Georgia Mann is usually to be found at BBC Broadcasting House presenting Radio 3’s Essential Classics. Why was she in a field in Glastonbury this weekend, and did she get the festival crowd moving?
Waterproof trousers, ear plugs and a self-inflating mattress aren’t usually in my presenting kitbag but I’ve just packed away my tent and dug the mud out of my wellies after one of the most surreal gigs of my life: playing a DJ set at Glastonbury.
Several months ago an intriguing invitation came my way. The team at the Free University of Glastonbury asked if I wanted to cross the musical Rubicon and be the first act on at the Crow’s Nest at 11am on the Friday of the festival. Could I get a Glastonbury crowd primed for Coldplay, Black Pumas and Michael Kiwanuka to roar for Bach, Saint-Saëns and Sibelius? I selected an hour’s setlist spanning almost 500-years’ worth of music, told myself not to think too hard about the compost toilet situation, and headed for Worthy Farm.
O2 Forum Kentish Town, London The seven-piece’s first London show in six years sees them tear through tributes to Slayer and the Exploited, while Ice-T’s son and daughter join him on stage
Ice-T contains multitudes. Thirty-two years ago, the man born Tracy Lauren Marrow was one of the most righteously furious-sounding figures in music, Body Count’s breakthrough single Cop Killer having smashed the barrier between hardcore hip-hop and hardcore metal while its incendiary lyrics drew condemnation from then-president George Bush. Tonight, however, the prevailing emotion isn’t the anger that burst from that signature song; Body Count’s first London show in six years is more instantly a love letter to heavy music.
After the seven-piece – long Ice’s main career focus, beyond even his solo and film work – bound out with Body Count’s in the House, they tear through a medley of songs by extreme metal antagonists Slayer. A similar tribute to punk legends the Exploited comes later in the set.
The nearly 50-year-old song has been adopted by the under-30s to describe their particular feelings of ennui
What does Billy Joel know about being a teenage girl? Enough, it turns out, to have written one of gen Z’s favorite anti-hustle anthems: Vienna, a nearly 50-year-old song that’s been adopted by the under-30s to describe their particular feelings of ennui.
On TikTok, young women craft their identities around the song. One content creator said she booked a trip to the Austrian capitol because of it; others tattoothelyrics on their body. “I want to name my child Vienna but everyone says it reminds them of sausage,” reads one comment on a clip where a young woman lip-syncs the tune.
Clampdown follows fatal stabbing of Chinese woman who tried to stop attack on Japanese mother and child
China’s internet companies have announced a crackdown on “extreme nationalism” online, particularly anti-Japanese sentiment, after a Chinese woman was fatally stabbed while protecting a Japanese mother and child in Suzhou.
Tencent and NetEase, two of the biggest firms, said at the weekend that they would be investigating and banning users who stirred up hatred.
Minister says sale could ‘disturb stability in the region and potentially threaten Norwegian interests’
The Norwegian government has called off a plan to sell the last privately owned piece of land on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard in order to prevent its acquisition by China.
The remote Sore Fagerfjord property in south-west Svalbard – 60 sq miles (sq km) of mountains, plains and a glacier – was on sale for €300m (£277m).
Themes of displacement and diaspora explored in collaborative textile project as part of The Spirits of Maritime Crossing exhibition in Venice and Bangkok
The Koung Jor refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border is just three and half hours from Jakkai Siributr’s home in Chiang Mai. But it was only during a visit in 2019 that the Thai textile artist learned about the ordeals of the Shan refugees living there.
That visit inspired a collaborative embroidery project, with participation from 20 girls and women from the Shan ethnic minority living in the camp in northern Thailand, who were invited to sew images and words of their choice.
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff The gala celebration featured flamboyant Ravel, an elegant new work from Huw Watkins and deeply expressive Strauss
In the decade since its inception, co-directors violinist David Adams and cellist Alice Neary have nurtured their Penarth Chamber music festival from its small beginnings to a jam-packed, ambitiously programmed five-day event. With a remarkable array of top instrumentalists, singers and contributors, this year’s 10th anniversary lineup showed just what a classy affair it’s become. What makes it special is the sense of connection and trust that’s developed between players and audience, allowing George Crumb’s extraordinary Black Angels quartet to be as enthusiastically received as Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge which preceded it.
