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#MYLDN (1318)

After leaving “an important part of my brain somewhere, somewhere in a field in Somerset” (sorted for pulp paraphrase) I have returned to the streets of West London…

What unites all these wonderful characters and cultures this week? Nothing other than geography. We live together in the same space. That is it. The sense of community in this neighbourhood is strong and it doesn’t matter where you are from or how long you have been here. If you live here, you are in. You belong. End of.

London has the structure and population of an ant colony but we do not work as a collective. We work as individuals who’s focus is on ourselves rather than the greater good. Ants understand that if they all join forces and share the load they can achieve all that is necessary for a harmonious and productive society . We do not understand this because if we did, we would do it. So we are basically dumber than ants.

At best we work within mini groups, be they neighbourhood communities, religions, football teams or families. These are tribes that exist within the colony but who do not co-operate together. To survive we will need to understand we are one big tribe. Only that will give us the force to fix what is broken and to survive…together we are strong, divided we are pretty useless.

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#MYLDN (1317)

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#MYLDN (1316)

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#MYLDN (1315)

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Babycakes Romero presents #MYLDN 1314

Here is a small FYI to my dedicated subscribers:

I have just updated my website so you may have noticed that you are now getting emails from wordpress.com rather than from babycakes romero. I don’t know know how to change back so guess we are stuck with it. On the plus side, it will hopefully highlight that you cannot reply to this email post as comes from donotreply@wordpress.com than directly from me (as it always has).

And again, if anyone had replied to one of my posts to the address that sent it I would never have received it so apologies for not responding but I never would have received it. If you do want to get in touch, please leave a comment or email me via contact button on my website..and if you aren’t a subscriber you can become one with a swift click on the ‘subscribe’ button on the top menu above and you will receive a daily photo from me and not much more. As the saying goes “a picture a day keeps the doctor away'”, no wait, that’s apples, sorry, it might boost your mood but you can’t count it as 1 of your 5 a day I’m afraid..

muchos muchos bcr x

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GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 6 (Sun 30th June)

  • If you gonna go bright on the festival outfit you gotta stay chipper
  • Jeff Goldblum fans leave 15mins into his set cos he was so friggin weird and just whitttered on about nothing rather than actually play any music.
  • The Hackney Colliery Brass band – best thing we saw all weekend. They even did a bangin version of Prodigy’s out of Space
  • Now this is doing Glasto in style. We saw Mavis perform at the Pyramid and she was superb and deserved this incredible on-site vehicle, beautifully designed by Joe Rush who also created Pangea and Glastonbury on Sea.
  • fat white family vs festival fatigue. FWF lose.
  • This is the q for the rabbit hole on sunday night. These people clearly have no idea what they are going into otherwise they would know it is def not worth the wait.
  • What used to be Arcadia, now Pangea. The MC declared to the crowd..”this is not EDM, this is D&B” Ok, cheers, thanks for clearing that up.
  • The giant spider is dead! Long live the giant umm crane!
  • Dawn at the stone circle (she’s the one on the left in the red jacket – drum roll puh-lease!)
  • A guy holding a cross, a guy dancing to no music and a guy who looks like he has his hands down some other guy’s shorts…welcome to the Stone Circle.
  • A ton fuck of people turn up for this ancient Glasto ritual which involves wathcing the sun rise whilst off your head and spending 2 hours trying to find your mates

And so we survived another Glasto. Just about. Hope you enjoyed my skew-whiff vision of Glasto (is there any other kind?) This was MYGLSTO but you can be sure that everyone out of the 200 odd thousand people on site would have had a different one. I have tried to show you a Glastonbury festival that you won’t see on TV. The one away from the main stages. And also to show you that it ain’t for everyone. Not as a warning just in the pursuit of an honest depiction.

And in all honesty I’m not even sure if it’s still for me. I have slightly lost the desire to dealing with crowds of that size and as there is more of a sheep mentality now at Glasto (see rabbit hole q for perfect example) which creates giant walking dead style herds of festival zombies lurching from main act to main act rather than venturing off the beaten track, it can become overwhelming. And having just read that they’ve had approval to increase capacity by another 20,000 that kinda puts the fear in me.

I also felt this year there was a lack of mixing between the multitude of sub-genres and musical tribes present. I liked that everyone moved between worlds but people tend to stay more in their respective camps these days. The ravers, the rock heads, the popsters, the hippies, the vaudevillians, the bucket list baby boomers, the poshos, the locals, the workers, the middle class munters..these independent worlds have always existed at Glasto but it felt like there used to be more crossover between them which for me was the best thing as you got to speak and hang out with folk from different bubbles to your own. I also judge a festival on the quality of the stop and chats and I would have to say it was definitely down on previous years. But that could have been me. I gotta feel it and I guess I wasn’t.

