Can you keep a secret? Glastonbury’s secret gems are where the festival really shines
Heading down the Rabbit Hole or into Hell at 3am will bring some of Worthy Farm’s highlights - we look at 2015’s potential surprises.
The main headliners at Glastonbury Festival, naturally, provide most of the talk in the run-up to the June bash. This year has been particularly true to form, with dodgy petitions, last minute cancellations and heroic rises to the top setting 2015’s agenda.
With over eighty - eighty - stages to pick and choose from though, it’s almost inevitably Glastonbury’s notorious nooks, crannies and secret stages that end up providing a great deal of the highlights across the weekend. It just requires a little digging in advance. Luckily, DIY have trawled through line-up posters and clashfinders to unearth some of the secret sets, largely unannounced slots and pre-festival parties that will make the weekend. Last year HAIM and Mumford & Sons appeared without much warning at the cosy Avalon Café on Sunday afternoon, and surprises across all forms and genres are a staple for the festival; they just need to be found.
Before the festival’s music properly kicks off on Friday, the William’s Green tent – a task to find in itself – has in the past two years become the subject of furious rumours and speculation for holding tiny, secret sets from bigger bands playing over the rest of the weekend. In 2013, Dry The River, Django Django and alt-J played unannounced shows there to a crowd who couldn’t quite believe what they’d stumbled upon.
Last year, The 1975 and Metronomy previewed their triumphant ‘proper’ Glastonbury sets with hour-long shows to an ever-swelling crowd, with knowledge of the Thursday pre-party reaching many more ears than the previous year.
The festival’s line-up page indicates three sets for Thursday in William’s Green this year, and with it fast becoming a staple for secrets, arriving early is paramount. With the acts from previous years both having been exclusively British and playing bigger slots on the Friday of the festival, the likes of Wolf Alice, Jungle, Catfish and the Bottlemen and Jamie xx look like good bets to throw a Thursday surprise before this year’s Glastonbury gets going.
William’s Green - head here on Thursday for secret sets. Photo: Louise Green / Glastonbury.
In 2011, the security and capacity at the far-out Park area of the site was stretched to its limit with not-very-secret sets from Pulp and Radiohead, and thus this tradition has been scrapped in favour of a new yearly TBA slot, opening the Other stage on the Friday morning. Rumours of everyone from Coldplay to The National flew around for the set in its first year of 2013, but it was Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye that ended up opening the festival. Last year the Kaiser Chiefs rang out over the farm at 11am before their headline slot on the John Peel Stage that night, with rumours since suggesting that Lorde was set to take the slot before guesting with Arcade Fire on the Pyramid Stage later that night before the plan fell through.
The identity of this year’s festival opener is, again, wide open, with Glastonbury’s bookers proving admirably tight-lipped and careful with their secret bookings. Rumoured Pyramid Stage headliners AC/DC and the likes of The Libertines have been among the names thrown around already, and The Charlatans self-confirmed for the festival recently but are suspiciously absent from the full line-up, but the only way to truly find out for this one is to head down at 11am. The Cribs follow the secret slot, so the Other Stage is the place to be on Friday morning anyway.
Photo: Glastonbury.
Across the past few years, the BBC Introducing stage has also proved a hive of secret activity for some of the biggest acts at the festival, with HAIM, Daughter, The xx, Bombay Bicycle Club and more all dropping by for an unannounced set. Take a walk past and check the blackboard outside the tent early in the day to catch these.
A lot of the unexpected, special extras that Glastonbury serves up are reserved for the lucky few who stumble upon them unawares, but there’s also barely revealed tiny sets from bigger acts that are hidden down at the bottom of the terrifyingly packed line-up page on the festival’s website. For example, this year Peace plan to follow their John Peel Stage set on Friday afternoon with a tiny performance in the Rabbit Hole venue in the Park area, at 9pm that evening. Conversely, if Block 9 at 3am on Sunday morning is your thing, Four Tet will be spinning on the Genosys stage until half four in addition to his main set on the Wow! stage in the Dance Village.
Miss Peace’s main set? They’re also playing the Rabbit Hole. Somehow. Photo: Emma Swann / DIY.
For those sets that won’t be announced until hours before they happen, and for those with any signal and phone battery, the @SecretGlasto Twitter account proved a godsend for many last year, providing text notifications of secret Mumford & Sons and Skrillex performances.
None of this is to discourage from the main stages though – the likes of FKA twigs, Jamie xx, Kanye West and Florence & The Machine are sure to provide blistering highlights over the weekend – but delving a little deeper into the city that Worthy Farm becomes could bring you to a mid-afternoon set from your favourite band to you and fifty other gobsmacked, grubby festival-goers in a faraway corner, and that’s what sets Glastonbury apart.
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