens I think Mr Radcliffe genuinely enjoyed the 'Heart of Gold' hitmaker, but you take my point. It is perfectly obvious to everyone but the powers that be at the BBC that not everything at Glastonbury is 'amaaazing', in fact most of it is rather uninspired and dull. But this being TV, everything must be inflated to bursting point.

If John Peel was still with us, would the Beeb still allow him airtime in the knowledge that he would almost certainly be distinctly underwhelmed by the relentless flood of positivity around him?

Just dull - but these people are never going to meet the absurd expectations of the media & the 'fans.' I think televising the event doesn't help. Glastonbury has become just another must-see, celeb-endorsed event on the summer calendar. It used to be a bit special, now it's just another promotional tool.

Springsteen was dull beyond belief. Neil Young was just embarrassing. I wanted him to be good but he just wasn't I'm afraid.
Lady GaGa however was quite superb.

of the Superbowl show but, as someone pointed out earlier, this is possibly just one show of a summer festival tour.

For the turn, there's no reason for Glastonbury to be any different to (say) Bonnaroo or Pink Pop

I was convinced Neil Young was going to be dull - I'd seen him play three times before with three different bands (Booker T & The MGs, Pearl Jam, and Crazy Horse), and wasn't blown away by any of them. But I thought Friday's show was fantastic. And Young, who often comes across as the sourest man in rock, actually seemed to be having a ball. For a lot of people I spoke to - and often to their own surprise - he was the star of the show. Maybe it just didn't work on TV.

And Springsteen? I thought he'd be the star of Glastonbury - do a job, play the hits, etc. But after five songs people were streaming away from the stage. He may have rescued things later on - and the setlist truly needed rescuing - but I wasn't round to find out. Too busy enjoying Franz Ferdinand, who I don't like much, but were great.

My older sister kindly asked me to accomany her to see Bruce Springsteen at the Emirates stadium last year. Even though i'm almost totally ignorant of his back catalogue i thought why not, it'll be a fun night out with my big sis if nothing else. Well, i'm a serial gig- goer and i have seen many stadium concerts, but no artist has ever blew my expectations to pieces the way Bruce Springsteen did last year, and i've never seen a London audience respond in such a thrilled way to a performer before or since. I've been watching his show on the sky plus today...and loving it, brought all the memories back. So maybe the point i'm making is, don't watch him on the telly, get yerself a ticket next time he's playing, you won't regret it.

BBC even had a scroll across the bottom as he banged on and on saying 'FRANZ FERDINAND ON BBC3 NOW!'. Never seen them do that before.

Another blog commented =
_
There was a feeling of collective deflation – the palpable sense of 50,000-odd people realising that they weren’t quite as keen on Springsteen as they thought they were, or know as many of his songs as they thought they did.
It’s safe to say a cover of Stephen C. Foster’s Civil War-era folk standard ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’ – "This is a song from 1855," he growled, to audible sighs and shuffling of feet - was not exactly what the keyed-up Saturday night crowd had ordered.
-

Well quite. If it had been raining i think he'd have been booed off.

are playing for the fans they already have rather than trying to make new ones.. that's the only thing I can think of for the slight lack of hunger.

button on your video\skyplus\tivo? You didn't hsve to carry on watching the whole thing.

There are loads of other things you could have been doing, like I did, going to Hyde Park to see The Boss and Neil Young....bugger. Oh at least we got Neil Young with some added Macca

Haven't watched em on the TV yet but they both were excellent in the flesh a day later. Maybe you do have to be there after all. It can't be the same in the cold light of day in your front room can it?

I've just read the Guardian review of the Blur slot and apparently they were the best Glastonbury headliners in an age. Well I saw it on television so perhaps you had to be there!

I thought the Superbowl show was terrific but this was... overblown, self-important, turgid. Like Meatloaf but without the sense of his own ridiculousness.

I went to see Neil Young last wednesday and he was great but the crowd sucked the life out of the gig for me...half of them just stood there like they were watching it on TV with a gormless look on their face...I wanted to shake them.

I've noticed this at other gigs with a much younger demographic...most of them film it on their phone , no doubt they'll have a wee boogie to it later in the privacy of their habitation module.

Gone it seems are the life threatening and sweaty days of the Barrowlands.. Now it's all "Watch the hair man".

No-one has mentioned him yet. Before the Blur bit last night he said "Amazing anticipatory light". Of all the presenters he is surely the most over the top in ridiculous praise. He also said "Benchmark Performance" twice yesterday. Really irratating or is that just me.

He's just put out his most underwhelming album since Lucky Town, Danny died, Max is in and out, Clarence is Not What He Once Was, Landau's business decisions have been under attack (Walmartgate), and his own private life has recently been under scrutiny for the first time in decades.... If his current shows lack some of the magic we've grown accustomed to (or perhaps just become blasé about), who's career can you think of that's been a 35-year bed of roses? Certainly not mine. Probably not yours, either.

