Entertainment For Lively Minds
Next time I'm taking a bloody sofa.
Posted by Vulpes Vulpes on 13 June 2011 - 8:18am.
I'm going to exercise my right to take my own seating arrangements to the next festival I attend. I've designed and built my own collapsible sofa, complete with arm-rests and extending foot-rests. It even has a built in cool-box. Anyone sitting behind me will just have to lump it, as it's my right to sit how and where I like; after all, I've bought my ticket.
I see the IoW organisers are withdrawing punters' human rights this year.
*chuckles to self*
Your thoughts?
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Kaiser Cheifs & Kings of Leon.
Pimms anyone? Frisby? Anyone know where the iPad charging gazebo is?
You get the punters you deserve. Don't f*ck with the brand, man.
I think that's the whole point of the IOW Festival
it attracts EXACTLY the sort of punter who wants to sit on a fold up chair all day, hopefully smack dab in the middle of the crowd.
It's a remarkably soulless festival and easily the most corporate of the bunch. A festival for people who aren't really bothered about music and liberally drop words like 'genius' and 'legend'.
I posted it before, but the original, original IOW Festival (at Wootton in 1969, not the Afton Down 1970/Hendrix special) featured a car jousting arena. THAT is what is missing from today's festival.
Thanks for the warning.
I hadn't realised it was such an event. I tend to like my festivals with a little more grit.
A festival isn't a festival for me...
unless there are scores of blokes in Saxon T shirts lobbing bottles of discharged bodily fluid at the stage (preferably whilst Meat Loaf is on).
Ruined
That's the trouble with the whole rock world now - it's all corporate and mainstream and ruined, basically. Like Noel Gallagher said about 'What's The Story Morning Glory' - the squares got into it and when that happens you make big bucks, or words to that effect, with a few fooks dropped in here and there. Can be applied more widely I feel.
(Bid for most reactionary, grumpy, snobby post of the day).
Different mileage
Beg to differ. I like the corporate, mainstream and ruined approach. Ideally with hot showers, comfy chairs and freebee breakfasts (or bog paper) from the sponsors.
But then again I am old, old, old. Nearly 50. And I like my creature comforts.
So, I go to Latitude. Which is not proper festival going according to my mates. Personally, I don't want to rough it more than that.
My last regular festival-going was to Reading during the 70s/80s
Even back then, I stayed in the nearby Caversham Hotel. Soft beds, hot showers, room service and a nice terrace bar overlooking the river. 5 minutes walk from the festival site :-)
Now
*that's* how to do a fest in luxury.
Shame it was Reading, mind, but hey.
I've taken to doing Glasters in a large estate car; slouch back to the vehicle after God-knows how much Tex Mex grub and a gut full of The Workers' Beer Company's finest, brew up some decent coffee and some relaxing refreshments while listening to the ambient sound of 120,000 people getting off their tits, then drift off to sleep on an inflatable mattress with no tent-peg stumblers to worry about, no speeding idiots gabbling all night two thicknesses of nylon away, and no damp problems when the inevitable electrically enhanced Monsoon arrives around 3 am.
Me too Paul
I was a bit tongue in cheek, but then I'm not much of a festival goer anyway. Only times I have been is to one in Sweden in recent years in my wife's home town where we stay with the in-laws and get lifts both ways with pre-festival cheap drinks, plus we know one of the organisers and seem to manage to bump into him most times thus receiving VIP passes to special privileged areas where there are nice loos with small queues and a quiet beer tent. A haven from the madding/maddening throng when it all gets a bit much.
As usual the answer is Adam & Joe
We're going to sleep inside a collapsable Yurt
There's a nurse in case anybody gets hurt
You joke
At Cropredy some people actually had a sofa, arm chair, coffee table and standard lamp set up, right in the middle of the field. Hilarious for them. Incredibly irritating for people as far back as 100 yards behind them who couldn't see the stage.
You need to consult Janes All The World's Festival Tricks
Turn to page 78, and there's the solution:
The Hens Teeth (TLPB Mk 1)
Description:
Transparent (may be available in various shades) polycarbonate liquid container that bursts on impact, scattering contents over an area of around 10 square metres. Aerodynamically accurate trajectory can guarantee tactical delivery at ranges of up to 50 metres. Collateral damage is non fatal, but may cause local unrest.
Field Deployment:
Quickly assembled from an empty Coke container, this has been proved to clear fields of chairs, flags, sofas and all manner of inappropriate, inconsiderate, ill informed crowd baiting buggery.
