I have to say that festivals like Glastonbury have never really appealed to me. Whilst I understand the creative strength through hardship concept for the artist, as an paying member of the audience apparently looking for a bit of harmless fun surely you would get better value by giving your £145 to madame whiplash for the full treatment.

I think that more difficult than removing the ingrained glastonbury mud from your prized converse sneakers would be choosing which stage to visit, apparently there are 44. Being an indecisive person I would probably spend the whole weekend wondering if there was something I was missing on another stage and studying the program with its huge listings of bands that I've probably never heard of and even if i've heard of them I don't know what they sound like. A few months back I went through an online music store listening to their samples of all the 'new bands' people were raving about because I got a free download with my mp3 player. I found most of the really disappointing and rather unadventurous. I think I chose the Kaiser Chiefs who are quite good.

So I thought I'd share my mp3 player with you (obviously not the player itself, but its contents). In honour of them playing at Glastonbury I played Little Fish 3 times - like chocolate I normally ration myself with the little tiddlers as after a month of listening to their cd I'm still expecting its uplifting qualities to wane with familiarity. Fortunately it's still as effective as ever, although from day to day my favourite song of the 4 varies, i can't help but feel privileged to be one of the ludicriously small number of people who own this gem. (You can actually listen to the same songs at their www.myspace.com/littlefishmusic so you can be special too). 

Next up is the Reverse Engineering CD which has loads of songs (around a dozen) and is a good listen. I also have tracks by Plakka (Synth city), Smatka (I'm sure some of her songs have more than one title), some sleazy synthy Soho Dolls, a little ditty from George Pringle. And at the end I have an extra-ordinarily rare demo cd from Mab. For no obvious reason I also have a couple of people you may have heard of: Patti Smith's interpretation of Feels Like Teen Spirit and Free Money by Penetration.  I won't say anymore about these songs, if I didn't like them I'd delete them (thats a recommendation). Looking at this I notice that haven't got anything from Ghostcat, Ophelia Torah or Little death who I enjoy on myspace but haven't got round to capturing for my mp3 player. I must do it this week ! In case you think my mp3 player very empty, I should assure you that I have another one with lots of cds collected over the years, and one rainy day I may share the contents of that one.

Due to my car aeriel being dodgey I hooked up my mp3 player to the car radio and was driving around listening to these songs. A warning about driving whilst listening to Little Fish - I found i was wizzing along. Many of you may have experienced this listening to what they call driving music (older readers think Bruce Springstein tape in an XR3)

So I spent the weekend not at Glastonbury, not seeing Little Fish.