Still, even though he's pushing 60 and is no doubt wealthy beyond imagining, he still has the desire to tour the globe and turn out 3-hour shows of an intensity that very few even half his age can come close to competing with.

What I find interesting about the coverage of his Glastonbury and Hyde Park bashes is that the very thing that made his name - his millimetrically measured showmanship - is now what he's most harshly criticised for, with claims that his act is "hokey" and "contrived". Most odd.

I am a 'Greatest Hits' kind of Bruce fan and I watched here and there an hour of his set on TV. My two-penneth-worth:

* He has incredible energy and stage presence, and to think he was doing all that again the following night is truly amazing.

* I know it's his thing, but he goes on too long. Not just the length of set (number of songs) but elongating those songs is just a bit boring; one or two false endings is OK.

* I was surprised how many people knew the words of (to me) relatively obscure songs - given most tickets were sold before the line-up was announced, there can't have been many die-hards.

* Clarence C ruins a lot of songs with his parp-parping

* The BBC sound was very very mushy, but maybe he uses too many instruments at times too.

* He had this year's Glastonbury's iconic fans (the BBC loved the blonde girl with shades on the left of these three):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2009/jun/28/bruce-springsteen-gl...

I confess I didn't see the Glasto show or even the highlights show, but I was at Bonnaroo a couple of weeks ago where Bruce payed a 3 hour set (none of your measley 2 hours 20 minutes I heard reported from Glastonbury).

He lost the audience at the start of that show too, the local press in Tennessee blamed this on the fact that Bruce just isn't used to festival audiences and severely misjudged his set and/or his importance to the audience. The thing is that he may be used to playing to huge audiences outdoors but he is used to playing to HIS huge audiences. Suddenly he comes across thousands of people who don't know every word to every song, not even the hits, and who don't hang on his every utterance. Even the American audience at Bonnaroo were going for a wander during "Outlaw Pete", not just because an eight minute song from the new album should not be played as the fourth song of a festival show, but because it's a dull, dull song! This should also be taken into context with the fact that he followed Wilco who had connected with the crowd on a human level, Jeff Tweedy was genuinely warm and funny, all Bruce did was scream cliche after cliche at the audience "Is there anybody alive out there?, I said...", etc.

He did bring it back eventually, he finished with "Rosalita," "Glory Days" and "Dancing In the Dark", but by then many had wandered off, and at Bonnaroo you have to bear in mind that all other stages had closed so that the Boss was an unrivalled attraction.

Bruce and team saw Glastonbury as being no different to the enormodome in Brussels, Koln or Prague. The set list WAS wrong for Glastonbury. It was the current tour set list, primed soley at shifting copies of Working on a Dream.

I don't imagine Bruce has shifted a single copy of any new material to a "new" fan since Tunnel of Love. Would a young girl or guy - your average festival goer - really make their first Bruce purchase "Magic" or "Devils and Dust"? Not on your nelly.

Should have played Born to Run in its entirety, with the greatest hits spread around...

Not a "bad" show on Saturday night by any means, but not a show that will win him an army of new admirers or, more importantly, open new revenue streams.

What did you expect?
The Hanging Gardens Of Babylon????
With both gentlemen, you get what you get, which is also what has given them careers in rock music that eclipse most others.
Fans will love them, other people not so much.
If Bruce was trying to flog his new album, 3 new songs out of 26 probably won't do that.
Final note, TV sound poorest of the night.

Read the above comments with interest. As a die hard Bruce Fan of some 30+ years,I can sympathise with the reaction of those who are not. But seeing him perform last night in Hyde Park reminded me of why I enjoy his music and performance.
After kicking the show off with the inevitable 'London Calling' cover, I felt that it took the band a while to warm up, let alone the audience, maybe travel lag after the journey up from Glasto!. However once they got into their stride, they delivered a storming set of new and old numbers and by the end of the evening all the band members seemed to be really enjoying themselves, and the feedback from the audience.
It was also good to see the support Bruce gave to up and coming band Gaslight Anthem who themselves put in a good set in the afternoon.

Just wondering, how many people writing here actually went to glastonbury and were in the crowd for springsteen/young.

I watched Springsteen, and thought that he was really, really good. I've never seen him before (aged 17), and only know his stuff a little. But I thought he fully lived up to his live reputation, and from were i was standing, most of the crowd agreed with me. obviously i can't speak for everyone, but I think it must be remembered that watching bruce on tv is not the same as watching him at the festival. Not just the atmosphere; the sound is different as well.

I know I enjoyed him anyway.

Hasn't anyone noticed that Springsteen and his music have ALWAYS been dull? Obvious and boring melodies. Music without imagination, delivered with plodding insensitivity. Self conscious, gum chewing, strutting machismo music. Clichéd guitar phrases, loosely strung together into showy and unimaginative solo's, showing a complete lack of appreciation for the potential of the instrument. Always sounded to me like music by the numbers. Dry and uninhabitable, narrow minded, fundamentally conservative, US centric drawl music.

There, glad I finally got that off my chest. Going to sit down and have a beer.