Glastonbury Application

As you are probably aware, Glastonbury 2020 has been cancelled. No Taste was built to be our vehicle into the festival by applying for press passes. Bollocks.

Below is the exact application we sent to the press team. We never received an answer from them before the festival was cancelled – so we’ll assume they said yes. Read it.

***

Well, if you’re reading this you clicked the link in our application. Thank you very much indeed – I promise it’ll be worth it.

So: hello there. I hope you’re well (which in this day and age is more than an idle pleasantry, argh).

I’d like to apply for four press passes for online music mag No Taste to attend Glastonbury Festival. Reviewing dozens of up-and-coming bands at Glastonbury would represent the zenith of everything we’ve been striving for since we began.

You see, five months ago, Glastonbury tickets went on sale… and sold out within 34 minutes. I know because when it happened my friends and I were sitting in Bristol yelling ‘nooo’ at my computer screen. At that point, hundreds of thousands of would-be attendees sighed, closed their laptops, and muttered to themselves: ‘maybe next year’.

But not us. For three lifelong friends, it was just the beginning. Never ones to shy away from a challenge – no matter how absurd – we endeavoured to find a way to attend the world’s best festival. The solution we settled on? Start a music magazine and apply as press. It seemed a far-fetched goal, but we were inspired. And No Taste was born.

We hadn’t a clue where to begin, so we guessed. We picked a name. Made a website. Drew a logo. Wrote our first album review. Our first ever press pass came soon after, closely followed by more. We set out our manifesto: to be honest, open and fair. No advertising, no money-making – just music, parties, and laughs. And – crucially – we decided we’d provide a platform to those who lack one; little-known bands, aspiring photographers and writers who just needed one person to believe in them.

While working full-time jobs, we grafted every evening on No Taste; collaborating and creating with anybody who wanted to work with us. Our lives became filled with the boom of live music, our weekends filled with debauchery. We met bands and artists, photographers, and writers. We made contacts and we made friends. We found a new purpose.

Oh, and we wrote about Glastonbury quite a lot as well.

Oh… and we got No Taste tattoos too. They’ll look rather silly if we are unsuccessful, I imagine:

Five months after we first failed to get tickets to Glastonbury – five months of motivating one another, of pushing, planning and preparing – here we are: our press pass request. It’s all been leading up to this, and I’ll level with you here: I am shitting it as I write this application.

If we attend Glastonbury as press, we will spend our weekend celebrating new talent, giving them honest, engaging, fun reviews.

Whether we get to Glasto or not, we’re not giving up. We’ve come too far to turn back, and no matter what we’re going to keep reviewing bands. For the initial motivation that has led us to where we are now – a big messy musical family – we owe you a huge thank you.

Thanks very much for reading.

All the best,

No Taste

P.S. We promise we will be environmentally conscious and not drop one single piece of litter at the festival x

We’re not stopping here…

No Taste will live on now. We’ll set an equally big goal again (and probably get interrupted by an asteroid or something) and work tirelessly to achieve it, documenting the madness along the way.

We want you onboard, too. You can contribute to the site and have your work published or just sign up to the newsletter below…