For five days, I dropped off the face of the earth and into the sparkling fluorescent world of Glastonbury. Notorious for its epic line-ups and the masses of mash-ups [Br. slang: "people who party and do drugs and stuff"], the Glastonbury Music Festival (June 22nd – June 26th) is arguably the world’s largest. Friends who have gone in years past have bragged about the surprise guest performances, the over-the-top interactive art installations and the head- bopping, dancing maniacs that make Glastonbury the legend that it is. But even with the inside gossip I had no idea what I was in for. This is my story: This is Glastonbury.

DAY ONE

We boarded a bus and left London before the sun came up. This would be the first of many moments over the next five days that would feel unnatural. With backpacks, crates of cider and a few hundred glow sticks we began the pilgrimage to Worthy Farm, a few hours southwest of London. Two hours into the journey it started to rain. With every drop that fell, I watched with horror as the ground swelled and the puddles emerged, and the voice in my head asked, “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” The rain persisted through the morning, but the sun came out long enough for us to partake in the traditional first cider at Brothers Bar, a tavern on the Glastonbury concert-grounds. This cider should not be called cider–”cider” makes it seem sweet and harmless, and with a percentage of alcohol at 7%, it is lethal. It tastes like sunshine, but it is lethal The night turns into a dizzying muddy haze of hilarity. We all pass out in the dark. Welcome to Glastonbury.

DAY TWO

Rain hammering down on my tent rouses me from my cider-induced coma. Where. The. Fuck. Am. I? With my eyes closed I listen to the sounds of Pennards Hill, which is one of the many once-grass-now-mud fields where all the young crazies camp. I emerge from the tent and look to the overcast skies before asking my mates what is for breakfast. I munch a greasy egg and bacon bap (that’s British for bread roll) like the true New York transplant that I am. It works a treat and I am on to other things. We stumble upon The Beat Hotel, and the marquee outside has an amazing line up of dubstep-electro-uptempo-dancy acts, including Erol Alkan, Romy XX and Skream. We grab a morning beer, and another and another, dancing out in the rain before lunchtime.

Morning turns to afternoon and afternoon to night. We end up drinking Skittles vodka in the Rabbit Hole and it tastes how it sounds, and then the night turns to feel how it tastes, with strobing lights, shitty house music, drinks of strange color. DRINK ME. The tented hideout is completely packed but the night air nips in through the cracks and creases. It is the coldest night at Glastonbury and no amount of potions would warm me up. I fall asleep frozen in a sleeping bag, glowing but cold.

The author, after a Glastonbury day (and night)

DAY THREE

It’s Friday and I can feel it. Today the music starts and the sun shines in the early morning, heating the tent and pushing everyone out early. We venture to the Pyramid stage and find a semi-dry spot on the hill. English hipsters Metromony brought in the big-beat funk with head bopping precision, but the Pyramid stage was perhaps too vast for them to have an impact.

Two Door Cinema Club followed, and to me, they felt like Glastonbury. They played a set that felt like it was their first ever and last ever rolled into one: all heart, no regrets. The rain began to fall again during their set, which got everyone standing and dancing.

Wu-Tang Clan woke everyone out of their indie rock trance, getting everyone to rock with their W’s up. From the hills we made our way down closer to the stage to get in on the arm-swaying and to yell, “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nothing to Fuck With.” They did a tribute to the fallen ODB and Young Dirty Bastard (his son) joined them on stage to honor their fallen member. “You down with ODB? Yeah, you know me…”

The rumours started on the walk to the Park stage; at Glastonbury everyone’s brother’s girlfriend’s cousin works back stage and can confirm it’s (insert band name here). But when the rumblings starting pinging in to mobile phones from the outside world I had to confirm. I made a 10 dollar call to my sister in Dallas to confirm and settle my fears. Pushing our way through the crowd and the mud and the rain was all worth the effort because at the end of the journey was was the holy grail of festival rumors come true. “Hi. We’re a band called Radiohead.”

