Mojo - The Music Magazine

THE GLASTONBURY NATION has many flags. In fact, when they say the British have been homogenized, "they" should be made to pull on their wellies and take a stroll down Pilton way, where pride in regional show-offing, expressed in loud, chewy accents and multifarious banners, endures.

From one vantage point in front of The Other Stage on Sunday, I could see five Cornish crosses, a Yorkshire rose, and at least two flags proclaiming an allegiance to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Oh, and a single Stars & Stripes (you wouldn't have seen one of those, pre-Obama).

While there is always much in the way of "It's not where you're from, it's what you're on" at Glastonbury, especially as the good weather kicks in, there is also the business of keeping one's end up. Over the pond they might call it representin' the 'hood.

Then there are the flags of no country: the standards of a state of mind. There was one I saw twice on Saturday, bearing the visage of a certain beardy TV botanist. "Kiss The Bellamy," it commanded. Well, if you insist.

More food for thought at a festival that has already provided plenty. Why, for instance, the abyss between, on the one hand, an enormous raft of not-quite-actually-successful-yet bands and the long-established evergreens? The unprecedented acclaim for 2009's "heritage" acts - Neil Young, Springsteen, CSN, Ray Davies, Quo, Blur even (of which, more later) - testifies to a falling away of punk rock-derived, Year-Zero fogey-baiting, but also exposes a paucity of new-generation rock heroes. Lots of great music, but few nodes of controversy or clarifying cultural watersheds. Oh, and could anything make your skin crawl quite like Tom Jones doing EMF's Unbelievable?

Mind you, I'm happy to report that festival sets retain the power to change your mind. I thought I hated the Manic Street Preachers until saw them at Reading in 1991. This year, Art Brut had me in their power, when I glimpsed the pathos and passion at the core of singer Eddie Argos's wry C86 throwbacks. A Blue Aeroplanes for the post-Doherty generation? It's like Britpop never happened.

Proving that it most certainly did, there was - of course - Blur, whose resurrection crystallized on the Pyramid Stage just when it mattered. Maximum commitment displayed in the manic glint in Damon Albarn's eye as he pogo'd and rolled around the stage to Song 2, as if aware that Springsteen had made "cool" and "ironic" useless gambits overnight.

Fears stoked by their just-released Midlife compilation (no There's No Other Way or Country House) that this would be a Blur edited of their juvenilia were swept away as all their Britpop standards were unfurled, and everything you secretly wished for but thought beyond hope (like Phil Daniels popping up for Parklife) was delivered.

Since parting company with Graham Coxon during the recording of Blur's Think Tank record, Albarn has whittled a big stick to beat himself with his outspoken disdain for some of Blur's works and his bandmates' career paths, and there is a certain amount of evil satisfaction to be had from watching the 41-year-old forced to re-establish a relationship with third-person snarkfests like Parklife's Tracy Jacks.

But if he seemed more comfortable with a guitar in hand, stoking the weird, post-Britpop maelstrom of Beetlebum, it's a marginal decision. Despite the sartorial let-down that is Alex James's baggy grey T-shirt (avec sweat patches a la mode), Blur were extraordinary and epic.

In a world turned upside down - ie. where Neil Young headlines Friday night - Blur garlanded the most Exciting Sunday Night Lineup In Glastonbury Memory. See you here next year, if the old back holds out.

Danny Eccleston

Picture by Big Marvin, who saw the same flag in 2007.