Why was it mediocre? A few reasons:
1. Mud. Everywhere. It had bucketed down the day before, and while some parts of the festival were firm underfoot, most of the place was a cesspit of stinky sludgy mud. Urgh! Okay, so I've never been to Glastonbury, so I probably don't know what mud is, but this was quite unpleasant.
2. The schedule. The timetable changed up until the day itself, and despite the fact we had three different timetables printed out, none of the bands appeared to run to any of them. Most bands came on 20-30 minutes late, or played at completely different times. As a consequence, I missed seeing The Tough Alliance, which I was very, very disappointed about.
3. The people. Why is it that festivals attract such awful people? Horrible meatheads who take their shirts off and rub their sweaty mansweat on all and sundry, jailbait girls in teeny tiny shorts and, oh, fashionistas posing like no other. Awful! I'm not sure if everyone can access it, but I have posted up some photos on my Facebook page. It was far more entertaining to take obnoxious pictures of the festival crowd than watching bands that didn't appear at their scheduled times.
Despite the disappointments, there were some highlights:
- Seeing The Jesus and Mary Chain was incredible - sure, they've aged 20 years since 'Psychocandy' was released, and the sound was cleaner than I expected, but they were still wonderful. Hearing 'Head On', 'Sidewalking', 'Some Candy Talking', 'Happy When It Rains' et al. was just an incredible sensation, and I can but envy those who saw them play 15 years ago.
- Watching Duran Duran was such fun, mainly because it was a rare opportunity to dance like a fool in a paddock, listening to all their 80s hits. And yes, even though they are quite tragic these days, hearing 'Girls on Film' will make even the stoniest dancer shake it. Simon Le Bon also has that certain charisma about him.
- Even though I thought The Tough Alliance were supposed to play, CSS were great fun, too, and extremely sassy. The two guitarists - one a Peaches lookalike, the other a bored looking girl who just played on - made my night. Again, they're songs are fun and the crowd lapped it up.
Depending on the line up, I don't think I will go back again next year. It's sad, because I used to love music festivals when I was a teenager, but now people are just awful! Side shows for sure.
4 comments:
That girl in the pink outfit. Her look is either "Euro aerobics instructor 1985" or "colourblind sex maniac". Perhaps it's both.
I don't really want to know, but I suspect both. Do people look as ridiculous as this at foreign music festivals?
The male contingent can often be found shirt off, beer in hand and sweating, but that's the default fashion setting for the British male in the summer, unfortunately. I've not been to one of the major festivals since Leeds, 2001. There was, as everywhere, still a lot of army trousers (for both sexes) and singlets (aka tit tops, for women) and band t-shirts (for men). Guns'n'Roses were playing, so you can imagine that black was a popular colour and tattoos were abundant.
Every day I like these festivals less and less, and I agree with I hate peole who go to them. They don't like music, don't know even bands their playing!! they go just because it's cool to go to festivals...
And the worst of all, many bands don't come in concert because there's a festival where they will be playing..so yo have to go to festivals to see them....grrrr, I hate big festivals!!
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