How not to plan a festival schedule?

Having just concluded that perhaps I should have chosen to go to Glastonbury, I've just been looking at the latest list of performers at Latitude 2008 with an eye to trying to work out my preliminary schedule. Last year I didn't even attempt it until the Thursday evening, by which time I was in my tent and armed with the festival program. This year, despite the fact that I've thought about it at the point when last year I had just decided to get a ticket and go, the situation looks more problematic! I suspect that I'll end up making some decisions on the fly but at least I'll have considered the possibilities that will give rise to the greatest conflicts.

As it happens I don't have to wait until Latitude for some live music, although of a somewhat different slant. My longstanding liking for folk-influenced music has probably already become apparent on at least a few occasions in this blog and I've got a ticket to see Seth Lakeman live at the "Cheese and Grain" on 9th July, as part of the 2008 Frome Festival. While Latitude 2008 will involve a round trip of almost 500 miles, this is about as convenient as it could get; I can be at the venue twenty minutes after leaving home and that is on foot!
His latest album Poor Man's Heaven (his fourth) was released today.

The one I want to hear first however is 'Kitty Jay' (2004), his first album. The title track is a telling of a well known, although very indistinctly chronicled, Dartmoor story (probably dating from the 17th or 18th century) thus making it good for elaboration.
Kitty Jay apparently killed herself due to the infidelity of her lover and was buried at a remote crossroads, lying on the boundary of parishes and remote from any settlements, because suicides could not be buried in consecrated ground. That much is, in so far as it is possible to say, fact.
That the grave remains to this day, at the crossing of a minor road and a bridleway, still remote from any settlement but always with fresh flowers, is really quite surprising. The fact that this is the second, completely distinct song, attempting to tell the tale is remarkable. The other song I am aware of is 'Lady Jay', which was on the fifth album by Wishbone Ash (another band with Devon roots) There's The Rub (1974).

That it is the last day of the first half of 2008 has reminded me that no-one has asked about my favourite albums of 2008 yet, which is good, but I will say that I'm not anticipating having any shortage to choose from come the appropriate time. It does however prompt me to consider what I would like on my listening list in the next month or so. I've just been thinking while writing this and I'm a bit lost, which has much to do with my comment above concerning the amount of new music I already have.
I have had to single out one album completely unheard (well sort of, but I'll try to add more later in the week) based on their first album and seeing them live last summer, it would have to be 'Donkey' by CSS:

It is not going to sound like their first, Cansei De Ser Sexy, but if it is anywhere near as catchy it will be a winner and, given the reports from Glastonbury 2008 it most probably is. The latest release date that I am aware of is 21st July in the UK.

Glastonbury 2008 - at arm's length.

They said that it would be a disaster, whether that was due to the choice of Jay-Z as the Saturday headline act, the assertion that Amy Winehouse would most likely be a no-show, or simply that the foul weather that has afflicted the last two events would return yet again, to the point that some said it would be the end of the road. It was, after all, the first Glastonbury since 1992 to not sell-out and that perhaps this is more important than it might appear to be.

I think that they were wrong on all counts. I, for one, would not have bought a ticket because I wanted to see Jay-Z perform live, or indeed any another headline act. I wouldn't go to a festival merely on the promise of the headline acts, however appealing they might be. Maybe that is just me, being the awkward one, but you would have been far more likely to find me at either the 'John Peel Stage' or the 'Park Stage'.
I could go and probably never much bother myself with the 'Pyramid Stage' which, by virtue of its variety and diversity, is how Glastonbury wins hands-down. Sometimes however it takes a modal shift to alter the dynamics of a festival and Glastonbury 2008 might just have done that.

Glastonbury 2008 and other festivals.

The tickets for Glastonbury 2008 went on sale at 9am (BST) today only to those who had pre-registered earlier in the year. If you were in the running then I hope that you were one of the lucky ones!

The weather here in Somerset is always a matter for conjecture when it comes to the Festival but the one thing it is unlikely to do in late June is snow. In fact it rarely does that here at any time of year, and I live barely more than ten miles away from the site, but for the first time this winter it did so last night. Not much admittedly but at 8am there was the better part of 1" of the white stuff on the ground; by 10 am it had almost all vanished.
I've not posted anything here for the last week as I've been away in the hills of NW England pursuing other interests that leave little time for listening and no possibility for blogging. That said I have returned with some new ideas and a long list of things to do or hear. It is going to take some time to put some of these plans in place if indeed they even prove practicable.

On the subject of 2008 Festivals the programme for Leeds/Reading 2008 is now available and the calendar of events continues to grow in response to the apparently inexorable rise of live music to the extent that now there is often more than one taking place on any given weekend. While Cowell et al are apparently hell-bent on finding new talent what Britain really needs right now is more summer weekends and better weather for those we already have. If only we could have a climate rather than mere weather!

I was lucky last year. It rained very little at Latitude 2007 and one of the heaviest showers was this one, just after I had pitched my tent (the red one in the foreground) on the evening of Thursday 12th July. Let's hope for a long, warm and dry summer in 2008!