Do you really need that gas-fired bbq sir?
Having just returned from the excellent, if windswept, Hop Farm festival I wanted to ask some opinions on the modern big-gig experience - particularly the paraphernalia that accompanies the one-dayer event. I know this has been covered before and at greater length, but I think there's more mileage to be had. Not as a moan-fest, but more as a way of understanding the modern gig and the modern gig-goer.
I must have counted a dozen tents pitched around the main arena of the Hop Farm: from small pup tents to full-size four season jobs, two gazebos, a thicket of collapsible camping chairs running from the burger stalls to the mixing desk (and closer). And that's before we get to the food coolers. M&S was the caterer of choice, and, during Primal Scream's set, a group of smart thirty-somethings were chowing down on hummus and olives and sparkling wine. Gathered around a small camping table with their backs to the main stage. The odd look thrown back to remind themselves they'd paid £50 each to see Supergrass and Neil Young performing exclusively for them.
At what point is that vital connection between audience and performer cut? When you get out beyond the mosh pit? When the area around the mixing desk has been subsumed into the orbit of burger vans and stalls selling herbal highs and rubbish woolen ‘ethical’ hats?
The blurb for the Hop Farm was all about taking the gig experience back to its ‘roots’. Laudable yes, but impossible in 2008 with our various gig-going habits firmly entrenched? Maybe someone could've explained this philosophy in the glossy programme: 'An open letter to the geezer with the ten man gazebo and wall of windbreakers, who suddenly realized that the band with the silly name were ruining the conversation at his summer bbq.'
I'm not wearing the hair shirt here, just asking if things have moved on so far that festivals (more than ever this year) have become somehow pointless?
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I'm not sure. I was at
I'm not sure. I was at Guilfest and O2 Wireless this weekend and I still think there are a lot of people who will pay a lot of money to see the artists. Ultimately, if people just want to use the event as a chance to socialise with others all the time, get drunk and forget the bands, it's their loss and it's their hole in their wallet.
You do wonder sometimes though don't you?
There I was standing with the 13 year old junior Hagen two back from the front of the Word Stage at Cornbury eagerly awaiting the arrival of Carbon/Silicon, who were, let's not forget, potentially the loudest & rockingest act on all festival long (the Biscuits having been & gone at that point).
Right behind us is a woman sitting in a large fold-out chair with a play mat & three toddlers next to her, completely surrounded by other (standing) festival goers & looking most put out by this intrusion...
They left once the pogoing started...
Back to "Gig as event"
This is all back to the argument that big gigs are now 'events' to be attended rather than a chance to see a band play.
Cornbury
Same at Cornbury - the crowd around the main stage made immeasurably more dense by the mountain of clutter, tents, tables etc that people feel entitled to set up. I tend to adopt a policy of setting up camp away from where the main crowds are, and wandering out as I fancy to whichever stage appeals.
I was going to post something very similar
I have come to realise over the last two weeks (at Glastonbury and Cornbury) that my festival enjoyment is in inverse proportion to the size of stage I am watching. The smaller the stage, the higher the enjoyment. The band being watched is (almost) irrelevant here - I would go so far as to say I would enjoy watching Keane (yuk) on the Acoustic Stage more than I would enjoy watching (say) Springsteen on the Pyramid.
My theory is that there are essentially three 'levels' of bandwatcher at festivals:
Level 1 - the hardcore fans. Always down the front, fully focused on the band, will sing along to everything.
Level 2 - the uncommitted. Somewhat aware of the band and will pay some attention, but just as happy to talk to their mates as watch the band.
Level 3 - the uninterested. There for 'the experience'. Tend to be sat down on their camping chairs and stay at the same stage all day, regardless of what's on offer elsewhere.
On the smaller stages, you are almost exclusively with the Level 1s. On the bigger stages, the proportion of 2s and 3s grows dramatically. To be a level 1 on the big stages, you also have to put up with a considerable amount of discomfort (if you're an old get like me) - so generally you end up back with the level 2s, wishing they would shut the feck up and listen. Plus you can't see anything through the plethora of 'witty' flags they insist on bringing with them.
And don't start me on umbrellas.....
It all comes round again...
In the olden days, where nobbut a single stage stood, the standard gripe was those who stood up in front of you, standing being an unnecessary part of getting into the music (man).
At folk festivals, especially the marquee ones, the scourge became those with foldaway seats, for taking up too much space. It is natural that affluence and age withers the festival vibe: I would only mow consider going if a 3-4* hotel is near enough to get back to. Sorry. Don't do tents no more, not since some bugger tripped on my guy-rope at Cropredy, ripping me open to the elements for the rest of the night, as my dreams made me wonder whether I had met on the ledge, so cold and wet I was.
I did notice...
a hand-made banner proclaiming 'peace and love' when Neil Young was on. I don't know why it just grated me; I was in half a mind to scribble 'spleen and bile' on it and hand it back...
Trainspotting
Is there an age, I wonder, when this "gig as an event" becomes a means of ticking off bands from a list.
I ask as, ashamedly, I seem to have reached that stage. Having won tickets from another magazine to see the last Alice Cooper tour I staggered out of the bar long enough to see the final number from Motorhead and add them to the list of bands seen in my lifetime of ligging. Joan Jett did not matter as I had seen the Runaways in the 70's.
Hmmmmmmmm....
Had to chase your details up as I read this, and at least I am reassured by the Stackridge hat tipping. I think I know what you mean, if it is that a festival can quickly hoover up the swift seeing off of many an act. But uncertain if you mean you go to a gig or indeed a festival, merely to log the appearances in your little black book. Surely a degree of aspiration to see the acts in question should feature. I'm seeming to hear that you wished more to have seen Motorhead than to see Motorhead. Which seems a shame.
Granpa, did you ever see Lemmy in the olden days? Yes, son. He was rubbish: will impress, I hope, less than a re-creation of having seen someone you really had wished to see and describing the outcome, even if a disappointment.
Did you get the number?
No, Lemmy was moving too fast. There was a time when I would have been down the front but not anymore. Sadly, the after effect of having worked on many a gig and ligged at hundreds more gives you an addiction on wanting to check the fire exits or box office takings instead of basking in the musical vibes.
There is hope; I drove over to Liverpool at the weekend to witness the return of Stackridge to the Cavern Club and paid for my daughter's ticket as well as my own. It's what dad's are for.
I'm less fussed
at a festival than at gig for single band at which I expect most people to be at least an interested in them and not talk all the way through.
You just have to get nearer the stage and avoid the people in leather cowboy hats and long coats drinking pinot grigio
As long as the bar
is in sight of the stage, I am a happy man. The only time I risked the elements was a few years back at Cropredy when there was more of a risk of sunstroke than trench foot. Asking for a foaming pint of (sponsors) Wadsworths 6X I was asked to wait as they were changing the tanker. Smart.
(£5 Boots token winner - Ed.)