With three days to go before Glastonbury there are still tickets available, an unusual situation for the annual celebration of pop music which many people blame on this year�s controversial lineup.
Armed with wellington boots and enough toilet paper to last four days, 134,000 fans will pitch tents and share 3,000 temporary toilets on a 400-acre dairy farm in southwest England.
There they will hope to catch performances from the likes of Amy Winehouse, Leonard Cohen and Jay-Z over the three-day event.
�I would think in the 1990s there were occasions when it got to the point that tickets were still on sale at this moment,� said festival spokesman Crispin Aubrey.
�Certainly since 2001, when we introduced a new impenetrable fence it has sold out every year since then until now,� he added. �It�s been rather slow selling the last twenty thousand.�
The usual excitement that surrounds the festival, which started in 1970, has been overshadowed by U.S. rapper Jay-Z�s headline appearance.
�(Jay-Z) has caused a lot of discussion but we�ve had a lot of people who�ve said it�s a brilliant, brave decision to do something different,� Aubrey said. �We often try to have relatively mainstream people at the top of the bill, like Paul McCartney, and I think it was thought this year �let�s go for something different�, like a solo black performer.�
The festival�s cause was not helped when British rock royalty in the form of Oasis� Noel Gallagher weighed into the debate saying a hip-hop act was wrong for a festival whose roots are in guitar. Jay-Z responded earlier this month by dismissing the debate as �ridiculous.�
�If we don�t embrace what is new, then how do we progress?� he told BBC Radio.
Some traditional Glastonbury-goers are happy about the choice of Jay-Z, saying the backlash against him is unnecessary.
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