For razzle-dazzle they can’t be beaten and we could all do with more of it these days
It is too easy to fall down rabbit holes of old festival sets on YouTube. I’ve revisited the ones I first saw on TV – PJ Harvey in a pink catsuit, singing Down by the Water at Glastonbury, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1995 into my childhood front room, changing my tastes forever – and later, the ones where I can try to see if I was in the crowd, while suspecting it’s probably best to not know.
There is something that almost every one of the shows that took place before, roughly, the mid-00s, has in common: they are strikingly un-produced. Nirvana at Reading festival in 1992 is music history, but watch it again now: it’s three blokes playing their instruments on a vast, open stage. The razzle-dazzle, arena-show-style spectacles we’ve grown used to, the big screens, light shows, costume changes, fireworks that put New Year’s Eve to shame, are relatively new.