For their gala celebration, the festival decamped from its base at the Pavilion on Penarth’s seashore to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where many of the players also teach. Lucy Wakeford was the harpist in Ravel’s septet, Introduction and Allegro, where quiet intimacy is balanced with the almost flamboyant virtuosity which was the work’s raison d’être, part of what was essentially a campaign to promote the new double action pedal harp by the makers Érard. Advertising was never more honourably conceived nor cast such a spell.
As the weather heats up, Guardian writers pick their defining summer tracks, from Phoenix and Donna Summer to Stevie Wonder
The unforgiving yellow sun, a trip to the beach, that sweet, cold respite of a dripping ice-cream cone. Somehow this 1969 classic, courtesy of Sly and the Family Stone, sonically captures the exact patina of summer, making it a quintessential part of the seasonal canon. Written and produced by Sly himself (with him and the entire group exuberantly taking on vocal duties), the funk jam scoops a lot into its brisk two and a half minutes. Kicking off with that unmistakable piano riff, it then starkly transitions into its main melody which boasts iconic horns that double as a bugle call for the season. “Hi, hi, hi, hi there” we hear, a breezy greeting mimicking summer’s laidback sensibilities. It’s a mood that later extends into scat-inspired lyrics like, “Boop-boop-boop-boop when I want to.” Despite being released over a half-century ago, Hot Fun in the Summertime is still cool as hell. Rob LeDonne
Last July, I paid AXS £2,649 for four tickets for the Taylor Swift concert in Liverpool this month as a treat for my daughters. When they arrived, they found their view of the stage completely blocked by a tent and large items of technical equipment shrouded in black plastic.
They asked to be moved and were put in the very back corner next to fans who had paid a fraction of what I had.
From Terminator-eyed strikers to flame-wreathed shots on goal, no bombast is too much in this feature-length extrapolation of Muneyuki Kaneshiro’s popular series
Like Squid Game meets Shaolin Soccer, this feature-length extrapolation of Muneyuki Kaneshiro’s popular manga and anime set in a football training academy treats the beautiful game like an epic showdown between demonic forces or a Kurosawa-esque assault on a mountain fortress. Terminator-eyed strikers, flame-wreathed shots on goal, players zoning out in an amniotic limbo; no bombast is too much when hammering home Blue Lock’s key message: a star centre-forward must have an almighty ego.
The head coach is even called Jinpachi Ego. In trying to identify a unique attacking talent for the Japanese national team at the elite Blue Lock academy, he is unimpressed by the close-knit bond between the two final recruits: rich kid Reo (voiced by Yuma Uchida) and his diffident schoolmate Nagi (Nobunaga Shimazaki). The latter especially is an enigma: a twinkle-toed footballing genius who declares everything a “hassle” and would rather be gaming than on the pitch. Both Nagi’s Eeyore-ish attitude and the pair’s alliance may have to be jettisoned if one is to triumph in Ego-san’s elimination process.
This month’s picks include a Starlight Express intro for kids, a rollicking wedding play at the National and an explosive hour of dance
Micheál Mac Liammóir’s 1960 solo show interweaved the private and public lives of Oscar Wilde with excerpts from the great Irish wit’s oeuvre. Alastair Whatley – who directed The Importance of Being Earnest a few years ago – recently performed Mac Liammóir’s monologue at Reading Rep. A recording of that production, directed by Michael Fentiman, is available on Original Online from 1 July.
From K-poppers Seventeen to performance artist Marina Abramović, via Cyndi Lauper and Little Simz, it was one of the most diverse editions yet. But the real fireworks came with a band who have taken things to another level
Friday morning at Glastonbury underlines that the old cliche about the festival having something for everybody is only a cliche because it’s true. Your options range from the beatific (Sofia Kourtesis’s lambent brand of techno) to the profoundly challenging (artist Bishi Bhattacharya performing Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano, which sounds every bit as nerve-shredding as you might expect). From the dependable – a sharp-suited Squeeze on the Pyramid stage, offering up one of the late 70s most beloved run of hits – to a largely unknown quantity. Now 80, Asha Puthli last performed in Britain in 1974: her oeuvre takes in everything from collaborations with Ornette Coleman to Bollywood soundtracks to new wave. A tiny figure swathed in chiffon, she turns out to be as spacey and idiosyncratic as the album on which her cult status is based, 1976’s The Devil Is Loose, highly prized by disco collectors and hip-hop producers in search of samples. Between songs, she reminisces about her friendship with legendary drag queen and Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn, complains about the weather (“it’s bloody fucking cold here – I just flew in from Miami”), and demonstrates how she achieved a curious bubbling sound that appeared on her 1973 cover of George Harrison’s I Dig Love: not, as was commonly supposed, by smoking a bong, but by gargling. Her voice is still capable of summoning up the eerie falsetto that punctuated her underground disco classic Flying Fish, while The Devil Is Loose’s acknowledged classic, Space Talk, still sounds incredible: a seductive, trippy dancefloor shimmer.
