What an o(l)dd Glastonbury…

So old. So old they all seem. Springsteen. Young. The Specials. Madness. Fecks sake, Status Quo, Francis Rossi, pony tail gone. And the youngest member of them who joined sometime after I paid attention looking… well… old.

This is what it means to be young. The camera as it panned the crowd seemed only to pick up on the bizarre divergence between those on stage and those off.

And don’t get me wrong. My God, Neil Young could do the smash the guitar to shreds and leave it wailing feedback as if he’d invented it. The Specials looked… well, Terry Hall and Co. looked like men who’d just found ska rather than long-timers working away at it. Springsteen and the band were as compelling as ever.

They rocked. Sort of.

But then look at Blur, dragged out with young Damon Albarn (two years younger than me as it happens) looking oddly haggard, the rest of the band looking… well. I wouldn’t put too much into the solo careers guys. Let’s put it that way.

There were other bands. The Prodigy. No, wait, they didn’t look that young either.

Moving to younger bands…Pendulum, a sort of Prodigy redux, all bluster and keyboards and Green Day nonsense in terms of song writing, but without the depth… which can’t be right.

Kasabian. I have to admit to a soft spot for them. But what possessed them to decide to dress like 70s rockers?

This must be a weird time to be young. I mean really young. Under 20. At least. A world inhabited by the grey or the greying.

I know someone who can’t talk yet, and whose only conception of ‘music’ is jigging along to the sound on a stereo. I wonder what she makes of it all. And what she’ll make of it as time passes? What sense of ownership she will have as this culture ages.

I know I sure as hell don’t understand it.