Whilst computor servers are working...Rain is playing havoc down here at Worthy Farm - just thought I'd mention that considering it was looking like this - I'm very pleased to announce that the bundles of hay are arriving by the truckload to make getting around much easier! Lay lay that hay hay... Fittingly the sun is back once more, blazing, just in time for Super Furry Animals. They're playing the Other Stage and I've just seen a briiliant 'Rings Around The World.' Apols, but I'm going back for more of that! Laters

Hey, more festival fun to come... Our intrepid picture editor, May, and myself are off to Knowsley Hall tomorrow morning, and we'll be bringing you blogs and news from this latest addition to the growing list of festivals, located in the grounds of a stately home outside Liverpool. We're very much looking forward to seeing The Who -- I must admit, I only saw them for the first time last summer, in Hyde Park, and they were truly fantastic. I'm hoping they'll put in an equally exciting show tomorrow night. Also on the bill are Madness, surely one of the great, fun-time festival bands. I saw them last year in Spain, and you can't really fault a set-list including "Our House", "It Must Be Love" and "One Step Beyond". Expect conga lines stretching right across the Mersey. I'm sure local heroes The Zutons, Pete Wylie, The Coral and Shack will all get a great welcome, so the atmosphere (if not necessarily the weather) should be excellent. Check back here from tomorrow to find out what's been going on. As long as the pear cider hasn't done too much damage first...

Out of all the burger-chain owning, cigar-chewing Eighties' action heroes, Bruce Willis was always the one I had the most time for. I grew up watching Moonlighting, often transfixed by the casual way the show broke through the Fourth Wall, characters directly addressing the audience or walking off set past the cameras and into the studio. Mostly, though, I thought Bruce was great -- carefree, insouciant, arch, funny, nowhere near as serious or smug as most other TV PIs in the mid-Eighties. When he hit the movies, Bruce was a far more engaging figure than peers like Arnie or Sly -- pumped and buffed and barely human. Bruce did, and still does, a great take on the harassed Everyman -- that look of bafflement that'd cross his face as some nasty terrorist or crooked cop points a gun in his face, a "Why does this shit always have to happen to me..?" glance to the camera. Comparing the trajectories of those three actors suggests Bruce is a veritable Renaissance man next to Sly and Arnie. His CV indicates a willingness to find varied and interesting projects, if admittedly not all of them are complete successes: 12 Monkeys, Bonfire Of The Vanities, Death Becomes Her, Last Man Standing, Pulp Fiction, Sixth Sense, The Fifth Element, Sin City. Here's a thing. In 1999, while Sly was shooting his woeful Get Carter remake and Arnie was starring as ex-cop Jericho Cane in the dire End Of Days -- imagine The Terminator meets The Omen, then swiftly forget it -- Bruce was playing opposite Nick Nolte and Albert Finney in Alan Rudolph's Vonnegut adaptation, Breakfast Of Champions. It may not have been quite the masterpiece, but at least he was making an effort. His last couple of movies have seen him play extended cameos, or supporting roles, and he seems comfortable with that. He was solid as the father in Nick Cassavetes' Alpha Dog, and chomped his way through his uncredited, 10 minute monologue in Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation. He looks like he's coasting, which I think is a clever skill, part of his charm, and undoubtedly deceptive. Playing an alcoholic cop in 16 Blocks at the start of this year, he was pudgy, bloated -- the physicals easily done with make-up and prosthetics -- but there was something in his gait, in his slight squint and mild air of befuddlement which suggested here was a long-term, heavy-drinker. So it perhaps seems rather strange that, 12 years on from Die Hard With A Vengeance, Bruce has returned to the character of John McClane for Live Free Or Die Hard. Sure, Sly resurrected Rocky earlier this year and we live in fear of Rambo's imminent return, while Arnie rebooted the rusty T-800 cyborg for 2003's Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. But I figured Bruce was a bit more savvy than that. Still, in comparison with the stultifyingly dull Transformers Of The Caribbean, the sight of a harrassed Bruce blowing shit up in a white vest once again is something to cherish. Live Free Or Die Hard opens on July 4 The trailer is here: http://www.livefreeordiehard.com/index_site.html