After UK drill rapper Headie One uses his 18-song set on the Other stage to unveil his new album – no fan of understatement, he incentivises fans to download it by informing them it is “a masterpiece” – the Pyramid stage plays host to the first-ever Glastonbury appearance by a K-pop band, the almost unreasonably pretty Seventeen, whose name refers to the number of members in the band and whose last EP, FML, was the biggest-selling in the world last year. The crowd they draw isn’t vast but at least some of it is very vociferous indeed: the stage-side screens unfortunately pick out a middle-aged onlooker wearing an expression for which the adjective “nonplussed” might have been invented, but equally, there are teenage girls down at the front expressing their appreciation by making a noise not dissimilar to Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano. And Seventeen, whose music varies from toothsome pop that comes accompanied by film of cartoon unicorns to what sounds like a peculiarly fresh-faced take on nu-metal, work very hard indeed to win over the merely curious. The hook of their closing track Very Nice is difficult to dislodge from your brain for the remainder of the day, simply because they repeat it so many times: every time you think they’re about to leave the stage, they start singing it again.
Some 68,000 people are expected to die alone and unnoticed in Japan this year, police say, as the population continues to age
“We occasionally greet each other, but that’s all. If one of my neighbours died, I’m not sure I would notice,” says Noriko Shikama, 76. She lives alone in a flat Tokiwadaira, in Tokyo’s commuter belt and has come to the Iki Iki drop-in centre to catch up with residents over cups of coffee served by volunteers.
Here, amid the everyday discussions about the merits or otherwise of dyeing grey hair, people also share news about the latest lonely death, or kodokushi – officially defined as one in which “a person dies without being cared for by anyone, and whose body is found after a certain period”.
What can we learn about style at the UK’s biggest music event? Chain belts are back, leopard print is a neutral – and Lidl is the biggest label right now
The only thing that unifies fashion at Glastonbury is the need for sensible footwear: no other festival is as much a walking holiday as it is a great day (and night) out. But other than that, all bets are off. From kimonos to fancy dress, these were the big trends this year.
Company Space Pioneer says first stage of its Tianlong-3 launched during test after ‘structural failure’ and crashed in hills near city of Gongyi
The space rocket of a Chinese private company crashed and exploded into flames near a city on Sunday, after it accidentally launched during a test.
The first stage of the Tianlong-3 rocket left its launch pad due to a structural failure at the connection between the rocket and the test stand, said company Beijing Tianbing, also known as Space Pioneer, in a statement on its official WeChat account. The rocket landed in a hilly area of the city of Gongyi in central China, it said.
Pyramid stage Her show may be situated in a fantastical world full of insects, swords and fallen trees, but the US singer’s lyrics are earthy and induce bedlam in her devoted fans
Towards the end of her set, SZA informs the audience that she was “so nervous to be here”. You can understand why. Of all the headlining artists at this year’s Glastonbury, the announcement of SZA seemed to cause the most consternation. It wasn’t the kind of dreary what-about-indie-rock complaining that used to attend the unveiling of any hip-hop or R&B headliner, more that if social media was to be believed, a significant proportion of Glastonbury-goers had simply never heard of her.
That probably says more about the atomised nature of algorithm-catered pop culture in 2024 – a world in which it’s far easier to stay in your particular musical bubble than it once was – than it does about SZA’s popularity. Her last album SOS wasn’t just a critical success, it sold 3m copies in the US and became the longest-running No 1 album by a female artist in the 2020s: in the UK, her last tour packed out a succession of arenas, including two nights at the O2. But as anyone who was at those London shows could attest, it was largely packed out with screaming, devoted teenage girls, who aren’t Glastonbury’s main demographic. Indeed, you could interpret her appearance as Glastonbury playing a long game, sending out a signal to a new generation of potential festival-goers that they feature the kind of artists they want to see.
