- Glastonbury might be the best festival in the world, but it's not for the feint of heart. The five-day event, spread across 900 acres on a dairy farm in south-west England, demands a lot of its 180,000 attendees—not just money (though it isn't cheap), but also preparation, endurance and general resourcefulness. This year was harder work than usual, thanks largely to one thing: mud. Though the weather was mostly clear throughout the weekend, torrential rains the week before had turned Worthy Farm into a vast bog of ankle-deep muck, not all of it free from the aroma of manure. Traversing even a short distance without rubber boots was impossible, and the treks between stages, a good half hour in the best conditions, were longer and harder than ever. "I've never seen mud like it in the [the festival's] whole life," Micheal Eavis, Glastonbury's founder, told The Guardian. "In all 46 years [the festival's been running], it hasn't been as bad as this."
This was my first Glastonbury, and people told me all weekend how much better it is in dry weather. Another common line was that, in terms of the lineup, 2016 was far from a vintage year. For sure, I would have traded even last year's headliners for this year's Adele or Coldplay, and I would have given anything to laze about on a dry hillside between performances. And needless to say, news of Brexit last Thursday night didn't exactly help the vibe. But despite all this, for me Glastonbury still more than lived up to its next-level reputation. In terms of atmosphere, production and musical variety, it delivers something far beyond other festivals. By the end, even the mud had grown on me a bit.
It's often said that Glastonbury is a world unto itself, but it's also a constellation of many little worlds. Even its dance music universe is too vast to cover here, especially as each corner of it is so rich with detail that it demands a close look. Take, for instance, Beat Hotel, one of dozens of clubs spread across the site. Like many "areas" at Glastonbury, this is closer to a proper nightclub than a typical festival stage. Talented bartenders dish out fairly legit cocktails, and the place also serves pancakes in the morning and barbecue at night (courtesy of Seth Troxler's restaurant, Smokey Tails). The inspired décor follows a midcentury hotel theme, from the retro sign outside to the slightly surreal DJ booth, which is flanked on each side by a mock hotel room. While Ben UFO, Midland and Joy Orbison chugged through house and disco rollers, the blaggers who would have normally filled the booth goofed around in these hotel rooms instead, lolling about or jumping on the beds. One of my favorite moments of the weekend happened here on Saturday when, after fleeing the crush of people gathered to watch Adele, I nursed a bloody mary in the back of the room while Nic Tasker and Reckonwrong played classy house gems like Lupo's "Hell Or Heaven."
Just a stone's throw from there you'll find Silver Hayes, the current incarnation of Glastonbury's first electronic music area. In 1995 it was the Dance Tent, then swelled to become the Dance Village, and finally what it is today: a cluster of six venues with over a hundred acts on the bill—essentially a festival within a festival. I walked through here one afternoon just in time to catch Miss Dynamite playing "Boo!" for a crowd of all ages at The Blues, a city-street-themed amphitheater with all the detail of a Broadway set.
There are several other large areas dedicated to dance music, each with their own big lineups: Arcadia, The Glade, The Common, Shangri-La. But for me, it was impossible not to keep gravitating back to one of them: Block9. This area had the most impressive production I've seen at any festival by a mile—the result of weeks of work and a whopping 700-person staff. The area consists of three clubs arranged into a kind of street scene: Genosys, a dystopian open-air techno venue; London Underground, a crumbling tenement block with a steaming subway car sticking out of it; and NYC Downlow, a faithful recreation of an early '80s gay club in the Meatpacking District.
The Downlow is probably the most beloved of all three, for good reason. Beyond being a great club, the venue is essentially a period piece. The level of detail is absurd—the posters out front, for instance, are accurate replicas of party flyers from 1982 New York. Inside you'll find queens dancing on the bar, a sassy MC and a theatrical stage show between each DJ set (Róisín Murphy made a cameo for one of these; Adele was rumored to do the same but it never happened). DJs could play along with this make believe as much or as little as they liked—The Black Madonna, for instance, threw in "It's Raining Men" alongside more modern fare like Daniel Wang's "Like (Some Dream, I Can't Stop Dreaming)." Needless to say, this all had a political dimension as well, reminding Glastonbury's ravers of club culture's queer roots. On the Friday night, Roger Sanchez, before launching into an explosive hit parade (Octave One's "Black Water," Basement Jaxx's "Fly Life (Extra)," Masters At Work's "Work") made a genuinely moving shout-out to "our brothers and sisters" killed in Orlando. On Saturday, after leading a dance routine to David Bowie's "Let's Dance," the MC gave shout outs to all the queens in the room, and also to the straight people who came to check out what he emphasized was "OUR culture."
For reasons beyond my control, I had to leave Glastonbury a day early. I spent my final moment at the festival in the smoking area of NYC Downlow on Sunday morning. The view from where I stood was surreal: first a gnarled chicken-wire fence, then a guy in cut-off jean shorts standing on the warehouse's loading dock, then, beyond that, fans of red lasers sweeping the crowd in front of Genosys, where someone was playing Aphex Twin's "Digeridoo" (earlier that night, Joey Beltram had played "Energy Flash" for the same muddy dance floor). On the left was the steaming, flickering facade of the London Underground. Between the two buildings, licks of orange crept into the sky. The people in line for the club were looking a little worse for wear, and understandably so—by my phone's count, I'd walked over 30 miles already that weekend, taxing enough without the mud and the booze and the lack of sleep. Even so, amidst crushing fatigue and a growing list of physical ailments—heinous blisters, sore legs, developing cold—I was hopelessly jealous of everyone that got to do it again that night.
