Bowie's Glastonbury 2000 Set Among Best Of All Time

Someone passed some bliss among the crowd*…

As music lovers ready themselves for an evening of top flight popular music on the first day of the 40th Glastonbury Festival in England today, it’s appropriate that various polls have been published highlighting the popularity of David Bowie’s 2000 set at the world’s most famous annual music festival.

Today also happens to be exactly ten years since that sublime Bowie performance and it’s thirty nine years since his June 23rd appearance at the second ever Glastonbury in 1971.

The first poll is from the current issue of NME (above) under the banner of Glasto’s Most Historic Sets. There’s a full page on Bowie’s 2000 Pyramid Stage performance with the following standfirst: “With a career even longer and as colourful as that of Glastonbury, one man had enough mighty crowd-pleasers to leave Worthy Farm reeling.”

For those of you that haven’t internalised it, here’s that 21-song, crowd (and long-term-fan) -pleasing set list from June 25th, 2000…

Wild Is The Wind
China Girl
Changes
Stay
Life On Mars?
Absolute Beginners
Ashes To Ashes
Rebel Rebel
Little Wonder
Golden Years
Fame
All The Young Dudes
The Man Who Sold The World
Station To Station
Starman
Hallo Spaceboy
Under Pressure

Encore
Ziggy Stardust
“Heroes”
Let’s Dance
I’m Afraid Of Americans

What a night, what a band, what a man!

Two other polls have been published in the last 24 hours. First up, 6 Music had the following…

BBC 6 Music listeners’ top 20 Glastonbury performances

01. Blur – 2009
02. Radiohead – 1997
03. Radiohead – 2003
04. Pulp – 1995
05. David Bowie – 2000
06. Orbital – 2004
07. Coldplay – 2000
08. The Cure – 1990
09. REM – 2003
10. Elbow – 2004
11. Johnny Cash – 1994
12. Jeff Buckley – 1995
13. The Chemical Brothers – 2000
14. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page – 1995
15. Manic Street Preachers – 1999
16. Morrissey – 2004
17. Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros – 1999
18. Portishead – 1998
19. Beastie Boys – 1994
20. Suede – 2003

The Top Ten Glastonbury individual song performances as voted for by 6 Music listeners

01. Blur ? The Universal (Pyramid Stage, 2009)
02. Radiohead ? No Surprises (Pyramid Stage, 1997)
03. Radiohead ? Karma Police (Pyramid Stage, 2003)
04. Pulp ? Sorted For E?s & Wizz (Pyramid Stage, 1995)
05. David Bowie ? “Heroes” (Pyramid Stage, 2000)
06. Orbital ? The Box (Other Stage, 2004)
07. Coldplay ? Yellow (Other Stage, 2000)
08. The Cure ? Just Like Heaven (Pyramid Stage, 1990)
09. R.E.M. ? It?s The End Of The World As We Know It (Pyramid Stage, 2003)
10. Elbow ? One Day Like This (Other Stage, 2008)

I’ll leave you with the results of a survey conducted by music video website www.muzu.tv …this is their top ten Glastonbury sets of all time…

01 – Radiohead – 1997
02 – Sir Paul McCartney – 2004
03 – Blur – 2009
04 – Jay-Z – 2008
05 – David Bowie – 2000
06 – Pulp – 1995
07 – White Stripes – 2005
08 – Bruce Springsteen – 2009
09 – Coldplay – 2002
10 – REM – 1999

* It was David Bowie.