Other stage The Canadian singer plays to the biggest Other stage crowd of the weekend, all in thrall to an expertly written catalogue that has real strength and depth
If Shania Twain’s legends slot feels strangely timely given the amount of pop-country currently in the UK singles chart, you could say the same thing about Avril Lavigne’s performance, which seems a little like a legends slot in all but name. Pop punk is very much a thing again, and while you can trace the genre’s roots back to the Buzzcocks’ debut single, no artist can claim to have made punk more pop than Avril Lavigne did in the early 00s: refashioning its sound – and a dash of grunge’s angst – as bratty but harmless tweenage entertainment. She shifted so many copies of her debut album in the process that its follow-up was deemed a commercial disappointment on the grounds that only sold 10m as opposed to its predecessor’s 16m. Moreover, pop punk’s current practitioners have been more than happy to pay tribute to a woman they clearly consider to be the OG: Olivia Rodrigo covered Complicated when she played Glastonbury two years ago.
“Here’s to never growing up,” Lavigne sings, as well she might: after briefly dabbling with a more mature sound – moody Christian rock – on 2019’s Head Above Water, she clearly realised which way the wind was blowing and leaned back into her original mall-rat teen-punk persona.
Exclusive pre-show rehearsal and on-stage imagery from Coldplay’s photographer, amid their much-lauded headline performance on Saturday at the Pyramid Stage
Pyramid stage Her voice, affected by Lyme disease, isn’t what it once was – but her country glamour and crowdpleasing impulses make for a successful legends set
Long before Shania Twain’s set on the Pyramid stage, there were signs of building anticipation in the double denim and cowboy hats – either brought from home or quickly acquired from the stalls so as to feel part of the fun. The whispers going around Worthy farm was that Twain would arrive on stage riding a horse.
As often the case with Glastonbury rumours, it proved to have only the slightest, wonkiest bit of truth: Twain’s arrival is heralded by a procession of elaborate, larger-than-life hobby horses, held aloft by a motley group of dancers and drag queens, led by a whip-cracking ringleader. The crowd dissipates to reveal Twain, swamped with pink tulle and crowned, of course, with a rhinestone-studded black cowboy hat.
Cut your toenails, play bingo – and drink rum instead of lager. Performers including Marina Abramović, Sugababes, Don Letts and Paloma Faith share their tips
You find out about yourself at Glastonbury. It is a campus bursting with lessons for the body and mind. Maybe you have an affirming experience, where you learn you’ve got way more stamina than you realised, that you are able to let your insecurities go and fully let loose, or that actually you really, really like hardstep and you’re building that playlist just as soon as you get home. Or maybe your Damascene moment is a starker one, where your mental age and actual age collide head-on. For better or worse, you will learn something about yourself. And for life lessons learned this year, who better to turn to than the performers and celebrities at this year’s festival?
Marina Abramović, artist I was terrified at the idea of talking to 200,000 people to create a seven-minute moment of silence. I was really, truly thinking this was almost impossible. But I learned that actually it is possible – to keep the energy concentrated of this amount of people in this moment of human history. And this was something that was a huge discovery: that we humans can change the world by just being together.
Follow along for updates, pictures, reviews and more, with sets by Janelle Monáe, Steel Pulse and Kim Gordon to come, with the National and more to come
Pyramid stage, 12.30pm
This performance couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to that of the previous band to play this stage. Where Coldplay last night brought pyro, fireworks, LED wristbands, lasers, guest vocalists, Afrobeat legends, and projections of K-poppers BTS on the side of the Pyramid, blues musician Seasick Steve has a drummer, a guitarist, and a guitar made out of a Mississippi numberplate. “I made it,” he says. “It’s a piece of shit.” There is a guest star in the form of a barefoot harmonica player, but Steve barely even stands up. With Coldplay’s confetti decaying amid the woodchippings underfoot, the crowd are taken back down to earth after the intergalactic scale of the night before.
At the festival there’s a background hum of grimness and a deep commitment to unconditional love. Will hope or hopelessness win out?
You can’t miss the fact at Glastonbury that there is an election coming. For one, there is a lot of “get the vote out” messaging. A large black box saying: “Use your superpower: vote,” funded by Dale Vince, the founder of the green electricity firm Ecotricity and a Labour party donor, sits in a field. Yellow stickers on tables read: “Crash the party, vote.” One archway is more overt in its message: “Vote out to help out.” Damon Albarn made a surprise appearance to perform with the Bombay Bicycle Club on Friday, enjoining the audience midway through the set to talk about “the importance of voting this week”.
