That’s a Jamaican Ska band, the Skatalites. Ska is a kind of on-its-head Caribbean version of American fifties R&B, on drugs, and steroids. For some unexplained reason they’re playing in Glastonbury, which doesn’t fit the narrative one way or the other, especially since I’m not sure if it’s Glastonbury Connecticut, or the one in England where the skinheads like Ska music for another reason I don’t understand.
They’re performing a gloss on a Ukrainian composer’s idea of appropriate background music for a movie about an international team of saboteurs blowing something up in Greece, but the Greek guy in the movie isn’t Greek, I think, his real name is Ercolani and he’s from Phillie, and Ercolani is a Bolgnese name anyway, and the Greek song he sings, Yalo, Yalo, isn’t part of the score; besides, he used to hang around with Gidget and nobody that hangs around with Gidget is any kind of saboteur you’d care to hang out with –oh yes, the song the Skatalites are playing has words but nobody knows them, and for good reason…
Islands of Greece are green and beautiful,
Green and beautiful,
Where the olive trees grow
In the field below,
But high on the cliffs the guns are hidden there,
Guns are hidden there,
In a cavern of stone,
Guns of Navarone…
There’s like 142 more verses like that, only worse, or moreso, or something, and if you go to a Skatalites show and sing along people won’t think you’re cool because you know them, they’ll think you’re strange so shut up.
So, to sum up: Nothing is wrong with this picture. It’s exactly how I prefer the musical world to be organized.