Payload:
Two litres of warm piss, preferably donated by those who enjoyed a particularly brutal session on Old Speckled Hen the night before.
Knebworth
I seem to remember this being field tested at Knebworth in 76. Somewhere around Hot Tuna I think.
Sounds like..
a very good friend of mine. He's been going since the 70s or 80s or something, and does not go to any other festivals.
I saw a photo of Australian motor racing fans
watching the Bathurst 500 from Castlemaine branded inflatable sofas (sofae?). Can't find it on the Web though.
Jane's Antipodean Crowd Control Methods (2011)
Turn to page 114, and there's the solution:
The Dinkum Deflator (HSSS)
Description:
Whittled stem of the coolibah tree, around five feet long, with one end as sharp as a dingo's dick.
Field Deployment:
Quickly assembled from nearby shrubbery, all that's required is a whittling implement, preferably of the Crocodile Dundee variety (i.e. bloody huge and dangerously sharp). Should be delivered woomera-style, from a great distance, in order to avoid the incumbents sat upon the target from being able to detect the original launch area. Accuracy is everything, as collateral damage may be liberty-threatening, and carry a criminal record.
Payload:
Instant deflation of observational obstacles, accompanied by a loud hissing sound and vile cursing.
Sofa? Pah!
You are all a bunch of softies. I went to the '69 IOW in the clothes I stood up in. No tent, no bedding,no food. This was not to show how tough I was, it was sheer bloody idiocy in not planning.What was I thinking? Obviously I wasn't thinking. Result- I sleep on the Friday night under a sheet of black plastic bought at a ripoff price, having eaten, all day, only a plate of curry that consisted of curry sauce, with no obvious ingredients, again at a rip off price (half a crown, if I recall correctly) The second night was spent with many thousands of others in a reenactment of the Dunkirk evacuation on Ryde Ferry Pier . What larks. Still, the music was good. Mind you, I've never been to another festival.
You were lucky
We had to go to Reading in 99 three days early to pitch our tent in a swamp or pure sewage, had to queue up in pouring rain to get a raw onion which cost a fiver. Not only did we have to put up with an acoustic set by Dumpy's Rusty Nuts for three hours cos all the other acts were stuck in a pile up on the A38 but when th headliners - Menswe@r finally came on they played the same one chord they knew for 5 days. Half the people I went with died, the rest got dysentery and I'm typing this with my one remaining finger
Chairs at Festivals
I'm a big fan of the folding chair at a festival, I always take one. I do tend to only use it either at the campsite or towards the back of the crowd during the daytime though (as I find most other people do). Some people can be inconsiderate with them, but then again some people can be inconsiderate regardless (like sitting on the floor setting up a picnic-type area on a sheet in the middle of a dense crowd).
I do think the biggest issue here is that they weren't told in advance. I'd be annoyed.
Mea culpa
I have to come clean. I have one of these (well two actually - one for Mrs T)
But in mitigation they are very low level and testing shows with a bit of a sprawl on your head is no higher than if sitting on the ground. But sooo nice on the aging back.
Sorry VV.
Oh, don't worry, my back gives me gip too.
I do like the recumbent seat design, I've never seen them before; must get a couple of those myself. Do they keep your arse clear of the ground in muddy climes though?
I've already got a couple of those standard upright ones, with the armrests with built in beer-holders, but wouldn't use them in a festival crowd scenario, for fear of either of the above mentioned Jane's-listed military interventions.
They are however really great at agricultural shows or equestrain events, when you've been on your feet for nine hours and the Magners (or magnum) is starting to have an effect, and especially at airshows, when everyone is looking upwards anyway.
Strap
Get ones with a strap built in - easier portage to sling them over your shoulder!
I used to have one of those
Is that the one where the same poles form the back-rest and the back legs, meaning that a moments inattention leads to the sitter leaning back causing the chair to fold up, then performing a backwards roll onto the blanket behind him where a middle aged hippy woman has displayed her homemade earrings for sale, tipping his pint over himself as he does so? I soon changed to another model.
Mine are pretty stable
Never had the backwards roll. Getting out once in is a bit tricky esp after a few sherbs, but you need a sort of forward momentum / push on frame technique and it's fine.
Re sinking into the mud VV i guess this is a risk but happily one I haven't had to take yet. I had them at Cornbury but had retreated under the trees once the Biblical storms swept across the site. Earlier on though, I was reclining in the sun with a beer and scotch egg and Kate Mossman walked past! Joy.
Phwooaarh,
you lucky blighter!