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Glastonbury is on the horizon folks and it’s looking gigantic. This year Worthy Farm boasts more stages than you can shake a stick at and enough live entertainment for anyone to die happy. So, what sets shouldn’t you miss and which hidden (and less well-hidden) treasures are waiting? Here’s a list of 10 bands not to miss:

Mr Hudson (Other Stage – 10.50am Friday)

By now you will probably have heard of Mr. Ben Hudson because Kanye West has been shamelessly promoting him at his every turn. Sure, he may be on his record label but you don’t find Kanye generally peddling shit to the masses. Mr Hudson has an inspired voice and brings an electronic edge to his music. He has the potential and the hype to become not just a huge but a monster act so it’s worth nursing that Friday morning hangover at the Other Stage.

Hot 8 Brass Band (Jazz World stage – 3.50pm Friday)

So by 4 in the afternoon you’ll probably be wanting the sun to be out and some party music to set you in the right mood for the evening. Well, the Hot 8 Brass Band is here to answer your prayers with a heady mix of feel-good tunes and an inspired cover of ‘Sexual Healing’ in their back catalogue. Brass bands have never been so cool.

Lady GaGa (Other Stage – 8pm Friday)

Simply put this is a ‘marmite’ set. Our favourite finger-flicking pop star will either sink or swim on the 2^nd biggest stage at the festival. Something tells me that the weather and alcohol consumed beforehand will have a big bearing on whether Lady GaGa emerges from her set triumphant or tragic.

Neil Young (Main Stage – 10pm Friday)

When Michael Eavis booked Neil Young, people moaned that it was contradictory to his assertion he wants to bring the young people back to Glastonbury. Do you know what though – any young person who knows anything about music will have been influenced/listened to/heard of Neil Young. He wrote the book on guitar rock and Eavis clearly agrees, pencilling him in for a 2 and a quarter hour set. That should be enough time for classics like ‘Cortez the Killer’, ‘Rockin in the Free World’ and enough guitar solos to send your head dizzy. He may be 63 but wouldn’t you be bloody proud to be headlining the best festival in the world at that age?

Baddies (John Peel Stage – 12pm Saturday)

Here’s a band who readily admit playing Glastonbury is a life-long ambition. This set is likely to be abrupt, riotous and hectic if frontman Mike Webster’s chipped tooth is anything to go by from recent shows. You can still catch this band while they’re considered ‘new’ and ‘cool’ if you get down to the John Peel Stage early on Saturday or catch them on Sunday at the Dirty Boots stage if you like your gigs intimate.

Special Guests (Park Stage - 7.50pm Saturday)

A few weeks back Emily and Michael Eavis announced a very special guest will play the Park stage which even they’re scared to announce due to health and safety fears. Currently this 7.50pm spot remains unfilled and I’ve come up with 3 bands doing the rumour rounds.

• 1) Arctic Monkeys – Reading Festival might not like this but who cares. The Monkeys embark on a European tour a few days after Glastonbury so they should be in the right area.
• 2) Radiohead – yes they will headline again soon but a sneaky spot on the Park Stage might just remind Worthy Farm goers of their excellence and the band do have a soft spot for Eavis…
• 3) The Libertines – OK this is a bit outlandish but the forecast of a reunion show from messers Doherty and Barat is promising. Pete’s already on the bill so you don’t have to worry about him failing to show up and where better to roll out the old classics again?

Kasabian (Pyramid Stage – 8pm Saturday)

Kasabian are a band who raise their game for the big occasion. You only need to look back to their epic Other Stage headlining spot in 2005 to know they relish having all eyes on them. This penultimate spot should be no different, as Serge and the gang aim to blow Bruce Springsteen off the stage before he’s even arrived. Expect a combination of older tunes ‘L.S.F’ and ‘Empire’ mixed with newer, more experimental tracks like ‘Vlad the Impaler’. Should be epic.

