is that 1 of the beegees ... ?

its defo barry gibb

Thanks dude! It is actually Andrew Kerr, he organised the first 'Glastonbury Fair' in 1971, due to his thinking that all other festivals were too commercial! The estimated attendance was 12,000 and entry was free.
NB. Pistol has done his homework!

That was the Blues festival at the Bath & West Showground held in September, that went on to inspire the Summer festival we have now!

Go away and leave me alone now, I have cutting to do!

'I have tea to cook' next to the Crass logo is all wrong!!!!

Lots of Glastonbury history can be found here:

www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/history/

And here:

www.glastoearth.com/40-years-of-glastonbury

Got my tickets today good times

I'm co-managing a stage this year. Come and say hello - we've got a fab line-up:
lyrixorganix.co.uk/news/glastonbury-2/

fingerz - that's an old levellers sticker...where did you get it?!!

Pistol - I have a friend playing on the spirit of 71 stage so i'll defo be around there. i'll look you up!

Quality line up indeed, seen a few of those names at the Chai wallah spaces before

Look forward to it mate!

Official Glastonbury 2011 Mobile App Launches

For Android and iphone (soon on Nokia)

We're pleased to announce that the official Glastonbury 2011 mobile app is now available to download.

The app, which has been built by Orange, is the only official mobile app for this year's Festival. Download it for free (whatever network you're on) and you’ll be able to see who’s playing where, with full stage listings from the Guardian Guide. Once the full line-ups timings are announced, you'll even be able to make your own schedule and set reminders. Plus, you'll get all the important Festival news from us in real time and an interactive map of the whole site.

Download the app before Friday May 27 and there's even a chance to win one of the final pairs of tickets to this year's Festival.

For more information on the app, including full T&Cs, head to www.orange.co.uk/glastonbury.

www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/news/official-glastonbury-2011-mobile-app-launches

Never thought I'd hear myself saying this one day, but well done Andy Parfitt!

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/2011/06/glastonbury-covering-a-major-cultural-event.shtml

Glastonbury - covering a major cultural event

Every year we have to counter the charge that the numbers of backstage talent the BBC sends to create Glastonbury is excessive. If the figures were 600, 300 or 100 people I don't think it would make any difference. Last year we sent 274 staff and freelancers and this year it will be less.

Glastonbury is a major cultural event and the UK's most significant popular music festival. Last year our coverage reached nearly 16 million people, was listened to by 5.7 million individuals and the website featured around 170 hours of video. The BBC prides itself on its high-quality coverage of major events like Glastonbury, so I thought I'd give you a glimpse of what I see backstage to give you a better scale to understand why, later this month, the BBC will send 263 of its best people to Somerset to bring a huge amount of content to our audiences across all our platforms.

The Glastonbury site is 1100 acres - more than double the size of the Olympic Park and Alton Towers and the equivalent of 550 football pitches - it's huge! It took me an hour to walk across the site (with no people there) and when at capacity over the weekend with around 135,000 people on site it can take much longer!

We have cameras and crew at six stages across this massive site - bringing audiences 38 hours of TV on BBC Two, Three and Four and around 50 hours of radio across 6Music, Radio 2 and Radio 1 plus extensive coverage on bbc.co.uk, as well as on four Red Button streams, offering a complete multi-platform experience.

As a former sound engineer, I'm going to tell you about the main Pyramid Stage sound for the Radio, TV and on-demand. We're talking about delivering some of the world's greatest artists (this year there's U2, Coldplay and Beyoncé) to your TV, radio and computer in super quality. I can tell you that mixing the hundreds of sound feeds does not happen on mobile disco equipment - Sound II is the BBC's big digital mobile music studio - a truck crammed with the highest possible quality mixing desk, monitoring and FX systems. Inside, our very best sound engineers work on a shift system to deliver great sound day and night; there are stage technicians who lay the cables and set the mics; and production assistants who log, time, quality check and upload hundreds of tracks so that the BBC Radio stations can play out live music in their Glastonbury specials.

This is only one stage and only the sound - across a sprawling site which is bigger than Bath. There's also the John Peel Stage, West Holts Stage, The Park Stage, Other Stage and BBC Introducing Stage with each one having dedicated technical points. And there are dozens more stages, tents and areas where music and comedy acts are doing their thing - so getting around the site with equipment and artists can be a real challenge.

All this, even before we get to the multi hi-def camera points, the vision mixers, directors, vision control engineers, producers, the website techs and the fact that tons of kit has to be installed in a fairly remote valley in Somerset and taken down days later by riggers and drivers. I hope you'll appreciate that this is why it takes the number of people it does to deliver the BBC's high quality multi-platform content. I should add that as the broadcast partner, the BBC's pictures are beamed across the world with BBC WorldWide selling rights to coverage overseas and generating funds to be invested back into the BBC for making programmes.

And this is certainly no 'junket'. There's no BBC corporate hospitality and any BBC executives attending will also be working. Every member of staff onsite has a clear and accountable role - working hard and extremely long hours to offer unparalleled coverage. The people who work at the festival are some of the most dedicated, talented hard-working and professional crew I have come across in my career - and I have been around a long time!

Andy Parfitt is Controller Radio 1, 1Xtra, Popular Music and Asian Network

Bazz, you SHOULD be excited!!! Enjoy the build up, there is nothing to prepare you for your first time. No matter what anyone told me when I broke my Glasto virginity, I had my own preconceived thoughts and idea's as to what it would be like. And when I arrived and over the following week(end), I was blown away. Honestly, it's immense...everything about it...just immense ;D

had my big glasto meeting yesterday. got given my ticket (and all important on site car pass!) bring it ON.

don't forget to come say hi at the MSF live tent and check out the full working field hospital they're gonna have set up...!