Festival Season
After a discussion with a guy at work who went to last years Coachella I started to wonder which was the best festival.
Personally due to the restrictions in carrying in your own drinks and food to the area where the bands are playing I have become disenchanted with most.
Of course most of my festival attendances were in England but I cannot think of many that would top Glastonbury. Around 200,000 people spending a week in a number of fields on what is an actual working farm, watching some of the best musicians on the planet play on a ridiculous amount of stages. Even if thye weather is bad, and it often is, it has to be experienced for the out and out fun of the place. Take in your own provisions/alcohol/drugs and have fun – amazingly the police presence is almost non existent. The Phoenix Festival in Stratford on Avon was also pretty cool, when it existed, if only for the locality and the history of the place. Any Virgin festival I would not go near if I was paid after experiencing the shit of the Reading Festival.
I have not been but have heard very good reviews of the festival held on a beach near Barcelona is also pretty amazing.
So what would be the best festival you have ever experienced.
NB: I have just started printing the setlist for the 15 stages at this years Glasto – it is a 29 page list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comments
The only festivals I’ve been to were the first 2 Lollapallooza’s in 1991 and 1992 but those were just 1 day things. I’d be up for 1 day of a festival or if there were hotels nearby but most of the US ones seem to require sleeping in tents in massive fields around large groups of noisy people and me being a horrible sleeper would end up going insane.
The only two I’ve been to were the Tibtean Freedom Concert in ‘98 in DC and Coachella a few years back when Daft Punk played. The Tibetan Freedom concert wasn’t as much of a festival as it was a reeaaallly long benefit concert, so I don’t know if it qualifies, but it had a great lineup, and was run well enough to impress me as a 14 year old. Someone got struck by lightning in front of me and I missed Beck and The Verve, which was annoying.
Coachella was really really well run I have to say, but it seemed almost less genuine as a result. Everything about it was just ridiculously efficient and organized, it gave it this ultra-businessy quality to the whole thing. Didn’t really have that whole festival community thing going for it at all, even with the camping. I imagine All Points West will be about the same this August, only with more traffic and no camping.
I’ve only been to the ’93 or ’94 lollapalooza (I forget which, but Tool and Orbital played there) and Area 1 or 2 (I forget which, but Bowie played there). Both felt kinda silly.
Hahahaha oh yeah, I forgot about Area 1 & 2.. they did feel silly
Silly is really a good way to describe it. And I would think that given the ridiculous scope and magnitude of the more traditional full weekend festivals, with 20-30-40 bands in a weekend would feel even that much more silly.