This year was in some ways one of the easiest (no rain, no mud, tent with shade, wangled an on-site vehicle pass) but also one of the toughest. Having been to a few smaller festivals of late which are all the fun, none of the aggro, it felt like a slog. We were slightly battered on arrival (after an unintentional run of nights in the lead up to the festival – textbook error) which meant we were maybe a bit jaded and too weary to deal with such a humungous event.

And without wishing to end on a downer (but I feel it would be disingenuous to not mention) I am also finding it very difficult these days to party with carefree abandon with the looming climate apocalypse lurking over us. Its a proper buzzkill and finding it harder and harder to shut it out and keep pretending all is well when it clearly isn’t. I just feel we need to put everything on hiatus until we sort out this shit show. Glasto should be a celebration of life but I just don’t feel like there is much worth celebrating right now. We need to take action not fuck around with frivolities. At least till this mother of all messes is dealt with. And yes, it was great they banned plastic bottles this year but that is a drop in the ocean (pun obvs intended) to what needs to be done.

And I think deep down it is having an effect on everyone but its the ‘elephant in the field’ no-one is really willing to discuss. And no amount of intoxicating substances can wash away the feeling that we are ignoring impending doom. If it is an emergency, which has been proven unequivocally, why aren’t we still not acting like its one? Why are we still doing all this shit? I love dancing in fields to great music whilst hugging strangers as much as the next festival go’er but maybe this isn’t the time? Just sayin…

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    GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 5 (Sat 29th June)

    • Elvis on Sea dancing to the Black Kat Boppers. We danced to about 4 hi-tempo rockabilly tracks in 90 degree heat and then had to sit in the shade for about 4 hours to recover.
    • They had clearly done the same
    • You can’t altho at the prices they were charging everywhere for food you kinda felt like you were…
    • A massive crowd descended on the hill at the Park for the ‘not secret at all’ gig by Foals who then all got up as soon as it started as they realise they couldn’t hear it from where they were.
    • White supremacist tipi anyone?
    • By sat eve the revellery was staring to take its toll…
    • I’m sorry, we don’t have Satanic Milk, soy & oat only…
    • The 5g mast not very cleverly disguised as a giant antenna atop a souvenir hut.
    • Hot Chip innit
    • Their finale was to set the stage on fire – impressive altho how they got that past health & safety I do not know.
    • The view from the roof of Emily’s caravan..
    • Slamboree
    • Dawn

    By Saturday we had officially run out of steam and stayed true to our intention and didn’t leave the park area for the entire day and night which was bliss. Each area is like a festival it is own right so there is enough entertainment on offer without having to go anywhere. It was also friggin boiling so a 10min stroll rendered you beaten and battered from the heat which made an excursion to anywhere not that enticing.

    When you first get to the festival you’re like all “I wanna see that, and that, and them, and we gotta do that and go there and there and there and etc etc” – by the time Saturday rolls around you’re like “I just wanna go where’s near..and where there is shade. My favourite act of all time who I have never seen playing on the John Peel Stage at the other end of site in 45 minutes? I would, its just I really need a sit down and a cuppa tea n a bit of cake…

    So we stayed put and sat on the hill below the Glastonbury Hollywood style sign and we watched as maybe half the site seemed to slowly join us from every corner of the festival. So you think, well, if you’re willing to trot across town for an hour to get to this spot its probably worth me for me doing sweet fuck all to stay here. Egernomic energy conservation is key at Glatstonbury. It is definitely a marathon race not a sprint.

    We saw Hot Chip and then hit the Bimble where we saw more brilliant bands. 2manyTs were dynamite and Slamboree were superb, even though they were a redux version, normally having 14 members, down to just 3 but they blew it up. Big time. Their frontwoman had an amazing stage presence, commanding the crowd completely.

    There was a drum n bass/dubstep influence to a lot of the bands we saw, even the brass bands and together they felt like a whole new genre, delivering electronic dance vibes with live musicians. Westside U.K bands fusing their urban inspirations with their own spin, a fresh hybrid which consequently felt like the most exciting and interesting thing on site.

    When you get music genre mash ups that combine to make an entire new thing, spliced together from divergent influences, both musically and geographically, that couldn’t exist anywhere else, you see that cultural cross pollination is the way forward..

