Glastonbury 2019

The Nal wrote: »

bodhrandude wrote: »

Hawkwind at the acoustic stage, that should be interesting, does that mean everything is unplugged rather than an electronic freakout.

ryaner777 wrote: »

Fontaines Confirmed

[IMGhttps://scontent-ams3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/59828897_10156002154210964_7797372929565523968_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&_nc_ht=scontent-ams3-1.xx&oh=47454a66d426600028bbc3706447044a&oe=5D57E1D2[/IMG]

OK, long post. Strap in.

Got pretty obsessed about secret areas (piano bar, rabbit hole etc) in my earliest Glastonbury years and I happened to read this in the build up to the 2016 festival. Just after about half way down the page there was a mention of something being 'more than it seems' in the London Underground. Separately I'd read about some secret pirate radio station somewhere in the Block 9 area in previous years so I hoped this would be it. The rest of my group were bang up for investigating and we were going to be in the area for the Hot Chip Prince Tribute anyway. We got down there early and started nosing around the London Underground area: pulling at the scenery and looking in dark corners to see what was what.

After 15 minutes prodding inside and out, we started asking the stewards, security etc and they were having none of it. So we go inside (again) get a drink and regroup, pouring over the words about 'queue jumpers' and things being 'not what they seem' wondering whether it was all a load of cobblers. Then one of the group goes silent and has got their eyes fixed near the main entrance where there is....a cloak room. It took a while for the rest of us to understand why this should be remarkable (we were a bit ****ed tbf) but when you think about it....why would there be a cloak room....in one of the smaller stages... in the corner of Glastonbury Festival.

So everyone starts getting increasingly excited and we bowl over. There's a girl there. Standing behind a counter, in front of rack full of exactly the same long black coats. Not a puffer or a raincoat or a poncho anywhere. It's all ****ing scenery. So we start shaking her down for info, 'you're not a real cloak room are you? is this the secret? how do we get in? etc'. Eventually she throws us a bone: "go outside and queue with the queue jumpers". So we leg it outside practically pissing ourselves with excitement and see, quite plainly now that we were looking for it, a pair of brightly lit but frosted glass doors on the far side of the entrance to the main queue. Next to it, there's a couple of people with a clip board and 4 or so people waiting in line.

We walk over, trying to play it cool (having heard about the difficulties people have trying to get in to the piano bar etc) and speak to the clip-board holder. 'Wait behind them' he says gesturing to the queue. 15 minutes go by , the group in front of us go through the doors and don't come out. We have a little chat with the clip board guy (who confirms this is what I'd read about) but gives us no other clues. Eventually we're led in through the doors and the four of us are sat down in chairs next to each other in a brightly lit corridor. Round the corner come four people dressed in Amish clothing holding sacks and headphones. They don't speak, they just place the headphones on our heads and stare at us. The headphones play the sound of their voices: telling us to be calm, not to worry and to trust our them as our guides before THEY PLACE THE SACKS OVER OUR HEADS. We're then separated and led one by one down the corridor in darkness, eyes covered by the sack but with the sound of our 'guide's' voice in our ears telling us to stay calm.

From this point on, the experience was a fully staged, personal immersive theatre performance that can only sound like a massive acid trip in the retelling. I was brought in to a room and asked to kneel. The voice in the headphones offered me a tic tac, my sack was removed and the Amish fella next to me had his hand out with some white pills in it. I took one. The voice said 'pray to the cactus god'. In front of me and the Amish guy was a 12 foot tall cactus. We prayed together. He put the sack back on my head. Then he starts telling me a story as we walk round more corners and corridors. For the life of me I can't remember the details but it wasn't a fairytale by any measure and it always linked to the next room where my sack was removed and a completely new scene greeted me. One time, I opened my eyes to one of the filthiest bathrooms I've ever seen in my life but when I adjusted to the light, the filth wasn't dirt, it was blood. And in the bath was standing a bloke covered in blood, wearing only underpants. The voice says, 'will you dance with him?' In my fairly spangled and slightly paranoid state I mustered a sort of jig and underpants bloke responded enthusiastically. We danced for a minute or so in a blood splattered bathroom in the depths of the naughty corner in the middle of Glastonbury.Then the sack was put back over my head. As we went further on down the next corridor, the story in my ears started building to a fairly negative conclusion with some fairly hellish sound effects before we reached another room and I was again told to kneel. The voice says 'this is the end for you'. Off comes the sack. There's a man running towards me over the top of a car with a massive ****ing axe in both hands which he brings down on the edge of the boot, maybe a foot from my face, very ****ing hard. It's over. The Amish fella leads me to the back of the room, takes my headphones and guides me towards a dark corner where there stands...a rack of coats. I push through it and I'm in the cloak room inside London Underground. The girl lifts up the counter and lets me out in to the main club bit where my friend (who entered ahead of me) was waiting. We both lose our ****, compare notes and wait for the other two. We have some celebratory shots, a moment outside and then got a decent spot for Hot Chip.

All night we just kept talking in disbelief about how good it was, that we had managed to find it, that we had managed to get in, etc etc. And whenever we met a random that we really liked we'd tell them about it, feeling very happy that we got to share this little secret to such an amazing experience. Anyway, I've never met anyone else that did it so I'm keen to know if someone on here has and if they can help fill in the gaps in my story. We went back in 2017 and it wasn't there, nor could we find anything similar. Fingers crossed for another surprise this time.

MadYaker wrote: »

Never heard of it. I had a look on a few torrent sites nut couldn't find it. You should ask here on efestivals, could be hard to track down but someone there might have it.

Just over 5 weeks to go lads! I'm getting excited. I dug out my rucksack and took my tent out of its bag today to make sure it's ok.