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Rev 20 Redlights
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Glasto was such a phenomenon. A few hundred thousand people decide to party, and then the Stones decide to join them, rather than the usual other way around. A very unique dynamic that unquestionably lit a fire under everybody...
I have a young friend in town here in country Australia, with whom in the past I've watched Shine a Light, the Doom and Gloom vid, and the Newark PPV. He's also downloaded a lot of the Stones stuff for his ipod or ipad or whatever, so he likes the Stones a bit but never could quite see why I was such a fan.
Well, he's just finished nursing school, has his credentials, and decided to take a month in Europe to celebrate. He found he could pick up a bit of cash by being hired as a nurse at Glasto, and this hiring was before we knew that the Stones would be there.
I ran into his mom today, and she said she got this call from him at some ungodly hour, and he was screaming about how the Stones were the greatest thing he's ever seen. I have no idea at this point how close or far he was from the stage, but he's lazy so I doubt he was anywhere near the front...
All in all, as I've written elsewhere, I think this 50 and Counting version of the Stones is an atrocity, culturally speaking, even though I know the music has been pretty good at times, if only in a very retro way. But what the Glasto crowd and the Glasto Stones accomplished, in producing a mass ecstatic experience in 2013 around the music and values of 1972, is just so impressive and wonderful that I'll join everybody else in wishing that against all the odds it can somehow happen again.
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