Playing mostly from their new album “King of Limbs” but also singles from “In Rainbows,” the set, to me, was mellow and beautiful but many of the others felt that they should have played more of the classics. Closing with “Street Spirit,” the crowd erupted into a full-on sing-a-long love fest and I wished it could have gone on forever. But it was only 10:00pm and the night was young, the festival only in its infancy. Slipping, sliding and struggling through mud we ventured toward Bono’s voice. While I wasn’t into it right away, I’ll be the first to admit that I was singing my little heart out to “With or Without You.” After Bono said goodnight we sought shelter at the Beat Hotel, with orange lights and the people and the everything that make everyone feel warm and happy. Erol Alkan spun onto the morning getting everyone to strip down and dance until we could no longer stand.

DAY FOUR

The first act of the day: The Kills at 5pm. My hangover has a hangover. Both dressed in all black, Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart’s work their karmic magic. The set quickly gained momentum. Mosshart may be the sexiest woman in the world. Her jet black hair covered her face as she stomped around the stage and poured her voice smoothly over the gritty guitar riffs.

I stayed at the Other Stage and caught Jimmy Eat World, whom I knew nothing about, nor did I love, but dancing about like an idiot with strangers truly never loses its appeal at Glastonbury. The real reason I stayed was to secure a great spot to see Friendly Fires. It was a gamble because at the same time the other Special Guest was debuting at the Park stage. The buzz was confirming Pulp and I hoped that it was true, because in that case, I couldn’t be bothered.

Near the front of the stage, the girl next to me handed me a beer and asked if I was ready to witness “the snake hips.” I said I had no clue what she was talking about, but then the music started and I saw exactly what she meant. When lead singer Ed Macfarlane dances, “snake hips” is really the only way to describe it. They played all the hits and a few new tunes; Ed crowd-surfed and I touched–I touched– his snake hips.

Last gig of the night: Chemical Brothers headlining on the Other Stage. We pushed through the herds; we twist, we wind, we make our way into the warm womb of the crowd. Lights pulse, beats rise and drop and I could feel the baseline deep in my throat, swallowing it with each breath. Together we dropped into the music, the floor, the feeling of being young.

The gig ends at midnight and we carry on to an electronic dance tent. At 4am, the tent closes and we venture to the much acclaimed Stone Circle. I look up to the hill and see a hundred sparkling torches each with a tiny tribe huddled around. This is Glastonbury. After we found a spot, a man in a fake moustache and rainbow colored suit stood up and yelled, “Does anyone have any ketamine?” Another guy lights his Chinese lantern on fire and sends it flying into an innocent bystander’s head. We decide we will wait for sunrise, but it never comes. The clouds are too thick and it is completely light before we realise that we have missed out.

DAY FIVE

Sunday feels like a fever, hot and delirious. We head to the Pyramid stage to catch the legendary Paul Simon. We lay in the sun with cold beers and sing along to “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.” It’s a pretty nice little Sunday at Glastonbury.

We jet over to the John Peel stage (named after the sadly deceased British radio legend) and grab a great spot close to the front for Robyn. The tiny Swede comes on 25 minutes late, in peacock patterned leggings and a cut off football jersey with five inch platform Timberlands. She waves and starts DANCING LIKE A MACHINE. It was like raver girl meets early-90s fly girl, impressive to say the least. Mid-way through her first song a sound technician came out and was trying to get her ear monitors working while she was dancing and singing her heart out. He tried and tried, and she grew more and more frustrated. Finally he left the stage, and she carried on, but the problem obviously had not been fixed. During an interlude she stormed off the stage and gave the guy a piece of her mind. She stomped back on stage, picked up her mic stand and threw it down.

She. Was. Pissed.

She needlessly apologised to the crowd, and we yelled and cheered her in support. Throughout the next three songs the tech kept trying to fix the problem while she carried on with the set. She played it up by being cheeky and lifting her shirt and showing us her bare tummy and bra. We LOVED it. Many people around me were saying it was one of the best sets they had seen, and that they loved the fire she carried in her belly.

Robyn (before hurling her mic stand) at Glastonbury

Going to bed Sunday night felt normal, ears ringing, wrapped in a sleeping bag listening to the mash ups outside and the echoing DJ beats from Shangri-La. I knew that in hours, the sun would come up and I would pack my muddy clothes and board a bus back to reality. Glastonbury is perhaps the best hide-out this world has to offer. It is a place where imagination erects a world for exploration, and chaos breathes order, a place where night is day and beer is water and sleep is silly. A place to escape, just for five days.

