Dissidenten

Glastonbury Festival 1998

Friday 26th to Sunday 28th June 1998
Worthy Farm, Pilton, nr Glastonbury, Somerset, England
£80

Daily capacity: 80,000

Review by: Christian
Stage: Jazz World
Day: Friday

Here's to the true Hippie spirit of Glastonbury!

I've been to many festivals elsewhere, and must say that I have never experienced anything so truly fascinating and lovable as the Glastonbury staff and crowd. Since I had the privilege to travel with the Dissidenten, greatest Global Groove Band on the planet, I knew it would be a good experience. But when our bus got stuck knee deep in the mud behind the JazzWorld stage, I began to have serious doubts. Our poor driver had to last another five hours before he got his much-needed rest, although the driver of the huge orange tractor did his level best. Then the rain got worse instead of better, and after Bim Sherman (whom I liked a lot), the crowd began to get thinner as the mud turned into a swamp. And then - we're from Germany! - we found that we didn't have a bass amp, and there were no adaptors provided for the keyboards and digital drums. Bummer! For a minute or two we thought the concert wasn't happening, but then, miraculously, two adaptors appeared out of nowhere, as did the bass amp, and the Dissidenten were on stage on time. Bless you waterproof Brits who are not addicted to football. You made this into a "historic" event for the band and this humble journalist. And only now, days after my return to a clean and well-lighted apartment in Frankfurt, I notice from a picture in a newspaper that the kind, ever-smiling old man must have been Michael Eavis himself who had been watching the mounting panic before and the euphoria during the gig with an almost buddhist patience and who had apparently known all along that everything would turn out fine.
See you next year, certainly!

Christian Arndt