Where rave meets spirituality, down in The Common.

0:00Jessi Hello and welcome to GlastoCast, the unofficial Glastonbury Festival podcast, coming from you today live from Worthy Farm. Hello everyone, it is the 23rd of June. It is Sunday the 23rd of June. The gates open in just 3 days' time. I'm Jessi. Hello. Uh, I am on site at Worthy Farm already. I've been here a couple of days now in my camper van in the crew fields, and everything is coming together so nicely. Everything looks brilliant. I'm so excited for things to get started and for everyone to start arriving. And yesterday I had the most brilliant conversation with Dan Sue, who works down at the Rum Shack as the venue manager in the Common area. which is in the southeast corner. He, you know, you'll hear me gushing in the interview because he just had the best stories. He was so passionate and so knowledgeable, and, you know, it really, really came across. I could listen to him speak for hours, and I came out of that conversation absolutely buzzing, and I still am.

1:16Jessi I still am.

1:16Jessi So I can't wait for you to hear that. But before that, I've just got one little important point to make. We would love to collect your stories and your voices and your excitement. We have added a section on the website, glastocast.co.uk. If you go to the menu dropdown, you will see Contribute. And on there, it's so easy. You just pop your name in, pop your email address in, and then there's a big red button for you to record. So you can record direct from your phone or your laptop. You don't need any headphones or anything. And you can just tell us a story. You can listen to it back at the end, so there is an opportunity to re-record it if you make a mistake or you're not happy with the first one. But you can just jump on, send us a voice note like you would your friends on WhatsApp, tell us your story. Maybe you're packing, maybe you're on your way to Glastonbury in the car with all your family. You can get them all to shout out in the background, or maybe even when you first get here and you've put up your tent and you can voice record the sound of a first cider cracking open or something. We would just love to collect these from you. We're going to be doing an episode hopefully quite soon after this year's festival, and we'd just love to get as many voices and stories on it as possible. So please, please send them in. Anyway, without further ado, let's get on to this conversation with Dan because it genuinely, yeah, just left me in absolute awe yesterday. And you'll, you'll hear that in, in the pod. You'll hear that in my questions, how blown away I was, and I hope you are too. And I hope it inspires you to spend Lots more time over the weekend in The Common this, this week at the festival because it definitely did me.

2:52Jessi Hi everyone, it's Jessi back today and excitingly I am already on site. I'm currently in my camper van in Greenpeace crew and I'm really, really lucky to be able to speak to our guest today. I sent out an email hoping that I'd be able to speak to someone and the lovely Dan has come back. Today, joining me is Dan, who is the venue manager for the Rum Shack and is here to talk all about the Common area at Glastonbury. So hi, Dan. Thank you so much.

3:26Dan Tsu Hi, Jessi. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about anything to do with Glastonbury, to be fair. So yeah, I'm very happy to be here.

3:34Jessi You've come to the right place. Honestly, that's basically why we started this podcast, because me and Miguel can't shut up about it. So here we go.

3:40Dan Tsu You're not the only one.

3:42Jessi Yeah, I know. Once you find a Glastonbury nerd, you know, that means that your conversation's going for the rest of the night, doesn't it? So, um, uh, but thank you so much. Do you wanna just give a little intro to yourself and, you know, maybe how long you've been coming to the festival, how you first started getting involved with The Common, those kind of things?

3:57Dan Tsu Yeah, so as you pointed out, I'm the manager of the Rum Shack, um, and also a new venue this year called Kinetic Bar in The Common. Um, I've been working at Glastonbury since 2011. The Rum Shack started in 2013. I'll tell you shortly what I did in 2011. It's quite unusual. But I've been coming to Glastonbury since about 2003, I think, and haven't really— maybe I missed a couple, but yes, I've been knocking about for 20-odd years. But to be able to say that I've spent half of that running a venue is genuinely a dream. And I remember one of my best friends walking around Glastonbury with me in the early 2000s and be like, one day you're gonna You're gonna be one in one of them things. And I was like, nah, don't be stupid. Um, and then now it's happening. So yeah, I feel very blessed.

4:48Jessi I love that. I love that your friend predicting your future life. That's brilliant. And, uh, yeah, imagine going back to seeing yourself then and being like, it's happened, it's happened.

4:56Dan Tsu I love that. I would, I wouldn't believe it if you told me.

4:58Jessi No, I still wouldn't believe it. Brilliant. Um, so before we get into what you did in, uh, 2011, cuz that sounds interesting, 100%, but let's start off with, let's just do a little bit of an intro to The Common. Can you just give, you know, someone who's maybe never been to Glastonbury or perhaps never made it to the Naughty Corner, do you wanna give the listeners just a little overview of what the Common is, what it's all about?