*

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Whoever came up with the title for ‘Bad Teacher’ got it right: People like movies more when there’s absolutely no ambiguity about what they’re about. Here are 101 movies, retitled to give your brain a break.

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Watch:

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I can’t tell whether or not they’re being passive-aggressive (Thanks A LOT, “Mr. Jason O. Gilbert, for your generous contribution of TWO DOLLARS”), but, either way, uh, you’re welcome.

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The woman is upset because:

A) She thought her husband was going to take care of the lawn. B) She lives in Phillipsburg, New Jersey C) She thinks that $650.00 is too much money to pay for cutting 20 square meters of grass. [See her yard below].

I know that, on first glance, this may seem like an excessive amount of money for 15 minutes of work. The Mayor’s office claims that the charge is due to rain and the overtime they had to pay to the service. The men also had to cut the grass with little pubic hair scissors, which made the job much more time-consuming. We’re in a recession, and the local government couldn’t afford a lawn-mower: just boxes and boxes of pubic hair scissors.

Seriously, though, the Mayor need not apologize for anything. I can vouch that $650 is a reasonable amount for grass-cutting services–why, when I was a teenager, I used to charge my parents $650 to mow the yard every week. I would do the chore every Sunday after dinner and be inside also 7-hundo richer and in time to see WWF Sunday Night Heat. And guess what? My parents loved paying just $650 to mow their lawn; you should have seen what Tommy next door was charging! This was a great bargain for them! They would tell their reading club that they were paying me $1,200 just so that our neighbors wouldn’t poach me!

$650 is a totally reasonable sum of money to pay for mowing the lawn. Here’s an itemized breakdown:

Mowing the lawn – $20

Gasoline [for the lawnmower]- $5

Gasoline to drive my car to the gas station to get gasoline – $5

Gasoline to drive my car back to my house – $5

Transportation of lawn-mower (from the garage to the front yard) – $10

Sweat and color deterioration to clothes, shoes, and hat – $10

Advanced weather forecasting (to determine chance of rain, humidity, heat index, and cloud coverage) – $15

Dermatologist visit to determine weekly risk of skin cancer – $150

Medicated sunscreen, sunblock, Sun-Shield, and sun goop – $120

Union dues – $85

Keys – $10

Navigation and pre-planning – $50

Walkman, headphones, and Coolio CD – $120

Sweet lawn-mowing gloves – $15

Sundries – $30

This is before tax and a mandatory 18% gratuity, of course (my parents could be such lousy tippers to lawn-mowers!). This Phillipsburg, New Jersey woman needs to shut up and pay her bill. How are these men supposed to enjoy WWF Sunday Night Heat without $650 for 20 minutes worth of work in their pockets?

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6: 30 AM: Put on one of my many hats, be prepared to wear more hats later.

7 AM: Brainstorm with a group.

8 AM: Come up with ideas collectively but still take initiative.

9- 10 AM: Use every feature of Microsoft Office, including Excel.

10:30 AM: Type quickly and without error.

11 AM: Lay everything out in InDesign and Photoshop and/or Illustrator.

12 PM: Put myself in a challenging situation and succeed.

1 PM – 3 PM: Juggle many things at once.

3 – 5 PM: Move about in a fast-paced environment while remaining focused.

6 PM: Use good communication skills.

7 PM: Multi-task.

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Here are 101 more politicians who, similar to Anthony Weiner, should be worried about an impending scandal.

[See more jokes in 101 list format at theweekly101.tumblr.com].

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I thought that no notable website could ever out-White McSweeney’s–its patron saint-cum-mascot is named Timothy McSweeney, for God’s sake–but then here is Grantland.com, which out-Whites McSweeney’s name origin and then out-Whites it in its content, too. But first, the name: Grantland Rice was a sportswriter in the early 20th century, a time period in sports history that is most notable for the fact that no black people were allowed to play. I mean, just look at Grantland Rice’s white-person bonafides: he was the son of a cotton dealer, he was the grandson of a Confederate officer, he attended Vanderbilt–need I go on? The only way Grantland’s founders could have gone Whiter is if they had named their site Stonewall; I guess they went with Grantland since RushLimbaugh.com was taken.

