Festival review by : Mari

Glastonbury Festival 2000

Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th June 2000
Worthy Farm, Pilton, nr Glastonbury, Somerset, England
£89 including booking fee and postage

Daily capacity: 80,000

This was our first Glastonbury and it certainly won't be our last .....we are a group of 7 musicians & non-musicians from the Emerald Isle who arrived complete with our 16' tipi. Our only real gripe was the poor knowledge of the many Stewards - at one point they seriously tried to get us to park in E4 - about as far from the Tipi field as one can get!! We finally got there, having been mis-directed over many muddy fields which necessitated much pushing of our bogged-down motor plus one cracked bumper ...........even this could not dampen our spirits.......what a party there was that night (Wednesday) and on Thursday in the Tipi field! A true outpouring of joy from all of the participants.

As for bands, I only saw the Wailers & Bowie but, as so many others have said - we didn't go for just the bands - we went to experience the unique atmosphere that is Glastonbury. I have to hand it to the festival - it is truly a unique experience - an oasis of misrule & mischief in the ordered structure of the "real" world which will become more difficult to protect as time goes on.......Festival Organisers, please try to preserve this spirit of Glastonbury and resist the tempatation to become just another sponsored event.

I don't know about crime, but apart from one individual coming uninvited into the Tipi whilst we slept & trying to nick a Djembe, we didn't experience any. The big shocker for me was: How can people who go to a Green festival be so disgustingly DIRTY - we took our rubbish to the bins every day - why couldn't everyone else? The tent fields were a particular disgrace - with rubbish & uneaten meals piled up between the tents - absolute SQUALOR in fact! What an offence to offer to the Goddess. Also, for a committed pagan like me, to see the desecration of the sacred space was unforgivable - do people have no respect for anything anymore??

review submitted by
Mari