The Big Day Out – Oceanias Glastonbury Festival

The Big Day Out is a festival held annually in key Australasian cities. The first Big Day Out (BDO) was hosted by Sydney in 1992 and was so popular and successful that by the next year Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth had joined in and The Gold Coast and Auckland became a part of the tour in 1993.

The Big Day Out tours at the end of January each year, with each venue having a very slightly different line-up. Local bands are encouraged to showcase themselves at their local festival alongside the big popular international acts.

Internationally known bands who have previously played at The Big Day Out include Nirvana, who played at the very first festival in Sydney just a few months after they released Nevermind,  Rage Against The Machine, Metallica, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Blink 182 and Muse. This years line-up includes The Prodigy, The Arctic Monkeys, The Ting Tings and Neil Young.

The Festival was almost permanently cancelled after the tour in 1997 but fortunately after a disastrous attempt at an alternative festival (which featured predominantly electronic and dance music) the Big Day Out was brought back in 1999 and has been going strong ever since.

The first festivals only had 1 stage but now each venue has up to 8 with different styles of music playing on each one. There are also amusements such as water slides and other rides that are normally found in theme parks to amuse the festival goers between their favourite musical acts as well as the usual festival fare of food stalls, bars and hippy clothes and jewellery for sale.

Each city that hosts the annual festival becomes ridiculously busy for a few days as everyone is fighting to find somewhere to rest their head for the night. So start thinking about where you want stay at least a minimum of a month in advance!

Kate has worked for Nomads Backpackers Hostels in New Zealand for the last 4 years, and currently carries out duties for it’s other backpackers hostels in Australia and Fiji.

Nomads have accommodation in all the most of the cities the Big Day Out is being held.

Pendulum, BBC @ Glastonbury


www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury Pendulum perform new track ‘Different’ and remix Calvin Harris’ ‘Im not alone’ especially for Glastonbury.

Weds Meet MamaSwifty Bus

glastonbury 2005

Image taken on 2005-06-22 22:51:28 by Auntie P.

What Everyone Needs to Know About Glastonbury Tickets

Once you have established roughly when the tickets will be going on sale you have to find out where you can buy your ticket from .

For any given festival there are a number of agencies that are allocated tickets to sell on behalf of the promoters. They sell these tickets at the face value plus a booking and processing fee which tends to be 5-10%. Knowing in advance who will be selling the tickets will give you a head start. Every year you will hear people say things like “I tried to get through for ages and by the time I did they’d sold out” and “I phoned up all morning but the number was always engaged”. The first lesson to learn is USE THE INTERNET! You are far more likely to secure tickets if you try online rather than on the phone. When you phone up the call centres, they work from the same database of tickets as the website does. Online systems this year will be more robust than ever before in order to cope with the demand created when festival tickets go onsale, so my advice would be to use the internet. Remember to make sure you use the fastest browser and have a fast connection

So the first step is to find out where to buy from. The agencies that will have the bulk of the tickets for the major festivals this year are:

• TicketMaster: Probably have the largest allocation for most and the site with the least chance of crashing, it is a pretty robust site with a good online queuing system. Good for all festival tickets.

• See Tickets: Not quite as robust and more likely to crash on you but easy to use. Normally when a big event goes onsale they implement a 2 page order process whereby you enter the number of tickets you want and put all of your details on the next page, which reduce the load on your server and means you can get in and out quickly. This site however does have the tendency to crash after you have entered your details, leaving you insure of whether you’ve got the tickets or not!

• Ticketline: Very likely to crash but a lesser known site so there is less demand

• Stargreen: (for V, Reading and Isle of Wight) These guys normally only have tickets for London events but also distribute tickets for the above festivals. The beauty of this site is that it isn’t that well known so getting in early will give you a good chance of getting tickets.

• Aloud.com: This site is powered by Ticketmaster, so you’re ultimately using the same backend system. Wait times on this site are likely to be just as long as on Ticketmaster but a god backup just in case.