5:19Dan Tsu Yeah, the Common is a very special area in the late night corner, which is the southeast corner, or as you correctly put it, the naughty corner. And, um, it kind of sits between, uh, Block9 and Shangri-La. We are at the furthest tip of the site. And essentially it is a home for rave and spirituality, but in the loosest sense of rave, because we also have a lot of live music at the Rum Shack. But ultimately the anchor of The Common is the Temple, which is a stunning open-air 360 kind of amphitheater of rave from drum and bass through to techno, UK garage through to bass culture. And it's an absolutely monster spectacle with fire shooting out into the sky throughout the night. And then my wonderful venue, the Rum Shack, sits opposite it. I believe many people consider it to be quite an iconic kind of home for them now. You can't really miss the sign. It is bright red, it is huge, and it becomes like a meeting point that people gravitate towards. I'll meet you at the Rum Shack in The Common after the main stage shut down. And it is kind of woven into the fabric of The Common is also the spirituality element. A lot of it kind of originated from our, both our relationship and our kind of influence of ancient Latin American civilization and culture. And that goes through to having You know, people performing rituals who fly over from Central and Latin America to Leicesterfield, basically. And, you know, in the context of that as well, not only do we have talks from spiritual leaders and healers, practitioners, but we also have had people like Sir Professor David Nutt talk about drugs and people like Graham Hancock as well, talking about psychedelics. So It's the place where music and spirituality and freedom and knowledge intersect.

7:32Jessi I love that. And it's, it's interesting, you know, you talk about the other side, 'cause I think a lot of people know The Common as, as you say, like the 1:00 AM, I'm in The Common, but I've been down there during the day and I, I, I've, I, I remember seeing some, gotta think about it now. It, it was almost like maybe a parade, but it was, you know, very much a, a sort of spiritual. Well, uh, tribal kind of dance situation happening. Um, and I will admit I just sort of walked past and wondered and, and carried on by. But it's, it's, you know, less likely that people will visit in the day, but it's amazing to hear what, what goes on there in the day as well.

8:08Dan Tsu Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're trying to do more of a day program, um, nowadays. So I believe on the Thursday at about 11 o'clock, there'll be a— 11 in the morning, there'll be a procession Um, with some of these spiritual, amazing people with a percussion procession kind of going from the, the common through up to the green fields and into the stone circle and back again. And then, yeah, a lot of the talks, um, happen during the day. Um, it's quite an amazing sight actually to see the temple kind of transformed, you know, like 12 hours earlier it might be full of 3,000 people who are having the time of their lives with fire and DJs and MCs and all of that. Last year we had Fred again do a secret set with Blessed Madonna, which was absolutely insane. But when you see it turned over and you have people serenely sitting on those kind of tiered steps listening to some of the greatest thinkers in the world, I think Kate Tempest might be doing a talk there this year as well. I think, you know, it's amazing to see that kind of juxtaposition. That we, we sometimes put things into categories and boxes. This is me partying and this is me thinking, whereas actually for us, you know, they're kind of intertwined. And I think it's really interesting because the area organizers are Kerry and Steve, and they both come from the traveler community and the free party movements. And so, as with a lot of the late night area, The heritage and indeed the kind of organizations are made up of incredible traveler community stories. I mean, essentially the way it happened, the way that Chris Toffu tells it, is that back in, I can't remember when it was, like the late '80s, early '90s, when there was a lot of kind of confrontations with the traveler community and involving Michael Eavis as well, that eventually they decided that they were going to kind of give the traveler community space just outside the main Glastonbury Festival site. And they kind of, um, just took back some tape and like, here you go, here's your fields, now just leave us alone kind of thing. And that eventually emerged into Lost Vagueness, which then became Shangri-La and everything kind of mushroomed out of that. So it's no mistake that the daytime stuff has such kind of power because, you know, these are people who have seen a lot and done a lot and are really influential in our kind of rave culture and kind of counterculture that a lot of young people don't always realize today. And so that's manifested very much at The Common. It's not just partying, it's also knowledge.

10:51Jessi It's great to hear the history there. And there's loads of things that you mentioned that I wasn't going to interrupt you, but I was definitely wanting to talk about. But Uh, I, I guess the first one is, let's go back to, you know, I want to dive into what you just said, but I was going to talk about the Fred Again set from last year because, uh, I, I would love to know, you know, however much you can tell me of the madness behind it because there were rumors flying around the site and then I think Fred put it on his story and then deleted it less than 1 minute later. And my friends being avid Fred Again fans and like me as well, but they were the ones who had his stories on like notifications and we're like, oh my God, it's happening. And then we had this whole half of our gang like ran down there and then they were in the queue and they were like, I dunno if we're gonna get in and I dunno if it's even happening.

11:39Jessi Yeah.

11:39Jessi And then they were in and then it wasn't happening. And then the rest of us were outside and we saw all the signs going, Fred Again is not playing the Temple. Please do not come down here. And it was just chaos, obviously from a crowd control perspective. Uh, and then a beautiful moment for those lucky people who were in there, which was not me, to be fair. Um, but I got many videos from my friends. But, you know, is there much you can tell me about the behind the scenes there of, of the madness of organizing that?

