Glastonbury 2009: the setup

Glastonbury 2009

Glastonbury 2009

Welcome to Glastonbury Festival 2009 - MusicRadar style! Yup, we're plodding our way through Worthy Farm as we type, but rather than saving ourselves for a 10,000 word essay on why Neil Young didn't play Revolution Blues, we're going to keep you updated by photo gallery, by Twitter (look for the Tweets marked #glasto and join in the conversation by replying @musicradar) and by carrier pigeon if we bloody have to!

And so… let's get it on! We'll start with this, the very first of our MusicRadar @ Glastonbury photo galleries. We'll be running these everyday and bringing you the sights and sounds of Glasto from as many stages as we can.

However until anyone actually starts playing, you'll have to settle for this preliminary report from intrepid RadarMan, the already-dishevelled Jon Sherrard.

Over the next few days, Jon has ditched the delights of backstage to tell it like it is - in amongst the masses, woefully unprepared, schlepping from stage to stage with only carrier bags to protect his Nikes and waking up next to a tent full of Borat impersonators.

No, really. Just check out page six...

Next page: let battle commence...

Glasto ticket

Glasto ticket

Glasto ticket? Yes. Car pass? Yes. MIDI drum pad? Tempting... But no.

Cars

Cars

It's a good job we love queuing. One hour and counting...

Pyramid stage

Pyramid stage

Glastonbury 2009 workers draw a larger crowd than Kate Nash did last year.

Lightning

Lightning

Was that lightning in the distance? It's Thursday, it's 5.17pm and it looks like we might be in for one stormy night…

Of all the places we had to put up our tent, we had to pitch next to the mankini boys. Wethinks you'll be seeing more of these fellas over the next four days…

Now this might look like the most boring shot in the world but we give you… the first drop of Glasto rain to fall on our hopefully waterproof tent! Yay rain!

Tent erected? Check. Peaked too early? Check. Chewing on blankie? Check. Boots carrier bag with oh-so-ironic 'feel good' message? Check and mate.

And that's it... for now. Inbetween waterproofing the tent, getting the only kip we'll get for four days and avoiding our mankini-clad neighbours (or probably having a sing-song with them), we'll be updating this preliminary pre-festival gallery as much as we can.

However tomorrow (Friday!)? Tomorrow it's finally time to start seeing some bands…