Glastonbudget

Glastonwho? Yes, Glastonbudget. An annual festival held in the wildes of 

Loughborough made up predominantly of tribute bands. Me and Mr JoLucy have been a couple of times now, and this year we roped in friends and family. As well as buying some silly hats, drinking too much and getting blown away, we had a great weekend!

Sadly, we missed Dead Hot Chili Peppers and Guns 2 Roses but I was witness to Axl’s white boxers last year and they were a sight to behold! We also missed Maybe Winehouse, but I’m pretty certain that from the distant warbles I could hear, there was no ‘maybe’ about it, just a flat ‘no’.

 Kaiser Thiefs were pretty good and provided a convenient opportunity to introduce the young cousins to the joys of the mosh pit and some hands-in-the-air action for ‘Ruby’ and ‘I predict a riot’. They were pretty good – the kind of band you can imagine wishing they could come up with their own material that would earn them enough to give up the cover bands….

 

There were plenty of distractions for the boys (and a few of the girls) as well, although we think Just Anastasia could be prosecuted under the trades description act. The look on my brother’s face here demonstrates that it was clearly “Just Anastasia’s Mum” on stage, not the buxom, pouted…um…. ‘lady’ in the programme!

Sadly most of our group had run from the weather by the time these commitment girls arrived. Not sure the one on the left knew she looked like she had knicker issues!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bon Jovi experience confounded us all by claiming to be “the first” Bon Jovi tribute – made up of all the other previous Bon Jovi tributes…… They were actually pretty good and the lead singer did have a look of ‘my darling’ Jon about him, and they would have been excellent if they hadn’t become a laughing stock because of Jon’s dreadful accent, with his deputy dawg style “yeyup” punctuating the whole act. shame.

By far the best act of the weekend for me was Mercury – not least because they were wise enough not to spoil the illusion by talking too much! If you get past the fact that Freddie had gained one or two pounds, the keyboardist had a broken arm (we wondered if he also drummed for def leppard tributes) and Brian was a little, well, not like Brian, these guys were great! I suppose it does help if you have nothing but crowd pleasing classics to cover….

Anyway, we’ll be back next year for more “so bad it’s good” music and a really good festival atmosphere without the price tag.