12:03Dan Tsu It really was a bit of a madness of organizing that. Yeah, basically, um, the, the Temple programmers had kind of lined this up for a few months, and then it became apparent that, you know, Glastonbury is amazing when it comes to safety. And so when you have to when you have something like that, like a big artist on a secret set, you kind of have to declare it because you have to, you know, sort out security and make sure that everything's safe and not going to be overcrowded or, you know, bum rushes to a venue or stage. And, you know, that is particularly the case for Federgan. Federgan is arguably the biggest artist in the world, possibly the decade, with a talent to match. He had played the Other Stage with a genuinely legendary sunset set that And yeah, there'd been rumors flying about Fed Again doing a secret set for maybe a few weeks. And we were trying really, really hard to keep it on lockdown. Like it was an absolute hush. And then inevitably the cat got let out the bag. And yeah, it was a bit like a kind of a Michael Jackson moment. Like, you know, when you just have Just queues and queues and queues of people on a rumor, basically. And I remember I was backstage being like, I think it's gonna happen. I think it's gonna happen. And I had privileged information, so I was fairly certain it was gonna come. And it was about, I think about 45 minutes into the scheduled time and he still hadn't turned up. And I was about to leave and go back to the Rum Shack because we We had just had, I think, maybe Corrupt FM that night or something like that. No, Corrupt FM was later. We had Pete and Baz and that was going off. And I was like, I don't really want to miss that. And I went and actually caught quite a bit of that. But anyway, I saw Fred again kind of just milling about backstage and I was like, right, it's on. And so we managed to kind of sneak into literally the front row. Again, was very fortunate to do that. But yeah, it On a number of occasions, it was kind of off and on again and off and on again because it was getting too dangerous essentially in terms of crowd control. Well, at least the powers that be thought that was the case. Actually, it was totally safe and really well managed in the Common, but it kind of added layers to the kind of buzz that was happening. And then the set itself was, yeah, truly momentous. I can't remember what Chuni opened up with. It must have been like Delilah or something like that.

14:34Jessi Yeah.

14:35Dan Tsu And it just went off. And Blessed Madonna is obviously, you know, one of the biggest DJs in the world. And it was, you know, Fred Again has just such a childlike grin when he's in the element. And it was as wide as the temple. It was amazing.

14:50Jessi Yeah, it was. So I'm a big Guns N' Roses fan, right? And we were at Guns N' Roses and that was like my big headliner. And it was about halfway through and this is what I mean, half my friends were like, right, we're gonna go to the temple just in case it's Fred Again. And I was looking at Guns N' Roses and I was like, I can't do it. I need to stay here. And if it happens, it happens and I'll just have to deal with the consequences. And then the next day I basically had to tell my friends, I, I don't wanna hear it. Don't tell me. I don't think it, but I did, I did watch some of their videos afterwards and was like, oh God. I mean, we did have an incredible night in the temple the night before and I was in there for 6 hours, which is a long old time. We got there at 10:00 PM and stayed there till 4:00. So it's good.

15:31Dan Tsu Did you, did you go to the toilet?

15:33Jessi Uh, yes, but so we've got crew wristbands, so yes, we were, we were able to go down. But yeah, I luckily, I was able to, um, yeah, to go around the back way as such. But, um, yeah, like even my friends were just about managing it. But yeah, that's the thing within there, isn't it, is that even the toilet queue gets pretty mad in there. But worth it, worth it. Really, really good fun.

15:52Dan Tsu Yeah, it's, it's— the Temple is one of those, yeah, few places where you can just be in one spot forever. And just soak it all in. Yeah, it's a beautiful place.

16:01Jessi Yeah, it was amazing because by the time we left, it was just getting— it was getting light again, and it was just to see the sort of almost sunrise sort of sky over it was amazing. Yeah, just a quick mention, I was going to say it was only a few years ago that the temple actually got toilets inside it, wasn't it? I remember, you know, it used to be that you were like, oh no, I need a wee, I'm gonna have to go out and queue again.

16:20Dan Tsu Yeah, that was a smart move because, um, oh God, I hate to think how many people, you know, did to do, um, improvise, let's put it that way. Um, you know, there comes a point where, you know, a little bit like you're kind of Guns N' Roses or Fed— or maybe Fed Again, it's like, do I, do I go for a wee or do I risk not and risk not getting back into the temple after I've queued up for like however long? So yeah, you know, Glastonbury is about those kind of sacrifices weirdly, isn't it? Like these kind of weird hedonistic kind of sacrifices where you're like, I could either do this one thing that I really need to do or really want to do, or I could just stay here and continue doing this amazing thing. And that's what I, you know, I think that's partly what makes Glastonbury such a kind of playground for adults and children alike, is that you can stop doing the one thing that you're doing at the moment, but the next thing could be the greatest thing you do in your life, or it could just be brilliant. Very rarely is it, does it go the opposite way. And I think there's something around kind of choices and our freedom of choices at Glastonbury that really takes us out of ourselves and our kind of everyday lives.