A couple of signs make oblique reference to the fact that people don’t feel that enthusiastic about the democratic offer: “Politics isn’t about them. It’s about YOU,” reads a sign on one booth. However, Albarn was more explicit: “I don’t blame you for being ambivalent,” he said. “But it’s still really important … maybe it’s time we stopped putting octogenarians in charge of the world?” Some here may have missed the Biden and Trump debate that struck fear into the hearts of progressives everywhere. But there is no question that Biden is an octogenarian – and Trump is not far behind him.
Garsington Opera, Wormsley Estate, Stokenchurch Whileit might have been cancelled after the premiere in 1840, Christopher Alden’s frenetic staging, an effervescent Philharmonia Orchestra and a fine cast show there’s a decent evening’s entertainment in there
Verdi’s spirited Un Giorno di Regno – usually translated as King for a Day – is one of his least performed works. So badly received was the La Scala premiere in 1840 they cancelled the rest of the run. The composer later went to considerable lengths to excuse it as the misbegotten product of a period of personal tragedy. It would be more than 50 years before he wrote Falstaff, his only other comedy.
So why revive it now? Well, as Christopher Alden’s frenetic, over-egged soufflé of a staging for Garsington Opera demonstrates, there’s a decent evening’s entertainment in there just itching to be liberated. And as Chris Hopkins’ buoyant reading of the score proves, Verdi came up with plenty of first rate, second rate music (to misquote Richard Strauss), even if you don’t come out whistling many of the tunes.
Portland has no Live Nation concert arena, and fans and artists love its fiercely independent music scene. But with a new venue looming, will all that change?
From tiny coffee shops where folkies sway to acoustic guitars and mandolins, to thronging dark halls where bodies collide as metal bands and hip hop artists dominate the stage, live music can be heard seeping out of venues across Portland on almost any given night.
The city is known for its fiercely self-sufficient music scene, where local venues keep ticket prices low and artists experiment for curious audiences. It’s also the only major US city without a venue owned or operated by Live Nation, the controversial entertainment conglomerate that dominates the US concert-going experience.
There are just 300 electric HGVs in the 500,000-strong lorry fleet – and only one public charging point, says RHA
The road haulage industry is calling on the new government to urgently tackle investment in infrastructure for electric trucks, after pointing out there is just one public charging point for HGVs in the whole of the UK.
Takeup of electric cars is soaring, with about 1.1m fully battery-powered cars on British roads and about 63,000 charging units in 33,000 locations, according to Zapmap data.
What it is about the the haunting classic, Smalltown Boy,that still compels teens to join older generations on the dancefloor?
Last Saturday night, Ian Wade was playing records at the storied London gay night, Duckie. “I thought, I’ll play Smalltown Boy, which I’d never played there before,” he says. “It’s Pride month, it’s a gay club, you know? Sod it, let’s go for it.”
The reaction was at first familiar to Wade, who is about to publish his first book, 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer, a loving compendium of what happened during the pinkest 12-month patch of pop history. A group of bearded fiftysomethings, men of an age to have had their lives upended by Bronski Beat’s evergreen classic, began singing along, edging their way towards the centre of the dancefloor. A warming result.
Day two for the photography team at Glastonbury brought the heat, the Last Dinner Party, a flypast, and an astonishing array of anthems from Chris Martin and co
The second day of Glastonbury proper and the day broke with sunshine and a clear sky, as revellers still awake from Friday night headed back to their tents across the site. It turned out to be a fine day across Worthy Farm, as acts including Little Simz, Michael Kiwanuka and Cyndi Lauper teed up Coldplay on the Pyramid stage.
Over on the Other stage, there were two great Party bands – the Last Dinner Party, and Bloc Party– plus Camila Cabello and a rampaging Mike Skinner of the Streets before Disclosure closed the stage out.
The early morning stroll homewards for revellers from the Southeast corner. Photograph by David Levene.