• Lastminute.com: Very little known that Lastminute.com have tickets to all the major festivals. They often don’t put them on sale until after the official onsale time and normally still have tickets left after everyone else has sold out. (although this year they are powering NME tickets for the first time so will likely sell out much faster).

• NME Tickets: Now powered by Lastminute.com, however the lastminute site directly has a faster server so it’s probably better to go straight there

• Seatme/Keith Prowse – another lesser known site selling tickets to the major festivals, they only have a small allocation but as no one knows about them, the demand is much less. As of yet, I’m not totally sure what allocation they will have so it will be worth checking back.

• NEC Box Office (for V staffs) – The NEC have tickets every year for the V festival in Staffs that you can buy online or over the phone.

• Gigsinscotland (for T in the Park) – A good source for your T in the Park ticket. 30,000 T in the Park tickets were sold on the ‘early bird’ offer in 2006 so this will sell out Very quickly!

• Ticketzone (for Isle of Wight) – another little known agency that normally has Isle of Wight tickets.

As well as these, other local agents/record stores often have tickets allocated, so if you live locally, always worth checking the local outlets. Ticketmaster have outlets in selected HMV stores, theatres etc, and as a general rule, these ticket centres work from the same database of tickets as the websites and the phone agents. I’m sure you’ve also heard that Ticketmaster may be selling tickets throgh National Lotery machines, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens there!

Camping Now have published their online guide to buying festival tickets which can be found here

Paul McCartney / Hey Jude (Glastonbury Festival 04)


Paul McCartney / Hey Jude (Glastonbury Festival 04)

Car Cover Guideance For Glastonbury Revellers

As music revellers were preparing for the Glastonbury Festival, they were advised to note that 62 per cent of car insurance providers will offer only as little as £100 for cover on all valuables that left in the car, according to a price comparison website. With around 128,000 of the 177,500 festival goers – which accounts for 72 per cent – travelling to music event by car, this research shows that almost £8 million worth of items will be stored in these vehicles as a safer alternative to the tents. Over two thirds or 68 per cent of consumers are under the false hope that their car insurance policy will cover damage or theft to the entire contents of the car. But, with items such as the Apple iphone costing up to £391.50 and a TomTom costing almost £400, motorists could find they are under insured if they needed to make a claim. As well as valuables, cash is also a problem at the festival. The average attendee spends almost £300 over the course of the weekend which means that more than £52 million worth of cash will be vulnerable to theft at the festival. Unique tent cover for possessions Unfortunately, storing valuables in a tent is also a big mistake. Home insurance policies do not include the provision of covering items that are away from home, in an unlocked tent. In order to protect the actual tent from damage of theft, consumers will need to take out a bespoke insurance policy to protect the equipment. However, this will not protect any valuables stored inside. Another misconception with car cover is that of driving other cars. This can also be a minefield of small print, particularly for people under the age of 25; who also make up a large proportion of travellers to Glastonbury. With the average one way distance travelled to Glastonbury amounting to 140 miles, it is highly likely that many revellers will opt to share the driving with friends or family. Nearly a quarter of motorists however, (22 per cent or 5.5 million), admit they have let their friends and family drive their car without the driver being named on their policy. Another one in ten drivers (9 per cent or 2.2 million) admit that they have driven a car without being sure if they are insured to do so. Whilst it could be tempting for motorists to hand over some of the driving responsibility this summer, only those motorists over the age of 25 with fully comprehensive insurance are covered under their own policy to drive someone else’s car. Glastonbury car cover guidelines Mark Monteiro and insurance expert at the price comparison website spoke about the findings He said: “Going to a music festival should be a fun experience and reading insurance documents probably isn’t high on the list of preparation priorities. “However, an event such as Glastonbury creates an insurance minefield for both providers and policy holders. Placing all of your valuables in a car or a tent could very well exempt you from cover with every insurance policy you own. Mr Monteiro added: “With high value items such as IPods, mobile phones and satellite navigation systems standard in most cars, this could be a very costly oversight. “Our advice to motorists is to check all policy details before getting in the car, that way you can enjoy the music with peace of mind. It’s always worth contacting your insurance provider to let them know what you’re up to as they may be able to help you out.” Make sure you’re covered for any event.