    We were still rollin at dawn which is actually pretty easy at Glasto as it gets so light so early and we strolled around and saw who was still standing and who were casualties of a long hot Saturday night on Worthy farm…just one more mega day to go..just knowing that filled us with energy, we knew we were on the home straight, we had been on the ropes, our knees had buckled but we never went down…the finish line was now in sight…

    Tomorrow: Sunday. The last day. to be continued!

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    GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 4 (Fri 28th June)

    • Trump with breasts swinging a plastic chicken is maybe not the best thing to see when you’re wasted..instant trauma and this was in the healing fields…
    • The slogans have spoken
    • Some people went to extreme lengths to not get split up in the crowds
    • I cannot tell you how many times I saw these scenarios around site at Glastochella
    • I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was actually at a Rosalia gig
    • The Brass Funkies at Funkingham Palace – they were superb and 1 of 3 brass bands we saw which were the highlight of our Glasto
    • The man with the bunny ears applauds the people who were dumb enough to queue up for 1hr + to get into the rabbit hole
    • Meanwhile The Bimble Inn gets rollin…
    • Superb brass band No. 2: Das Brass

    We marched all over site on Friday and even though it had seemed packed uptil that point the crowds seemed to have doubled since the day before. Dealing with the mob in downtown Glasto (around the main stages) is pretty full on and not for the feint hearted. It’s a slog and you see lots of people who seem completely overwhelmed by the scale of it all and the amount of folk they have to fend through to get to their chosen destination. This is the bit they do not see on the TV.

    Every time I mentioned that I was going to Glasto or that have just been to Glasto, the response is always the same…”Oh, I’ ve always wanted to go there. I would like to see it, just once”. It has become one of those bucket list things like the northern lights or Machu Picchu. IT is now something everyone wants to experience but it is definitely not for everyone. Not at all. It is an extreme event, an endurance test and ideally you need to be pretty wasted pretty much all of the time to deal with it.

    Glasto used to be full of mostly munters and musos, party people who are willing to do what is necessary. These days you tend to get a lot more tourists who are there to see the spectacle rather than necessarily participate in it in this way. This has changed the feel of the festival considerably and it now feels different to how it did. Not that anyone doesn’t deserve to be there or can’t do it how they want to do it. Glasto should be anything but exclusive, everyone is welcome but it has altered the vibe.

    it used to be mainly heavy duty hedonists that was attracted to Glasto which created a certain atmosphere. In the current era, pretty much everyone and their grandma now want to go to Glasto. So as a result, it sells out in half an hour so it basically boils down to who has the fastest broadband is who gets to go.

    Its not about it getting more commercial because it had to move with the times and think that Emily Eavis has done a magnificent job of transforming it and making it relevant to a new generation by diversifying the acts which has successfully diversified the crowd. It needed to evolve to survive but it has also diluted the Glastonbury spirit, in my opinion and in my experience there. And I will come back to this concept of personal perspective and projection in my final Glasto post on Sat…(bonus blog day so I could cram it all in, aren’t you lucky?)

    After our massive trek across site we came back to the Bimble Inn and had the best time out of anywhere we had been so decided we were going to park up in the Park (park pun intended) and have our fun without the aggro of having to get to it in the first place. This is often my policy in my home town and Glasto is actually a lot like London. Its massive and not just one place, its lots and lots of places sandwiched together and sometimes the best thing you can do is stay local and enjoy what is on offer on your doorstep…

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    GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 3 (Thurs 27th June)

    By the time Thursday came along everything was in full swing, although so much had already happened I felt like I had been there a week and could barely remember anything before arriving on site..I was sure I used to have a life before Glasto, I just couldn’t quite recall what it was. The festival is so friggin enormous (the size of Sunderland apparently) and so all encompassing you forget there is anything beyond its walls…

    New arrivals getting stuck in at The Bimble Inn, which was our favourite venue on site…great vibe, great bands. It is up on the hill in the ParK Area behind the big ribbon tower so people who are willing & wanting to steer away from the masses come here because they know there is a ton of fun to be had off the heavily beaten tracks of the main areas.

    If you want to see your favourite band best get there early.

    One crucial thing we learnt very early on and from previous years…if you see a crowd heading somewhere en masse go in the opposite direction and you can’t go far wrong. At normal festivals you would do the opposite but at Glasto there is so much cool shit to see it really doesn’t matter where you are. You do not need or want to follow the hoards. You wanna basically zig when they zag. Not everyone realises this as there are so many first timers who don’t really know where to go and you could see them marching around looking for the party not realising that they ARE the party. You make the fun wherever you are not where you were told to go. You have to be adventurous and explore. Glasto rewards the brave and the bold.