17:29Jessi Yeah, I was going to say like the, this is kind of why people say, oh, why do you go to, why have you been to the same festival 12 times? I'm like, because it is never, obviously things change and they have new stages and there's new bands and whatever, but just in general, you know, you, you make a decision and you're, you can never have the same festival twice ever. And some of those choices you make, you know, my choice to stay and see Guns N' Roses was amazing. I had an amazing time, but I could have gone to see Fred again. And then, you know, next year you might find yourself— I think my, my biggest one was one year I just happened to be in the rabbit hole, uh, when, um, Fatboy Slim did a secret set, and I was just like right at the front. And then I turned around and then you couldn't get anywhere near it. And it was— yeah, so it's those, as you say, it's those mini choices. And you'll always have a good time, hopefully, like Let's say most of the time you always have a good time, but sometimes it'll be that extra special, amazing thing that, you know, that choice sort of enabled you to do. So love that.

18:22Dan Tsu Yeah. And there's something around kind of experience as well, just like following your instinct. Because when you do that a few times, sometimes you do it and it's a bit of a dud. You get to the end of things like, oh no, there isn't a secret set, or I've missed this thing, or, you know, I've had to do something else. But then when you win, like when you get it right, um, it kind of reinforces this kind of Glastonbury mystique of like, yeah, wonder and surprise. So yeah.

18:45Jessi Exactly. And I always feel like the journey's always fun anyway, even when you're stood in a queue. Sometimes you have a laugh with your friends, don't you? Having a chat. So it's worth it. It's worth it. Let's talk about the Rum Shack a little bit. Uh, is there anybody— let's go into history. Is there any like one performance over your years of being venue manager that like really stands out to you at the Rum Shack? Anything that really was a game changer?

19:06Dan Tsu Yeah, I mean, many. Every year there is a thing. I mean, I probably— the first real kind of landmark moment when we realized we had arrived as a venue and as a program was when Kate Tempest did their first live music, kind of their live band set at Glastonbury. I think it must have been like 2014. Now obviously it goes without saying that Kay is an absolute Glastonbury legend in many respects. And it was, you know, and they were ready, um, as a poet. Um, and I remember, uh, Quake, who is, uh, now in Speaker's Corner Quartet, who is Kay's best mate, who I was, I'm friends with Quake and he was like, listen, we've got this project and It's Kae and it's live music. And, you know, my background is in spoken word and hip-hop partly. And so it was a no-brainer. And I remember Kae played with us twice in 3 years. And the first time there was a huge buzz about it. You know, at the time we were about an 800-person venue. The Rum Shack was still like a kind of oak barn structure with the stage kind of, you could see the stage from the railway track. And essentially there must have been about 1,000 plus, probably about 1,500 people there, like maybe 1,200, let's say. Basically just crammed in the tent, spilling out outside. And it was like, you know, K was like, what? Are they all there for me? Like, in fact, they were playing the first set on the Thursday, right? And I always make the Thursday kind of I run a company called Lyrics Organics, which is around spoken word and hip-hop and kind of youth social action. And so we always do the Thursday night takeover at the Rum Shack. That's why Thursday at the Rum Shack always has a kind of a hip-hop or spoken word kind of feel, like a lyrical feel to it. And Cave's obviously the kind of apex of that in many ways. And we put them on at 8 o'clock and they're The barriers were on at the temp— uh, in the Common. So like people were queuing outside the Common waiting for those gates to open and so they could run to the front of Kay's set. And we were like, what are all those people there for Kay? Um, and, uh, the security were like, yeah. And so we went, we went backstage and got Kay. I was like, Kay, you've gotta see this. Like, There are people queuing to get into the field for you. They came outside and they were absolutely bowled over, you know, they started getting really nervous, um, and they went on stage and, you know, what, they opened the gates and people ran like a, you know, kind of like a One Direction concert to the front of the, the stage and it was just rammed within seconds. And then they came out, Georgia, who's an amazing, uh, kind of, I guess, electro alternative pop musician in their own right now. I think they headlined Park Stage a few years ago, was one of the percussionists. And I remember it was actually a really, really chaotic set because essentially the sound was really bad. And like Rum Shack is famous for how quality our sound is, but for some reason there's this weird gremlin, like one plug lead was wrong and no one could figure it out. And it was the worst noise ever. So essentially what happened was Kay started a set and about 10 minutes in this enormous buzz that no one could solve, even our kind of experts and sound tech crew just couldn't figure it out. And we basically had to stop the show for about 5 or 10 minutes. It was that bad. And that never happens. It never happened since. And at that time, Kay ended up just going a cappella. And you can imagine, like, the place went absolutely wild. It was just hairs on end. And then halfway through the set, like, George's percussion stand was falling down. So my stage manager spent the entire set, like, lay on the floor holding up her drum stand. Um, it was chaos. Um, but, you know, from, from chaos comes beauty. And it was one of the most memorable and certainly kind of precipitating set that would be the benchmark of everything that would follow.