Enter Shikari (Other Stage – 3.45pm Sunday)

On paper this shouldn’t work and that’s why it’ll be so bloody good. Enter Shikari will try to tame a gigantic field with their mix of dance, grime, metal and devastating techno. Vocalist Rou Reynolds will also do his best stage gymnastics throughout and probably end up vaulting off a stack of amps so even if you don’t like the music, don’t miss this.

Roots Manuva (Jazz World Stage – 7.15pm Sunday)

There are few more seminal UK hip-hop acts than Rodney Smith, a.k.a Roots Manuva. This set on the Jazz World stage has the ability to mesmerise your already fried brain. With enough special guests on his albums to compile a dictionary it may also be time for another surprise showing.

Blur (Main Stage – 9.50pm Sunday)

One of the biggest bands of British pop history reforms at the grandaddy of all festivals – how can this not be memorable? Even if Albarn and co. are out of tune and out of practice this will probably spank 95% of the other acts playing at Worthy Farm for the mere spectacle. But let’s be honest, they won’t be out of tune and they’ll presumably have 80,000 people hanging on to their every note so they can’t really lose.

• Photo courtesy of Geoftheref’s Photostream

Glastonbury regulars often profess that the festival is a home from home, an annual pilgrimage. Granted, very few people actually live in enormous fields jammed with music, mud and biodegradable pegs, but it is a valid point. This year the homely feel will be bolstered by an abundance of acts that are on the latter side of the youth vs experience divide, bringing familiarity to the faces the hordes stare at from afar. Records long since gathering digital dust will be filling cars and minds on the road to Worthy Farm, taking listeners closer to where they came from.

However, as well as the unfailing non-debate about the shocking nature of the line up – last year too radical, this year too wrinkly – there will be another constant at this year’s festival of festivals: houses. While the second homes scandal has left politicians shamed and the public has been left mortar-fied (sorry) by ever-decreasing property values, Michael Eavis has gone and booked a main stage nigh-on obsessed with dwellings of all shapes and sizes. There even seems to be a hierarchy happening with this property phenomenon. Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, as the undisputed joint legends of the jaunt, don’t just get the biggest trailers – they get the largest house references. Both singers are likely to boom out separate songs titled Mansion on the Hill, clearly illustrating their financial clout as well as their musical standing. The tales tell of aspiration rather than grandeur, but at Glastonbury these hypothetical mansions are on “no ordinary hill”. According to Glastonbury Tor’s website, people “develop personal, profound relationships” with the mound. As the final headliner, Blur are not quite at mansion status, having to settle instead for their Country House. The Oasis-beating single, which the band promise will be revamped and rocked up for Glasto, may be a tad on the small side quality-wise, but Damon Albarn assures us it is a “very big house”.

With the big guns taking the intellectual property rights issue slightly too literally, those preceding them on the Pyramid Stage are playing catch up. Madness lay claim to the only home to spawn its own musical with Our House, while House of Fun gives them another track to claim expenses on. Meanwhile, Fleet Foxes’ slow-burning prospects will be offered to the masses when Quiet House breathes its understated mastery, while Crosby, Stills and Nash’s own Our House is sure to fire up memories. All that will be left before the long trip back home for another year is for the only investment more reliable than real estate, Tom Jones, to croon a rather famous number concerning some place or other where the grass is always greener. Home sweet home.

• Photo courtesy of al_green’s Photostream

Glastonbury Festival have finally confirmed the news we’ve all been saying we knew already. Bruce Springsteen is to headline the 2009 festival on Saturday night.

“I’m so pleased that Bruce Springsteen has agreed to come to Worthy Farm for the first time” says Michael Eavis on the Glastonbury website. “He’s one of the all-time rock legends and I’m confident that this will be one of our best shows ever. He’s also a Barack Obama supporter, which makes two headliners in a row who’ve backed the new President.”

Franz Ferdinand have already confirmed their appearance and rumours of further headliners include Blur and Neil Young.

Glastonbury takes place on June 26-28 and even though tickets have already sold out, a small amount of cancelled tickets will go back on sale at 9am on April 5th.

So - is this good news, bad news? Who do you want to see play?