    But sometimes you just can’t avoid ’em. Glasto has the same sized population as Iceland (the country not the supermarket altho apparently there was a supermarket on site selling sarnies in biodegradable packaging but we never found it) there were times when staying away from the crowd wasn’t possible. On Thursday the site was already rammed with folk there but none of the stages open till the following day so the whole site descends on block 9, unfair playground and Shangri-la, the late night venues scattered across the top end.

    Block 9 – just like the apocalypse, but with mebbe less cannibalism and with mebbe more massive sound systems, amazing light shows and munted ravers…

    Meet you by the guy with the big sword..

    This is Icon the new stage which looked like a cross between 1984 & 2001. The movies not the years..although by the way a lot of the ravers were dressed you would have thought it was 1989 not 2019.

    Meanwhile in the Rocket Lounge, vintage vibes rocked & rolled em…

    Went to see our friend Gus aka Lazlo legezer in the early hours play a superb drum n bass set in the giant mouth tent (don’t know name) in the Unfair playground that had ’em spinin’ out…

    ok, caption comp..the fella on the right has clearly said somit that didn’t go down too well with the girl on left. Please send your entries to babycakesromero@gmail.com and the winner will get a lifetime subscription to my blog…

    On the way home we stumbled upon this gang. The girl on right was mc’ing really quite badly to a makeshift sound system in a shopping trolley pumping out D&B but we cheered her on cos that is the Glasto spirit. its all about supporting & rewarding effort…

    We even managed to pop to the seaside on the way back, visiting Glastonbury on Sea: a giant seaside pier built out of steel. ‘Nuff said.

    Back in the pod, the lucky folk who had bagged it were settling in for the night. Made mental note to try again next night..

    You might have noticed by this point that all my pictures are mostly blurred with whacked out trippy light swirly affairs. All I can say is this is what my camera captured. The colours you see are the way it came out. The odd thing is that is mostly how it looked to me at the time. My retinas seem somehow, quite inexplicably, to be able to relay the information they are processing directly into my shutter – how that is possible I know not but am very happy my equipment and my warped sensory perception have this symbiotic connection. The ultimate fusion of man & machine. Or just a shaky hand with a long exposure. I prefer the first theory personally…

    Tomorrow’s episode: Friday! When the festival actually officially begins and bands you have heard of start to play. The likes of which I fail to see as am ensconced elsewhere. People who watch Glasto on Tv can’t really comprehend that what they see is only a fraction of the festival, and in my opinion, not the best bit about it all. The greatest thing about Glasto is all the little tents, the bands and djs you have never heard of, the ones you stumble upon by accident…the ones you will never know their name but you will remember the moment forever…possibly. Ok, unlikely, but you lived it and that’s the main thing, right?

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    GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 2 (wed 26th June)

    Thursday used to be the warm up day for the festival. Then the warm up day got its own warm up day and now Wednesday is a big day in its own right. At this rate people are going to start coming for their 2 week summer holiday ..but that won’t work because you would then need a 2 week holiday to recover..

    Annoyingly they weren’t there. Typical Glasto meet up.

    Devices at the ready…we’re goin in.

    This festival go’er was lost & trying to find the location of her temporary dwellings after having pulled an all-nighter. She had taken a photo of a nearby stage the night before so she would be able to find but it wasn’t helping. There are apparently tons of tents which are found at the end of the festival which are full of unpacked bags where Gglastoheads have arrived, dumped their stuff, gone out that night, and then never managed to find their tent again for the rest of fest due to having successfully failed to secure their whereabouts before going off and getting wasted. Ouch

    Cinemaggedon – an incredible collection of sooped up vintage cars n hotrods to hang in at the drive-in whilst you watch you a movie…

    ..or use to catch up on some kip.

    Fatboy Slim turned up and performed a ‘not so secret’ silent disco set as the film rolled. Crowd went suitably nuts..

     

    Incredible pod thing you could hang out in a la Park. Made mental note to return and utilise but subsequently forgot to check mental notes so never managed to actually get in…

    Kicking off at the deluxe diner.

    Standing up for alien rights…

    ..and it was great to see so many unicorns at Glasto this year, diversity really improving, although think orc numbers could still be improved..