23:34Jessi I was about to say beautiful chaos, but you said it for me. Um, and I'm really glad you mentioned K Tempest again because I know you mentioned when we were just talking before, and huge fan. I'm now very gutted I missed that. I've seen them on somewhere in Silver Hayes. I can't remember what it was, one of the— they've changed the names in Silver Hayes many, many times. But yeah, it was, it was in a tent in Silver Hayes and we just about got in the door and it was again K Tempest but with, with the full, full kind of live setup. And just, yeah, the fact that they've gone from spoken word, which is obviously incredible, and then just elevated it and, yeah, taken over. It's such a Glastonbury soul, as you say. So yeah, I love that. That's one of the more memorable ones. Amazing.

24:17Dan Tsu Yeah, I think if there was a patron saint of, uh, Glastonbury, it would probably be Kay.

24:21Jessi Yeah, I would say a tie between Kay or maybe Beans on Toast as well. He gets around, doesn't he? So, um, great. And then what about this year, Dan? Is there anybody that we should really 100% put on our lineups for the Rum Shack. I know you're going to say everyone, but any particular stands out for the Rum Shack this year?

24:37Dan Tsu Well, again, Thursday becomes a special day and Thursday is often a day that we, in inverted commas, break artists who are about to blow. Obviously, you know, they're amazing in their own right and it's not really down to us, but we just seem to catch them at just the right time. So in previous years, you know, that artist has either been Kei or Koji Radical or Akala or who Whoever else, Steam Down Collective and Eni. And this year for us, it's Crystal. So Crystal's headlining at 10:15 on the Thursday night as part of the Lyrics Organics takeover. If anyone watched the Netflix Top Boy, the most recent one, which is just a phenomenal piece of television, there is a kind of innocuous kind of 1-minute section where there's a girl freestyling in her bedroom. She has no part in the show itself, but it's just her performing in the bedroom. Presumably the director was so taken by her that they just included this freestyle. And from that, she's amassed like— she hasn't even released an album, but she's amassed something like 300,000+ followers, which goes to show you quite how much that little clip of her rapping caught fire. So we're really excited to be having Cristal this year. She's a phenomenal artist on a bit of a Lil Simz level, but a little bit grimier. And, you know, Yeah, really young. I think maybe early 20s and a huge talent to watch. And I'm really excited. I'm not sure whether they're playing any other sets on site as well. So, you know, that's quite rare at Glastonbury. So definitely come check out Crystal at 10:15 on the Thursday night. Also really proud, I'm part of the East and Southeast Asian Music Community, also known as ESEA Music. And we've got a feature with a couple of incredible rappers, one called Jambo, who has just been touring around China and is currently in Tokyo at the moment. And Natty Wyler, who's a bit more of a kind of psychedelic, kind of Loyal Kana vibe, really chilled hip-hop, but really thoughtful and abstract kind of lyricism. But then we've also got Queer House Party and Daytimers this year. We wanted to offer up more space to kind of takeovers and kind of diversity. Like, I'm not sure how many people are aware, but we are really proud and really champion gender-balanced lineups, diversity. This year we're running an accessibility program to train up Disabled festival producers. We're really excited about Queer House Party. We're really excited about Daytimers. We've given them over a few hours actually on the Friday. We've also got a guy called Gerald doing a live set with the Jungle Drummer on Sunday. Live band.

27:21Jessi I love Peng Shui. I didn't know they were there. Amazing. Right. Okay. I'm adding that to my list as long as, along with everything else you mentioned, but that one really excited me.

27:29Dan Tsu Yeah, and then also on the Friday, we last year we did the, I believe Glastonbury's first Afrobeats and Amapiano night. And this year we're kind of following that up again with Mercedes Benson, who's one of the sickest Afrobeats DJs in the world at the moment, who actually happens to be one of my former students, of which I have a lot of at Rum Shack, which is another beautiful thing. A lot of the young people that we work with in youth programs and workshops around the UK, we bring through. Rum Shack. So yeah, I mean, yeah, at risk of kind of going through everyone, because I genuinely feel that, you know, I program these artists and I book these artists and at the Rum Shack, it's really hugely important that we're not just giving platforms to the same DJs and live acts who are getting booked everywhere and just relying on agents. Like we, we really go down the middle with getting people who no one has heard of. We have probably more debutantes to Glastonbury on a Glastonbury stage of our scale than almost anyone I know. Like, you know, having, I mean, Greenpeace are amazing with this as well. And there are others, but, you know, we really don't try to kind of pedestal big established artists. To us, if you bang, then you bang. If you can get a party going, then you get the party going. It doesn't really matter who you are. And we try to reflect that in the program. And so I'm so passionate about the program. It takes us about 6 months of lot of tweaking. So yeah, I could go on all day about the program, but I guess the top line is Thursday's got a real kind of lyrical hip-hop conscious element to it. Friday's a lot of kind of West and South and East Africa vibes. And Saturday's more kind of UK bass and garage. And then Sunday we're rolling out with jungle and drum and bass.