Find the best car insurance cover at Only Insurance.

Financial and legal writer

Glastonbury 2005: Island in the Mud

glastonbury 2005

Image taken on 2005-06-24 13:25:20 by minifig.

Springsteen at Glastonbury 2009


The River (i’m on fire) I am not really a Bruce fan , but i saw this track on saturday night and was just blown away by how much Steam this man was giving off,if they had hooked this guy up to a steam turbine i’m sure he could have generated enough power to run the whole of the Glastonbury Festival,keep on rocking Bruce your the 7.27 from Winchester to Waterloo in 1962 !

Elbow “One Day Like This” Glastonbury 08


Elbow with host of friends on strings as the broadcast finale of their Glastonbury 08 set

Diva Bassey Shimmers at Glastonbury

Who says you have to be young to rock? Almost 200,000 fans at Europe’s largest outdoor music festival at Glastonbury found that out first hand when Shirley Bassey hit the Pyramid stage to perform memorable hits like “Goldfinger,” Diamonds are Forever” and “Big Spender” live.


As America’s Woodstock rival, the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts (it’s name since 1990) has been delighting fans around the country and drawing worldwide attention. This has been going down since Somerset farmer Michael Eavis at Worthy Farm, Pilton – near Glastonbury in Somerset, launched the first concert in 1970.


Shirley Bassey has been an icon in the entertainment industry for four decades, and she is one of the few true remaining legends in the music world. Even those who don’t know her name will immediately recognize the distinctive voice that offered those fun-filled theme songs to many popular James Bond films of the 1960s as well as popular tunes such as a remake of Stormy Weather and her exciting rendition of Big Spender.


Recently named one of the top 100 famous people of the 20th century, Bassey and her music offer generations of fans her unique voice and style, no matter what she sings.


Born in 1937 in Tiger Bay, Wales (close to where Catherine Zeta-Jones and Charlotte Church also hail from) Shirley belonged to a large family with six siblings. Her father abandoned the family when Shirley was a baby, and she left school at 15 to begin work in the packing department of a local factory. The following year, she supplemented that income by singing in local clubs in her native Cardiff.


Bassey’s singing career took off in 1957 with her rendition of The Banana Boat Song and by 1964 she was blowing away the competition on both sides of the Atlantic. She was tapped to sing the title song to the James Bond film, Goldfinger in 1964, to be followed by several others. Other popular songs that became favorites and topped the charts were No Regrets and I Who Have Nothing. Not only her unique voice, but her penchant for glitzy and glamorous costumes quickly brought a lot of attention to Bassey, who was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1999 by the Queen.


Bassey relocated from London to Monte Carlo, Monaco, where she still resides in a luxurious apartment with a spectacular view of the Mediterranean. Living in one of Monte Carlo’s most prestigious neighborhoods, Bassey has had such illustrious neighbors as tennis great Boris Becker and Beatle Ringo Starr.


Bassey is securely ensconced in the warm sunshine and crisp sea breezes that entice visitors from around the world every year and seems content to spend the remainder of her life in the small principality that served as a location for several of the Bond films she sang theme songs for.


In 2005, Shirley decided on a makeover and downsized her existence. As a result, she auctioned off a major portion of her belongings, original paintings and art, furniture and interior designs with Sotheby’s.


Though she’s been married twice, Shirley Bassey now lives alone, though she is never truly alone, with activities and appearances that continue to keep her busy and in the limelight for her adoring fans around the globe.

Like many top European entertainers and sports men and women, Shirley Bassey now lives in Monaco.

The guide has details of hotels in Monaco , including the online poker at the Hotel de Paris and for those visiting Monaco and France, Monaco holidays.

 
  Older Entries »
Cheaper   Gas   Electricity and   Phone   bills from   Utility   Warehouse and   Telecom Plus