Grantland, in case you missed the grand countdown clock on ESPN’s home page, is a new Bill Simmons creation that covers mostly sports with flecks of pop culture. Its writers are polished, incisive, quirky, and–perhaps most unifyingly–easily, conversationally readable. To this point Grantland is a pleasant, uncontroversial, breezy daily read; it is also very, very, very White.

For me the site has thus far been defined by its overwhelming Whiteness–not in the sense that all the writers are White (they aren’t)–but in the sense that the subjects, the asides, the soliloquies and the detached postmodern cool are all totally, unarguably White. Today’s edition of Grantland, for example, features a narrative history of hockey’s Stanley Cup; a write-up on the Congressional Country Club golf course, which will host the Tiger-less U.S. Open this weekend; a list of reasons that Canadians should still be proud of their hockey teams despite losing to Boston in the Finals last night; and, in pop culture, a Freudian analysis of the lyrics of Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Nicki Minaj.

And, oh yeah, an article by two white guys whose comedic premise is that white guys don’t understand Cricket. The tagline for this escapade:

With labor trouble threatening the ’11-12 season of two of our four major sports, two red-blooded Americans look overseas to fill the potential gap.

Manifest destiny! Classic white-people sports humor.

Am I cherry-picking? Perhaps. But anyone who has read the site thus far should not debate that Grantland is looking like the Princeton men’s basketball of web-based sports journalism. Grantland doesn’t have a theme song, but if it did, it would certainly be something by Vampire Weekend.

It is not surprising that Grantland is so preciously, inexorably White. Bill Simmons, Grantland visionary, has made a nice career out of coming across in print like your funny, smart, very White friend. When ESPN dubbed him “The Sports Guy,” it did so with a disconcerting hint of inherent racism: while Simmons might be the Everyman Voice of sports in most suburbs and Northeastern college towns, he is not the Voice of anything in any inner city barber shop or playground basketball court, I would imagine. His hallmarks are all traditionally White hallmarks: a love for Boston sports teams, an obsession with The Wire, total fascination with and astonishment at the behavior of Real World cast members. It is no surprise, then, that Simmons’ vision writ large does not so much resemble the hip future of sports journalism as it does a terrific little factory that churns out think-pieces on White culture from a White perspective written by a bunch of writers who write like Bill Simmons.

There is nothing wrong or racist about Grantland’s Whiteness, because, first, know your audience, second, know your audience, and third, know your audience. Grantland is not out to “challenge the orthodoxy” or “push any buttons” or “change the way anyone thinks,” or anything revolutionary like that. It is simply sailing along with the wind (oh, how the wind picks up as it blows out from the Vineyard!), establishing itself as the website of choice for highly-articulate sports writing about White concerns. Criticizing it for being so overwhelmingly White seems a bit like criticizing Jezebel for writing too often about women; Whiteness is written into Grantland’s DNA. It is not essential for Grantland’s long-term success, but it is essential for its short-term success at maintaining its status quo.

And so let Grantland be White. I, for one, welcome our new Whiteness-overlords, complete with its David Foster Wallace footnotes, its 8,000 word hockey think-pieces, its textual analysis of rap verses, and its token Colson Whitehead cameos. Move over, McSweeney’s: there’s a new website for 19-year-old liberal arts whiteboys to forward each other the links from, and it’s name is Grantland.

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2011 has not been a great year for songs that I like to air guitar while naked to. It (the year, not my nudity) has been dominated by non-air-guitarrable down-tempo stuff like James Blake, Panda Bear, and Fleet Foxes. How the hell am I supposed to rock out with my cock out to Bon Iver? Justin Vernon is up in the woods, and he didn’t bring his electric guitar or delay pedals.