29:14Jessi Honestly, your passion is like really, really coming through. I'm sitting here just Yeah, sort of slightly awestruck, Dan. It's amazing what you're doing down there. And, um, yeah, I think I'm going to be adding a lot of things. I think you're going to be seeing a lot of me, basically. So if you, uh, if you bump into me, I'll definitely say hi. Doing some great stuff. Um, it sort of leads me on to— I've got a question written down here that, you know, I prepared a few questions, but sort of leads on nicely to what you, what you've been saying and a lot of what you said in the beginning, actually, in the, the origins of The Common. But, you know, The Common kind of describes itself as a space born from collective imagination. So, you know, how would you say that that presents itself in the festival, that phrase that you put forward? I know you've talked about it a lot, but go in a little bit deeper.

29:59Dan Tsu In The Common or in a festival in general?

30:02Jessi Well, let's say, let's go with The Common, I guess. And then, you know, maybe we can widen it out.

30:07Dan Tsu Yeah, for sure. I mean, all festivals have an element of collective imagination for sure. And The Common is kind of manifested in a way that, you know, different crews and collectives and communities come together and share space and kind of reimagine that space and reimagine our collective kind of lives for a week or more. You know, when The Common, well, when I first joined The Common in 2011, you know, we had Beard Kitten were involved and they were doing like tomato fights and like kind of, You know, all kinds of madcap stuff in the, in what was the ballring before it was the Temple. And, you know, that in and of itself was, you know, collective imagination. There's loads of people who have just wild imaginations, but the kind of proactiveness and the resourcefulness, which is a really important thing at festivals, especially if you think about the build and the design, the resourcefulness of people to create these kind of alternate realities really. And it, and again, it kind of echoes back to the kind of, the traveler community and the kind of free party era where you had to create new worlds and alternate kind of cultures and realities and spaces where you weren't given space in mainstream society. And so really this collective imagination is about to me anyway, is about how we come together as different communities from different spaces with different ideas. And, you know, in practice, what that means is, you know, I have my ideas for programming, for the sound and for the feel of the venue. Other teams who we work with have different concepts of what it should look like and the structure and the architecture and the aesthetics and the ambiance of the field. And then you have the production, the incredible production team at The Common who, you know, pull it all together and make it a reality. And then all the other layers on top of that, you know, security and stewards and catering. Like every single person at Glastonbury and in The Common has a specific role, which is the shared kind of value and the shared space. And when it comes together, I guess in the form of collective imagination, it's like walking through a bit of a dream. You know, my brother's coming to Glastonbury for the first time. He's never been to a field festival, like he's never been camping before. And it'll be fascinating to see, as it would be with so many people, what Glastonbury looks like through their eyes. And for me, I get so much joy out of watching people at Glastonbury for the first time because that collective imagination really Um, starts to make sense.

32:58Jessi Yeah, honestly, just sitting here listening to you going, this is, this is just wonderful. Um, completely agree. Uh, I— we, we talked about this in one of the earlier episodes of the podcast, is that me and Miguel and, and Rob, who used to be on it, we all talked about how we loved bringing people for the first time for that exact reason, just to see them kind of open up and, and realize that, yeah, This was built by, as you mentioned, so many layers of people. And when you all collaborate together, this is what can be achieved kind of thing. And it's seeing that for the first time is a beautiful thing. Again, like you mentioned something right at the beginning there that, um, uh, I was, I was going to bring up because we, we, we post on Twitter quite regularly. And there's also, um, not sure if you know, there's like an unofficial, uh, Discord, which is lots of festival people, but mainly Glastonbury lovers, um, who go on and talk. And I, I, before this interview, I asked, does anybody have any questions? if I'm speaking to, um, one of the managers from The Common, the only question I got was, when are the tomato fights coming back? Or when are the paint fights coming back? Um, so yeah, I, I think everybody fondly, weirdly fondly remembers those.

34:07Dan Tsu That's a really good question, and I don't have the answer for that, sadly. You'll have to ask. Um, I'll, I'll ask, I'll ask my team, uh, when I get on site. Um, yeah, I have really fond memories of those, uh, paint fights and the tomato fights. I remember If I wasn't feeling brave enough or I didn't have a poncho for the tomato fight, I would stand outside of the temple and see the kind of stray tomatoes just being lobbed over the temple wall, trying to dodge them. I mean, yeah, I miss them too. It was, it was, um, a real marker, you know, when you would walk around and just see people covered in tomatoes, you're like, what has happened to you? It's like, oh, well, I just got in a tomato fight on a Sunday at the temple. It's like, what? Like the temple isn't even open in the daytime. Well, you, well, that's where you need to be. So yeah. I do, I do miss it. I think in reality the actual logistics of the production of it was quite challenging, but, uh, who knows, it may well come back. It was such a good idea, it'd be a shame that it rests forever.