Thanks for your continuing response to my recent post about Bob Dylan bootlegs and which of them are your favourites. Among the sundry comments I’ve received, the following response from Paul Metsa from Minneapolis stood out. As anyone who’s seen the footage he writes about will already know, this was an electrifying performance (from which Damien Love and I recommended “Ring Them Bells” in my original post) and Paul’s description of it makes me wish I hadn’t lost the video I had of the concert. But is it really Bob best-ever vocal performance, as Paul claims? What do you think? Either email me at allan_jones@ipcmedia.com or post a comment below. But, first, here’s what Paul had to say: “I think Dylan's performance of ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ from Nara, Japan is his greatest vocal performance of all time. The setting could not have been more sublime. He stood in front of a wonderful orchestra comprised of sympathetic and handsome Japanese classical musicians, all of whom seemed to be smiling. The orchestra, as I remember it, was supplemented by the rock solid Jim Keltner on drums, another guitar player, and, I believe, Ray Cooper on tambourine. Behind him was a 30 foot gold statue of Buddha, while the wind blew threw those beautiful trees. Bob started to sting, and the orchestra slowly swelled behind him. Each and every verse was stronger than the last, building like a powerful steam engine of strings and gongs. Dylan’s voice had a vibrato that evening that would have made Sinatra proud. Verse after verse of apocalyptic visions, pounded home by this wonderful orchestra. Dylan seemed truly energized and inspired in this setting, and by the end, it was as if the song was reflected from the mountains so all souls could see it. An absolutely breathtaking, bravura performance, and folk music at its absolute best, by the finest folksinger of our time. ‘Ring Them Bells’ was to die for as well. Word has it, that when Beattie Zimmerman, Bob's mom, saw the video of the show she commented "Bobby looked great in that new suit coat!" Gotta love that. Also, I read a Joni Mitchell interview that said when they were singing ‘I Shall Be Released’ as an encore, Bob (who looked like he was up to no good) was standing either behind her or next to her, singing the wrong words to her during her verse. She compared it to having someone dip your pigtails in the ink well in grade school. God bless him.”

Uncut is on its way to Glastonbury right now, so keep an eye on this blog for news and reviews all weekend. If there's anything you specifically want Uncut to check out, let us know in the comment box, and we'll try and have a look. In the meantime, John has blogged vaguely on Glastonburys past over at Wild Mercury Sound. Have a great weekend!

Terrible weather forecast notwithstanding, I'm feeling a bit jealous of everyone heading off to Glastonbury this morning. Farah is representing for Uncut, and you should keep an eye on our festival blog, where she'll be filing reports all weekend. The dreary grown-up business of looking for a new house prevents me from going to Glasto this year (if anyone is an expert on South Tottenham primary schools, don't be a stranger. . .). But of course I'm feeling very nostalgic right now. The festival used to always bring out the latent hippy in me, and consequently I used to spend most of my time mooching around the stone circle or the teepee field, wondering whether to join a meditation class, rather than watching any bands or doing any work. One band that I always used to make a point of seeing, though, was Orbital. And so I'm playing this great new compilation by them called "Live At Glastonbury 1994-2004", and trying to hear myself yelping in the crowd between tracks. Along with Spiritualized, I always associate Orbital with Glastonbury, maybe because their music always strived to be transporting, intricately ecstatic. Much as I love bands like Arctic Monkeys, this weekend's headliners, gritty urban realism never really did it for me in the Vale Of Avalon. I remember at my first Glastonbury in 1989 (or the CND festival, as we used to quaintly call it back then) seeing Van Morrison sing "Summertime In England", and thinking it was just perfect, transcendent even. Orbital, of course, took that aesthetic much further. After their "In Sides" album, the Hartnoll brothers got a bit too corny for my liking (though having said that, Paul Hartnoll's new solo album has its Morricone-ish moments). But so many of the tunes on these two CDs - "Kein Trink Wasser", "Impact", "Halcyon" (complete with its daft and invariably uplifting Belinda Carlisle break), "Belfast", "Satan" and, inevitably, "Chime" - have a complex emotional power which isn't, I think, entirely due to my dewy-eyed flashbacks of Glastos past. The version of "Impact", in fact, comes from 1995: if I remember right, Orbital played the Pyramid Stage that year at sunset, just before the famous Pulp show. And while Pulp seized their moment brilliantly, I have a distinct memory that there were more people actually watching Orbital. But then the biggest crowd I ever saw at Glastonbury was for The Levellers, so not a great way of measuring a band's excellence, all told. I lasted about 30 seconds of The Levellers, by the way. I might be a latent hippy, but I could never cut it as a crusty. . .