Pyramid stage The Mercury prize-winning north London rapper aces the sweet-spot slot before headliners Coldplay
Last time Little Simz played at Glastonbury, she told a packed-out West Holts crowd that she’d see them next time at the Pyramid stage. It wasn’t an empty threat – over the last decade or so, she’s consistently outdone herself, releasing a string of acclaimed records, including the Mercury prize-winning Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, touring all over the world and staking herself as one of the UK’s strongest rappers both on home turf and further afield. Though she is not at the top of the bill tonight, she has indeed made it to the Pyramid, in the sweet spot before headliners Coldplay.
Despite the scatters of Coldplay T-shirts at the barrier, the packed-out crowd feels absolutely hers. You can tell that from the moment she cheekily addresses everyone with a simple “hello!” in her familiar north London intonation to rapturous applause. For the first few tracks – Silhouette, No Merci, I Love You I Hate You – she performs alone, skipping around the stage in her custom Ed Hardy two-piece, her name embroidered across the chest of her biker jacket. But she holds it down, spitting with impeccable poise and contorting her body with effortless steez over her signature backdrops of swelling strings and syncopated drums. “I need you to understand that you’re witnessing greatness,” she declares. “I say that not with arrogance but with confidence. It took me a while to get to the Pyramid but I’m finally here!”
Media reporting on the campaign is overwhelmingly dominated by men, say researchers
General election coverage has been dominated by male voices, according to researchers from Loughborough University.
Academics from the university’s Centre for Research in Communication and Culture have conducted news audits for every general election since 1992. They analyse TV coverage from BBC One, ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky’s evening news bulletins, plus print reporting by the UK’s broadsheet and tabloid newspapers.
Festival opens its arms with more diversity but rock royalty gets the crowd bouncing
“This is our favourite thing to do on earth, so thank you for letting us do it here,” says Chris Martin as Coldplay headline Glastonbury for a record-breaking fifth time. No other band has such a direct line to the festival’s inclusive, idealistic heart. Their speciality is the universal.
Each year’s line-up throws its arms a little wider around the world of music. On Friday afternoon, for example, you could see in quick succession Indonesian heavy metal, Indian disco, Sofia Kourtesis’ dreamy, therapeutic dance music and Headie One’s furious drill.
Acoustic stage The Hollywood star brings his magnificently deep and robust voice to Glastonbury
Glastonbury’s cinema tent has hosted an impressive range of A-listers this year, from Paul Mescal (whose short shorts are yet to influence the Glasto blokes who adore a practical cargo pocket) to Tilda Swinton, Florence Pugh, Simon Pegg and Cate Blanchett. All dilettantes at this music festival, though, compared with actually singing Russell Crowe at the field’s opposite tent, the Acoustic stage.
In his Oscar-nominated performance in Gladiator he was “father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife”, and I rather thought he’d be uncle to a series of murdered cover versions, but I’m proved wrong. Billed as his Indoor Garden Party and backed by a sizeable band, he sings a series of self-penned songs inspired by moments in his own life, from thwarted love to the death of his father.
Pyramid stage Fireworks! Lasers! Confetti! More fireworks! Coldplay pull out every last stop for their record fifth headline performance, and you’d be churlish not to love it
It is, as Chris Martin points out, 25 years since Coldplay’s Glastonbury debut, a silver anniversary they commemorate tonight by unexpectedly dusting down an acoustic version of Sparks from their debut album Parachutes. Perhaps more pertinently, it’s the fifth time they’ve headlined the festival, and they’ve got the hang of it to such an extent that it increasingly feels like the job the quartet were put on earth to do.
Since their last appearance in 2016, they’ve completed a 180-degree turn from earnest stadium balladeers to purveyors of relentless, balls-out, more-is-more visual overload: their gigs are now effectively a 21st-century equivalent of U2’s Zoo TV shows, albeit without any of U2’s accompanying theorising about the media or the relationship between art and commerce.
The drummer-singer talks about his love for Alec Guinness, putting his foot in it with a Bad Seed and the ideal length of men’s shorts
Spiderbait is touring to celebrate 20 years since your insanely good cover of Black Betty was released. What is Black Betty to you?
It is an amazing song written by Lead Belly back in the 1930s that has somehow transformed over almost 100 years into many different versions. But essentially the song is still the same. We covered the Ram Jam version from 1979. But after our version came out, we went back and researched the song and heard the original version by Lead Belly. It’s just so different. It is like when you listen to Robert Johnson’s work – there is so much power that those guys could do with just their voice and an acoustic guitar.