35:03Jessi Yeah, I, I was never brave enough. I always used to, as you say, see people kind of walking back from the, from the corner at like 4 PM on a Sunday covered in bits of tomato, and I, I always said one year I'll do it and then didn't. But yeah, Bearded Kitten, um, they used to do SGP as well, and they were For, uh, there they were famous for naked mud wrestling, which you can imagine was, um, quite, quite hilarious to watch as well.

35:27Dan Tsu Anyway. I remember, I remember.

35:30Jessi Great, I love that you were there as well.

35:31Jessi Um, fab.

35:32Jessi So I've only got a couple more, uh, questions for you, Dan, um, because obviously I realize you're a very busy man this close to the festival, and I know that you're coming on site soon. But, um, first question actually, you mentioned right at the beginning a new kind of venue or bar. Is there any more you can tell me about that?

35:47Dan Tsu Absolutely. So it's Kinetic Bar, which is, it'll be a relatively modest venue. So if you're familiar with The Common, you'll know that there's a kind of a, like an overspill bar called Kinetic, which kind of sits just off the railway track, kind of between Rum Shack and Mess Yard opposite the entrance to the temple. So we're basically putting a DJ platform in there. It's about kind of 400 capacity, I believe. Imagine it like a little bit like a kind of outdoor but covered house party. It's going to be, there's no music policy. It could be anything at any time. There could be, you know, random secret sets, lots of friends and family. It's a little bit like the kitchen in the best house party. You know, there's DJs popping off in all the other rooms, but you know, you can have a little kind of casual vibe. I say casual, who knows? It might go off. Like, it's a bit of an unknown quantity at the moment, but definitely come check it out. I'm managing it. I've programmed the Thursday night with a mixture of kind of drum and bass and jungle, UK garage, kind of random electronica, kind of West African music. So it's going to be a real mixed bag. So it'll be a perfect opportunity for you to get a drink, reset, have a little dance before you go attack the Temple or the Rum Shack.

37:09Jessi Brilliant. I love the description of the kitchen at a house party. Like, I immediately knew exactly the vibe. So that's brilliant. Uh, and then maybe a little bit about the future. I know obviously that's sort of hard to talk about, but is there anything that you envision, uh, for The Common or any, you know, I guess dreams you have for it? Anything that's in the works for 2025 and beyond that obviously I realize there's not much you can talk about, but—

37:34Dan Tsu Yeah, sure. I mean, we, so we obviously got the follow year, I believe it was 2026, right? So, um, This presents a really interesting opportunity with regards to 2025. You know, if, you know, we've— The Common has really made a name for itself over the last 10, 10-plus years. And, you know, we constantly like to freshen things up and keep things interesting and create new experiences whilst also kind of recognizing and acknowledging the home that The Common provides. You don't want to change too much of home, you know, because it's familiar. But also at the same time, as restless creatives, there will be things that kind of evolve and develop. You know, there's only early talks of what that might look like at the moment, but I know that, you know, there's so much collective imagination in the field that nothing stays the same for too long. So watch this space.

38:29Jessi Brilliant. Thank you. And I have, I know I said that was the last question, but I have just remembered one more. What was the job you did in 2011? I remember you mentioned at the beginning.

38:38Dan Tsu Yeah, so basically, the company I run called Lyrics Organics, putting on live events around kind of hip-hop and spoken word and folk music, we had been working quite closely with a charity called MSF, which is Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders. And they're an incredible humanitarian aid organization that work in the frontline of places that don't have their own medical care. They're always the first in and last out. And we've been working with them for very, many years. And at the time, MSF had independently been invited by Glastonbury, by The Common in fact, to come have a stall there. And I remember when that amazing opportunity presented itself, MSF came to me and were like, listen, we got offered by Glastonbury to do a stall. And we were like, oh, that's amazing. But what happens if we went back to them and said, could we do something bigger with it? And so from that, an amazing talented woman who would go on to become my life partner called Joanna Layla, who's now a fashion illustrator. She designed a venue, a music venue that was, the facade of it was like the crumbling wreckage of a hospital in Haiti. Now bear in mind that this was 2011 that we did this. Haiti went through a catastrophic earthquake in 2010 and then a subsequent cholera outbreak, which killed in total about 250,000 people. And it's already the poorest country in the world. So you can imagine the amount of devastation that caused. And Jo went over to Haiti in 2010 and kind of came back and basically designed this venue with her kind of incredible visual arts skills and worked with the producers at The Common to make this a reality. And inside of it was, you walk in at, you walk through this like, you know, crumbling hospital. And then on the walls were this incredible photo exhibition of the work that they do in Haiti. And it was staffed by doctors, nurses, and logisticians from the field, many who had worked in Haiti and other kind of cholera kind of crises. There was also a Land Rover Discovery, which is the kind of vehicle that they use in those situations. There was a shipping container with a pop-up operating theater in it. There was a cholera tent there where, you know, revelers could come down, lie down, watch an iPad or of the work that MSF do and talk to the people who really are on the front line doing incredible work. And then in the daytime, we would have kind of music workshops and talks. And then in the evening, we would have a live music program, which I booked. We had Ed Sheeran play one of his first Glastonbury gigs his first year there. We had people like Disraeli, Beans on Toast. We had Sam Lee. Benjamin Francis Lefwich, there's quite a strong folk element to it, John Fairhurst. But also we, and it was just an incredible experience. And it was, you know, we were flying by the seat of our pants. We didn't know what we were doing. We had next door to us by like bad luck, the Wall of Death, which was like a motorcycle kind of stunt venue where the cycles would gradually pick up so much speed that they were like, you know, riding kind of horizontally around and up the walls. And it was the noisiest diesel-powered thing you could ever hear next to like beautiful kind of folk with rare Japanese instruments. It was a bit of a disaster in some ways, but it was such an incredible experience and the program was great and the design of the venue was great. We also had another venue. We took over Bassline Circus that year. And we did a one day of a, like an all night thing. Again, Ed Sheeran played. We had loads of kind of pop stars played. Ne-Yo also performed as part of the box sets. And yeah, it was quite an experience. And we did, again, we didn't know what we were doing, but it led to us being here. I think it was a fallow year, maybe in 2012. And then in 2013, they were like, wow, you did a great job with that. Do you want to come run the Rum Shack? And So here we are.