What can we expect from this year’s Glastonbury Festival? It is almost a given that the heavens will open for at least two of the five days, Pete Doherty will turn up late and someone will fall into one of the many festering toilet pits, but I’m talking about the music, and to be more specific, the headliners.

In the midst of an even longer wait for 2009’s festival - and wanting to play the Gallagher brothers at their own game - Michael Eavis was quoted this week as saying ‘We’ve got four headliners at the moment. If they all confirm, then I’ve got two headliners for Saturday’. Ah, so he’s got TWO headliners this year then, interesting. A brand new feature for a festival that is quickly becoming out of fashion with ye olde faithful and in fashion with a new generation of multi-coloured-welly-donning youths.

I’m slightly concerned; is Eavis trying too hard to make Glastonbury Festival fashionable? I thought one of the main attributes of the festival was the fact that it stuck its proverbial middle finger in the establishments face and said a big fat NO to conformity?

Well, as much as it pains me to say it, I think its high time we all came to realise that Glastonbury Festival is now commercial. There… I’ve said it. Eavis (Michael and Emily) appear to have been trying to spruce up the whole Glastonbury experience over the last decade, and it’s a totally different festival to the one I first attended in 1999.

Yes, there are some positive signs of improvement to the experience as a whole:

1. People aren’t jumping the fence to gain access to the site anymore.
2. The new ticket regime this year seems to be fairer than previous years, giving buyers more chance of being able to log onto a website that was previously harder than getting into a nun’s knickers.
3. More and more donations are going to Greenpeace and Oxfam every year, so it’s fair to say that Eavis still gets top marks for his green message.

However, what’s all this ‘you wont know who is playing until you have bought a ticket’ nonsense? Michael please, give us a chance mate! Last year attendance was at an all time low because you wanted to look ‘cool’ and added Jay-Z to the Saturday slot when you could have drawn thousands more with Muse, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin to name a few world-class bands.

Is watching someone rap to a CD classed as a real Glastonbury experience? The majority of people said it was refreshing but I think in the backs of their minds they knew it was a slight letdown. Now I’m not saying Jay-Z isn’t a good artist, rather that he doesn’t belong at Glastonbury Festival just for the sake of having something different in front of our eyes. Are the days of booking the best acts in the world gone? Is there any thought going into booking these headlining slots?

Last year I had more fun watching bands on the Park Stage than I did on the Pyramid Stage. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think having ‘The Boss’ as a headline this year is the way to go. Landscape rock dinosaurs will draw the crowds for all the wrong reasons.

As I stand with the Fields of Avalon before me, I want to know that in one hand I have a slightly warm can of Carling, and in the other I have a festival programme that boasts the best acts on the planet. Reading/Leeds, V and Isle of Wight are nicking all the good acts now it seems; The Prodigy, Kasabian and Radiohead? What choice do we have at Glastonbury so far? Bruce Springsteen and Kanye West – do me a favour! We need acts to bring an excitement back to the Pyramid Stage. What Eavis has got to be careful of is having people watching the headline acts out of interest rather than love. It shouldn’t be such a gamble, should it?

With new plans to move the ‘fallow year’ back until 2012 to avoid the Olympic clash, it seems Eavis would be better off taking time out now to seriously rethink things. I hope I am proven wrong, but Eavis, you are too old to start trying to be cool now.

• watch Eleanor Conway at the 2008 UK Festival Awards

The summer is officially over, so this episode of Eleanor Conway Presents comes ‘atcha from the UK Festival Awards at the O2 indigo, London.

350,000 people voted in this year’s awards, for Best Major Festival, New Festival, Rock Act… the list goes on.

Catch up with Eleanor as she chats to Rob Da Bank winner of Best New Festival (Camp Bestival), goes camping with Best Rock Act winners Biffy Clyro and Pete and the Pirates and chats to hat trick winner Michael Eavis (Glastonbury) as he dishes the dirt on Jay Z and next year’s line up.

View previous episodes of Eleanor Conway Presents on music.virgin.com/author/eleanorconway.

Join her Facebook group before 23/11/08 for the chance to win a copy of Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree:

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