Despite the best efforts of depressed white men to totally drain 2011 of all hard-ass guitar licks, this year’s releases have provided a few additions to my naked air guitar catalogue. If you are wondering why anyone would have a “naked air guitar catalogue,” then this article is not for you. If you enjoy playing the air guitar while naked after getting out of your shower, bed, or significant other, then you get it: strap on your invisible Les Paul, take off all your clothes (actually, reverse those two–it’s going to be pretty difficult to take off your clothes with an invisible guitar strap over your shoulder), and get ready to windmill your arm around like a crazy person to 2011′s Best Songs to Air Guitar Naked to In Your Room.

The Strokes – “Under Cover of Darkness”

You hear that riff? That is some take-off-your-pants, grab the neck of a fake guitar, and pretend-you-know-chord-fingerings rock n roll. When I air guitar to this, I like to raise my shoulders up on the third note of the riff–the really high note–and then slowly lower them as the chord resolves. There’s all kinds of fun up-and-down jangle-guitar going on throughout “Under Cover of Darkness” that makes this a surefire classic in the naked air guitar anthem canon. Well done, Strokes. My naked body salutes you.

When to naked air guitar to this song: 3 AM, so drunk that you rip off all your clothes in the common room of your apartment, as your horrified roommates try to put a towel around your waist to shield your genitals from their girlfriends.

Times New Viking – “Fuck Her Tears”

It doesn’t hurt that this song is called “FUCK HER TEARS”–many of the great air guitar shredders have similarly hard-ass fuck-all names (think “Back in Black” and “Rebel Rebel”). Before the guitar even starts out on this one, the song title “Fuck Her Tears” makes me want to get some intimidating bicep tattoos and some intimidating bicep muscles and just wail, man, just pick up a Les Paul and fucking wail. NAKED. The actual track isn’t quite so intimidating or shit-kicking as you might expect for a tune about tear-fucking, but believe my denuded self when I say that this song still kicks some serious shit.

When to naked air guitar to this song: Heartbroken, fresh out of a relationship, fresh out of the shower, right before a night out in which you intend to get blasted and meet someone new, perhaps in front of the mirror after you apply deodorant, or while applying deodorant.

The Vaccines – “Norgaard”

If there is one knock on this peppy dreamer of a rock song, it’s that it’s too short; but let’s be honest, when you’re air guitarring naked to a song, an overly-long run-time can really wear on an air-riffer’s endurance. Though there is something to be said for getting all sweaty when playing the skin guitar, sweat is not always wanted when pounding away on your Gibson-less Gibson.

When to naked air guitar to this song: After a mutually successful love-making session with a partner that you really like to goof around with, jumping softly up and down on the bedroom floor so as to not disturb the neighbors below.

Arctic Monkeys – Brick by Brick

“Brick by Brick” comes to you from an Arctic Monkeys LP called “Suck It and See,” and I’m sure once you suck in “Brick by Brick” you will see that it is a perfect song to play the air guitar while naked to. It’s got that great big riff, a bar-room drunk guitar solo, and the phrase “I WANNA ROCK N ROLL” repeated over and over again. If you’re looking for something a little more evil for your naked air guitar repertoire, “Brick by Brick” is your song, Naked Person Air Guitarring.

When to naked air guitar to this song: Seducing a woman at a cocktail party; standing on the ledge of the roof of a tall skyscraper, at an after-hours drug-fueled powwow with college buddies and girls who wear headbands.

Fucked Up – David Comes to Life

Full disclosure: I have yet to naked air guitar to this song. Another disclosure: the choice of “A Little Death” is a bit arbitrary; I could have chosen almost any song off Fucked Up’s new album “David Comes to Life” for this 2011 naked air guitar round-up, as basically every track from the LP rocks space face with some grungy-ass guitar. That said, I am confident that “A Little Death”–especially the guitar solo starting around 3:25–is going to make for some fine invisible axe work the next time I am naked. And by “the next time I am naked,” I mean “right now,” as I am naked right now.

When to naked air guitar to this song: Right now. I am drunk and naked and ready to air guitar.

Until next time: keep on fake-rocking in the nude world, fellow naked air guitarists! COWABUNGA.

The post The Best Songs of 2011 to Air Guitar to While Naked in Your Room: A Guide appeared first on The Faster Times.

The last time I saw this headline it was on RedTube.

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