Jay-Z and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skulls:
Eat it, Damien Hirst!

Champagne

Superhova

Note to Noel:

After all,

now it’s his “Wonderwall.”

Jay-Z faces down Oasis (sort of) in
the Battle of Glastonbury BY CRAIG MCLEAN

Noel Gallagher was angry. The notionally compos mentis wing of Oasis had heard that—sweet Jesus, no!—a rapper was booked to headline Glastonbury, the world’s most venerable rock festival. “I’m sorry, but Jay-Z? No chance,” Gallagher told the BBC, signally unimpressed by the Jigga Man, whether as hip-hop icon, multiplatform brand, or cigar-chomping boardroom titan.

In its ³⁰-year-plus existence, Glastonbury has grown into a gargantuan, three-day spectacular, with thousands of bands sprawled across dozens of stages, a mini-city/medieval encampment springing up annually in the English countryside. And it remains a bastion of charity-supporting right-on-ness. But massive crowds, international media coverage, sponsorship and marketing tie-ins galore, battalions of police and security guards, and an impregnable steel fence ringing the ¹,⁰⁰⁰-acre site have all ensured that modern Glastonbury is a very different proposition from the ramshackle, hippie-era version that drew doughty Brit-folk/psychedelic artists such as Fairport Convention and Traffic to ye olde pastures.

But in terms of the music on offer, particularly at the top of the bill, Glastonbury is still viewed by many as a cherished institution that must not be allowed to roam too far from its guitar-shaped roots. Nothing should detract from its legend as the location

of reputation-making headline performances by Pulp (’ ⁹⁵), Radiohead (’ ⁹⁷), and Coldplay (’⁰²). “I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury,” fulminated Gallagher. “It’s wrong.”

Still, Gallagher’s grumblings chimed with other concerns about this year’s Glastonbury. The 2007 event, like the two previous years’, was a literal washout. Torrential rain turned the dairy-farm site, a four-hour drive west of London, into a quagmire. Flooded toilets, trench foot, sets from Arctic Monkeys and the 2wKillers that were endurance tests rather than career triumphs, and a deep, dark, unshakable longing for home—these were last year’s key memories.

Plus, the festival market has been overrun. The profusion of huge outdoor events, which Glastonbury’s ’⁹⁰s boom time precipitated, means that on both sides of the Atlantic you can attend a rock festival (or two) virtually every weekend of the summer. Many happen in actual cities, which means the bonus of concrete roads and an easy drive home. Why pay top dollar to schlep to a boggy farm for the privilege of sleeping in a soggy tent, crapping in a ditch, and re-creating the conditions on the Somme in World War I? All told, it was no surprise that Glastonbury’s ticket sales were sluggish. That is, ²⁰⁰⁸ didn’t sell out in frenzied nanoseconds, which is what normally happens. Cue

If you’re not soaked, you’re not at Glastonbury.