Pyongyang calls ‘Freedom Edge’ drills involving fighter jets and nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier ‘provocative’
North Korea has criticised a joint military exercise by South Korea, Japan and the US held this month, state media have said, saying such drills show the relationship among the three countries has developed into “the Asian version of Nato”.
On Thursday, the three countries began the large-scale joint military drills called “Freedom Edge”, involving navy destroyers, fighter jets and the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, aimed at boosting defences against missiles, submarines and air attacks.
Glastonbury festival is known for its mammoth crowds – with more than 200,000 people descending on Worthy Farm for the event each year, the huge audiences in front of the big stages are a sight to behold.
But this year festivalgoers have been left frustrated by overcrowding at smaller stages, which have led to areas being closed off to prevent crowd crushes and one act being forced to halt their set.
It has been revealed that the street and performance artist Banksy was behind a stunt during Idles’ set at Glastonbury, when an inflatable life raft holding dummy migrants was launched across the crowd.
Many in the crowd believed it to be part of Idles’ show, dovetailing with the Bristol punk band’s lyrics about immigration, criticism of rightwing governance and calls for empathy. But a representative for the band announced on Saturday that the boat was created by Banksy, and the band weren’t aware of the stunt until after the set.
My blood brother is an immigrant
A beautiful immigrant
My blood brother’s Freddie Mercury
A Nigerian mother of three
Storm is forecast to glance off Barbados on Sunday before heading through Caribbean and toward the Yucatán
Tropical Storm Beryl is forecast to become the first hurricane of the season before skirting the southern tip of Barbados in the south-eastern Caribbean on Sunday.
Beryl currently holds maximum sustained winds of 60mph (95km/h) and is traveling west at 21mph (34km/h), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.
Pyramid stage The pop balladeer brings 1980s hits Time After Time and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun to a sweltering crowd
The 80s live on in Cyndi Lauper, who takes to the Pyramid stage looking every inch the rock chick of yore in her silver bustier and matching trousers and platform trainers, beneath a blue blazer also attached with streams of icy-blue tulle. There are also fingerless net gloves.
It’s a big look, and Lauper has the energy to match it, making full use of the stage and making forays out towards the crowd. They’re here for nostalgia, as she acknowledges with her opening track, The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough, her 1985 single from the much-loved film. From there it’s on to She Bop, one of Lauper’s better-known songs, though outside the handful of classics most of the audience are baking in the mid-afternoon heat to hear.
A glimmer of optimism greets the likely end of the Conservatives, but few hold out hope for the next five years
As she stopped to chat under a sign calling on people to “Vote Out to Help Out”, Ellie Lee said she was excited to be spending what is expected to be the final days of the Conservative government at Glastonbury festival.
“We are very excited to get rid of the Tories,” the 29-year-old, sporting a Fuck the Tories necklace, said. “All of my adult life has been the Tories, basically. It will be so nice to have a bit of change, and a bit of optimism.”
Guardian photographer David Levene was granted exclusive access to the 13-strong band, and captured all of the buildup and preparations, as well as the performance, when they debuted on the festival’s Pyramid stage on Friday
A dive into the history of the UK’s music festivals is life-enhancing, while two disturbing investigative series tackle toxic dumping in Wales and the origins of vaping
Here’s a lovely series for a Glastonbury weekend: Sonic Fields, an intimate, welcoming set of shows about the history of UK festivals. It’s made by the independent podcast maker Sam Tyler, who made the endearing There Are No Greater Heroes five-parter about the obscure psych-folk trio Tony, Caro and John. I loved it, and I love this series, too.
Follow along as the action heats up at Worthy Farm with reviews, photos and more, while we look forward to Little Simz, Camila Cabello and Coldplay
Pyramid stage, 12pm
Forty minutes before Afrobeat maestro Femi Kuti begins, the crowd are already beginning to gather for the soundcheck. An a cappella run of Oyimbo, with its repeated chant “All in the name of peace”, teases the show’s narrative.
In conversation with the Guardian at the festival, Paul and Phil Hartnoll recalled their culture-changing sets of the 90s – and whether they killed off Top of the Pops
At today’s genre-bending Glastonbury, it’s hard to imagine hard lines ever being drawn between electronic and rock music. But 30 years ago, when Orbital played their first-ever Pyramid stage set, thereby inching the “indie kids” towards techno, it represented a landmark moment for the festival and for British music culture.
Brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll were reflecting on how the festival has changed – and their own part in shifting it from a traditionally rockist event to the more accommodating one today – while in conversation with the Guardian’s chief pop music critic Alexis Petridis on Saturday morning.
The Troxy, London E1 Undimmed by the decades, the Deal sisters mark the 30th anniversary of their classic album Last Splash with a masterclass in off-kilter melody
The first thing that twin Breeders guitarists Kim and Kelley Deal do when they hit the stage is begin feverishly adjusting their amps and effects pedals, calibrating their racket just so. The late Steve Albini, who engineered multiple albums for the four-piece, once noted band leader Kim Deal’s “absolute persistence in trying to achieve the sound in her head”. It was gushing hyperbole from a man known for his acid tongue.
The sound in Deal’s head remains both redolent of the grunge era, and gloriously, goofily free of it. The Breeders deal in bounding basslines, sticky guitars, weird noises and Kim’s own melodic vocals – all present on Saints, the band’s opening track tonight – and re-administered at various titrations across the course of 90 minutes. “Summer is ready when you are!” sings Deal sweetly, of the pleasures of going to the fair – her midwestern girl-next-door manner long providing camouflage for the obsessive sound architect within.
Llangollen international musical eisteddfod More than merely a mutual love-in, this tour finds the two bands – and longterm friends – spurring each other on to be provocative and potent
Thirty years after they toured together as young men across Europe, cementing a lifelong friendship, Manic Street Preachers and Suede’s UK co-headline tour kicks off in rather more refined surroundings: a white pavilion on the edges of the pretty market town of Llangollen, launching the town’s 77-year-old international festival of music and literature.
The Blackwood-born-and-bred Manics may headline tonight on home turf (the bands are rotating the billing on this tour), but Brett Anderson bounces on to the stage at 7.25pm nevertheless, a Tiggerish gladiator determined that Suede win the crowd over. They do so audaciously, kicking off with the little known, darkly energetic 2022 album track Turn Off Your Brain and Yell, followed quickly by 1997 hit Trash (which Manics’ frontman James Dean Bradfield called his favourite Suede song in an interview last year).
The Leicester-raised musician on avoiding ‘nasty lads’, the power of putting on costumes and his anguish at having to sack the band’s frontman
Born in Salford in 1980 and raised in Leicester, Serge Pizzorno is the co-founder and songwriter of Kasabian. Its four members met at school in the 90s. Inspired by Britpop and rave, they signed to Sony in the early 00s and released a string of hits including LSF, Club Foot and Fire, scoring six UK No 1 albums and headlining stadiums. In 2020, Kasabian announced it had asked singer Tom Meighan to leave the band before his conviction for assault against his partner Vikki Ager. Pizzorno now fronts the band. Their eighth album, Happenings, is released on 5 July, with a hometown show in Victoria Park on 6 July.
This is me in Victoria Park in Leicester. I was a curious, quiet and thoughtful three-year-old, and I loved that jumper. I suppose the colours are like the Italian flag – my dad was from Genoa and he was keen his heritage was passed on to the next generation.
From cinema programmers to orchestra CEOs, figures across the arts world reveal what 14 years of Tory rule has done to the sector – and whether a change of government would improve anything
The October 2023 statement from Leeds music and clubbing venue Sheaf St did not mince its words. “Sadly, the world is not on our side right now,” it said, before shutting its doors for the last time. “Our industry is facing a real crisis, post-pandemic, with low attendance, rising costs, increasing fees, significantly reduced spend, and skyrocketing utilities and stock costs. The business is no longer sustainable and cannot recover.” Sheaf St had established itself at the heart of a creative community. It combined high-profile dance acts (Nicky Siano, DJ Yoda, Crazy P and many more) with a generous approach to engagement that included open-deck sessions and yoga classes. Sadly, this wasn’t enough.
Across the country, similar stories abound. These tales of decline, struggle and eventual defeat encompass every artistic discipline, at every level. They include nightclubs and classical orchestras, comedy venues and theatres, independent cinemas and grassroots music venues. There are threats to public service broadcasting and a sense of almost complete abandonment of arts provision in state schools. The arts pyramid is in danger of collapse. This crisis represents a tangible threat to a huge national income generator (£108bn in 2021) and a primary source of UK soft power. But of course, it’s much more than that.
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