Saturday 21 March 2015

Kanye West At Glastonbury Is Perfect

In what appears to becoming an annual tradition, people are moaning about the Glastonbury Headliner and debating what is "the right type of music" for the headline slot, because whilst rap has been at Glastonbury for years it's apparently inappropriate to have it playing the main stage on the final night.

This flies in the face of the entire history of the event as one of the biggest melting pots of music going in the UK (well, if you like middle-class blandness and faux-shock) and not, as some folks are claiming "a rock event". It makes you wonder how people are defining rock, beyond 'band with a guitar, what I like', as I thought the big bitch about last years headline (who went down really well) was that they were too rock. Or maybe it's not well known enough to be up there (I'm sure some of his 81 million sales have happened in the UK), even if the complaint about The Rolling Stones was that they were too old to excite the crowd (which they did). Or maybe they think it's too Pop, like Beyonce (who went down incredibly well) in 2011.  Or maybe they think that the audience just won't like rap, like when they all loved having Jay-Z headline in 2008.

Now, there are a lot of people commenting that the problem is with Kanye West The Person. This is a valid viewpoint, because as the President Of The United States of America said, "He's a jackass" (presumably the words "irritating fuckwit who keeps on wrecking award shows" aren't presidential). He is, he really, really is. But that's an irreverence, because if you were to ban annoying, arrogant, opinionated people from the event then you would have half the bill empty, along with half the venue. It's also missing the fact that, as one of the greatest producers of a generation, that he has earned that arrogance. Because what he does he does unbelievably well, Including his live shows, which have flamethrowers in them (so he's basically Rammsteinn but using the word "Nigger" to highlight the ills of racism).

So what you have is a controversial booking of a highly successful and talented artist, that has managed to cause a controversy by being a bit outside of the box whilst having the professionalism and popularity to go down an absolute charm at the event. Further proof that Michael Eavis is a genius because he's managed to book a perfect act for his event. It's also proof that Glastonbury has got so big (thanks to the BBC) that people going 'I don't like it' is now a story that somehow shows the raw, racial undercurrents of the modern world, rather than the real headline of "IDIOT CONFUSES GLASTONBURY WITH V-FEST".

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