Weller, Weller, Weller, HUFF!
It's really not Glastonbury's year, is it?
Ever since it was announced that Jay-Z will be playing, they've had howls of outrage from indie fans, just because an entire festival has booked one act who they personally don't like. This despite the obvious counter-argument which says that anyone who claims rappers don't belong at Glasto has clearly not been there. Hip hop is just one of a bazillion musical forms that the festival has devoured in its rich history. Pay attention!
Also, ticket sales have been slower than usual, which is probably due to a few wet years. Now, that is a very real problem, and not just a case of expecting disgruntled festival-goers to knuckle down, don wellies and shut up. They've got a point.
The result is, it's starting to become clear that Glasto's status as The Best British Festival Experience is being challenged, and that means more and more quote stories appearing in the press where members of the rock aristocracy line up to pretend they're on an episode of TV's Grumpy Old Men. , and now Paul Weller has joined the anti-Glasto camp.
I say 'camp' assuming the people who are anti-Glastonbury actually enjoy camping, of course. Mr Weller does not. He doesn't like festival-goers either, and he told 6Music they're becoming increasingly ungrateful for his musical endeavours:
"The difference between doing it in '94 and doing it last year was that most of the audience knew the greatest hits, whereas in '94 they were music fans. You didn't just have to do the greatest hits, that was very noticeable to me."
A point which is undermined slightly when you consider that in 1994, he was just establishing himself as a solo star after some years as a washed-up former hitmaker. He only had two albums of solo material to work from. Now he's got loads, and he's rock royalty once again.
But the other thing which has changed between then and now is the overall quality of Paul Weller's music. I guess the most charitable way of encapsulating the situation is to say that Paul Weller's muse has been noticably dwindling over the years (with the odd resurgence here and there), pretty much ever since he released that song 'The Changingman', and then promptly stopped changing.
So, with most of his good stuff being what he grumpily calls "the greatest hits", why shouldn't people demand to hear them? They had to buy all of those rubbish albums and put up with the diminishing returns, didn't they? And it's not like they're there because they like being crammed together in a bog, is it? They ARE music fans.
So, if Glastonbury can make an effort to do something about the flooding and the mud, surely its performers can do likewise and give them a breath-taking performance of songs that they know andÌýlove?
Because you can bet your bum that Jay-Z will be doing that exact thing.
And that his wellies will cost more than your house.
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PS: I've no particular bias about Glastonbury, I've been once and enjoyed it well enough, but it's not on my 'To Do' list every year. Also, I've been a massive Paul Weller fan in my time. That said, people who get sniffy about playing their best songs, and then call their own fans names for wanting them to are The Suck, IMHO.
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