    Just in case crowd got lairy…

    Drum n bass was back big time all over site this year..just like it never went away. #90stakeover2019

    One day of rubbish…

     

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    GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 1 (tues 25th June)

    We arrived at Worthy Farm on Tuesday afternoon and sailed in. Well, we drove in actually, we weren’t in a boat. The hoards wouldn’t arrive till tomorrow so we were able to get on site easily and get our tent pitched up on the hill overlooking the Park area next to a tree. This turned out to be the greatest move we ever made as it meant we had shade every morning till midday which was a first. When its hot at a festival you normally have to vacate your tent by 8am as it becomes nuclear by then. By getting several hours kip in each night (well, each morning) meant we were able to give our bodies ‘n’ brains some rest which allowed us (just about) to get through an insanely full-on week of revelling in the biggest musical festival on the planet…

    Rule No.1 – pack light.

    Dr. Zoidberg warmly greeted us into the festival..

    Glasto gets poolitcal. (one bad pun surely deserves another?)

    Glasto tourists wait for the big crane at Arcadia to burst out its fireballs.

    Clearly every crowd was catered for at Glasto…

    The Unfair playground

    On the first night we went to the crew bar at Shangri-la and it was going off. On a tuesday! Everyone was already flying high and raving hard. It was kicking off more than most festival at their peak. You realise that Glasto is actually a crew party, the punters are just along for the ride…and pay for it. There are around 50,000 people working at the festival and by the time the festival starts they have been going at it for about two weeks. It is their contribution and dedication to partying which makes Glasto begin in full swing at full tilt with no run up…

    This guy above was jumping up and down repeatedly into a bin so that he could crush the cans inside. We never found out quite why unless he was just being duly diligent…or had a thing about cans. Or bins.

    We found out on arrival that the whole of the festival was being used as a 5g testing site. No choice. No consent. This did not feel me with joy. More of that later on in week…

    We saw many casualties even on the first night. At Glasto no-one knows how to hold back. It just isn’t an option.

    Eco Car

    This was a sculpture of a turtle that had been caught up in a ton of plastic and other human waste items. It was designed so you could hang out inside of it but highlighted the damage we are causing to the oceans and its inhabitants, which to be honest, was a bit of a buzz kill (laughing face with tears, crying face with tears)

    The view from our tent

     

    To be continued….

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    #MYLDNites (1313)

    Some london nitelife shots this week from my b’n’w MYLDNites series, all taken in a variety of clubs around the city. Different music, different crowds, different vibes wherever you go. Musical tribes tend to segregate into their own worlds and stick fiercely to their chosen genres and fellow folk who are all into the same tunes and vibe. We congregate with our own and feel that we are doing it as it should be and other versions of the same thing don’t quite do it as well. And yet, everyone thinks that so we can’t all be right…

    I like to move between worlds and see how everyone is doing it, not just one corner. The more scenes you see the more you realise they are much more similar than they would believe. What they all have in common are the 3 ds: drinking, dancing & drugs, the holy trinity of nitelife which exist in some combination in every place you go to. We tend to want to hang out in crowds who like the same tunes because that makes us feel we are not only right to like this version of music but that we belong. When you cannot connect with the sounds you are surrounded by, you feel like an outsider and that immediately alienates you from those around you.

    Life is tribal in almost every way and nothing more than music.  I have just got back from Glastonbury and this festival which has every single strain of music represented shows this better than anything. Strangely the experience for everyone is largely the same but we tend to fixate on the differences even though the similarities outweigh them. I might delve into this more next week when I post up shots from Glasto as it is a great example of how what should unite us still managed to divide us.

    (p.s sorry bit late today, blame Glasto)

     

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    #MYLDNites (1312)

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    #MYLDN(ites) 1311

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    #MYLDN (1310)

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    #MYLDN (1309)

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    #MYLDN (1308)

    Words on the street this week, a variety of scrawled statements telling you how it is…I think you can learn a lot from walls personally. They speak the truth delivered with either humour or hate. These two for example, indicate a reasonable amount of resentment for a much maligned minority but they are probably one of the only demographic who you can freely abuse without fear of recrimination. Just  like hipsters. And men who wear socks with sandals. And fans of Celine Dion. And Celine Dion…

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    #MYLDN (1307)

    dear Wall,

    Got it! umm, but just so we clear tho, what was it you wanted me to lose?

    it’s just I don’t want to get rid of the wrong thing by mistake…

    look forward to hearing from you

    kind regards

    b romero.

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    #MYLDN (1306)

    really? shit, i’d better go do something..

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    #MYLDN (1305)

    ..in case you needed reminding…