42:41Jessi I'm so glad I asked that question because that is an incredible story. And, you know, when you first said it, I thought you were going to say, you know, I started off, I don't know, cleaning the loos or something like that. But no, that's— wow, what an introduction to go straight in and create a venue. And yeah, the fact that you found your life partner as well and what a creative person she is. So what a story. Thank you so much. Honestly, this conversation's been so amazing and I could— I feel like I could talk to you for hours, but I feel like we should wrap it up and I should let you get on with your work. But If we sort of finish it up, if you, in your fabulous, eloquent way, um, just give us a wrap-up of what's happening at The Common this year, you know, why should people come down, um, and, you know, again, talk about that kind of daytime into evening perspective, that would be wonderful.

43:29Dan Tsu Yeah, so The Common 2024 is just going to go off. I mean, if you've been to Glastonbury before, you know the sketch. The Common is the place to be. I know everyone says it, but once you're there, you know it. So at the Rum Shack, as I mentioned before, we've got an amazing lineup stretching from Afrobeats and amapiano through to drum and bass and jungle. I think it's probably, I could drop a little hint on there that we might be open earlier than Thursday. That's all I'm saying. So if you're about, you know, kind of swing down if you're around earlier than Thursday, let's say. which we've been doing recently. Also, we've been doing a Wildcard, which is a really amazing thing where we basically run a competition every year and give people the opportunity to DJ or perform live at Glastonbury. We don't care who you are. You could be a 6-year-old, you could be a 70-year-old, as long as you kind of— it doesn't matter how much experience you've got. We just want to be able to— we call it Our House, Your Party. And yeah, that's a wonderful thing as well. The Temple has got a banging lineup as people would expect. So on the Thursday, got some of the best jungle and drum and bass. But interestingly, at 4 o'clock, this is the earliest that the Temple's ever opened. We've got Channel One, the legendary soundboys from Notting Hill Carnival and all around the world, opening the Temple from 4 till 6. So that'll definitely be something to check out. All the Bristol heads will love to know that Gardner is doing a live set from 7 till 8. And then on Friday, it's a really incredible night. It's Rinse FM's 30th anniversary. So E.Z., He's doing a back-to-back set, a really rare back-to-back set with Sammy Virgie. Jotti, who's one of the biggest DJs in the world right now. Katie Bee's performing, Hamdi. So that's going to be one to watch. Saturday, got some absolute drum and bass legends like Dillinger performing. And on Sunday, you've got Sherelle, again, one of the sickest DJs around at the moment. So there is so much going on. Of course, you've got the Mezzeards. As well, which is a little bit more like a kind of house party vibes run by Copper Dollar Crew. And then as we've talked about the kind of the backbone of The Common being the speakers, we've got The Common opening ceremony on Wednesday at 7:30, which is always a wonderful, beautiful thing to be a part of. If you're around, do come down for that. We also have processions on Thursday. We've got artist talks, we've got talks around sacred earth activism and indigenization. We've got Kate Tempest on Friday at 12:30 doing a talk. We've got Graham Hancock talking about civilization and shamanism on Sunday at 5 o'clock. So log on to your app, make sure that you star us all, make sure that you come down to the Common. Our home is your home. Um, and we can't wait. Glastonbury 2024 is going to be an absolute banger.

46:26Jessi Amazing. Thank you so much. Honestly, this has been brilliant. I'm just smiling from ear to ear. And yeah, I feel like, how am I going to be anywhere else except The Common for the entire weekend? But you've, yeah, you've done a great job of, um, of going through it all and, and really getting me hyped up. So thank you so much for giving me some of your time, Dan. It's been wonderful speaking to you.

46:45Dan Tsu It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me, Jessi. And, uh, yeah. Shouts out to everybody who's, uh, new to Glastonbury this year. I hope you have a wonderful, life-changing weekend.