Festivalentine

An American Blog in London...


As the entrails of winter finally seem to be losing the battle to keep us in a semi permanent state of drizzle, visions of dipping toes into ponds, running hand in hand through the park, building a daisy chain and enticing skin cancer run through my thoughts.

Outdoor pursuits of all manner come to mind and I can literally taste the covering of sweat on my upper lip in anticipation of the heady days of summer, involving such activities as looking out of a shadowed office’s window at frolicking children playing outside like new born lambs and returning, weeping to routine work based tasks like spreadsheet corruption, embezzlement and burying corpses in a landfill site.

There’s always so much to look forward too when the days get longer and I’m hoping for a bumper summer. For the worker there’s the prospect of coming home in daylight, for the sportsman there’s jogging in the park and the World Cup on the telly, for the film fan, blocks will be fully busted at the local Megaplex and for the alcoholic tramp there’s a summer sniffing round pub car parks for the dregs at the bottom of Magner’s bottles. With a bit of luck, there’ll even be a dead wasp inside... Mmm, protein.

It’s also in about May that I start to eye up the summer festival schedule, dribbling lust spittle over the lineups, checking prices and having a squeeze of my lower back to check which of my kidney’s is ripe enough to sell so I can afford a day ticket. The mailing lists all bark at you unexpectedly like Lassie letting you know there’s a boy trapped down the well, to let you know that this year Jay Z is playing on the rec ground round the back of Morrison’s, or the latest kitsch revival act from the 80’s (Del Amitri? Big Fun? Chaka Demus and Pliers?) are literally aching for you to sing along in a field whilst off your box on a mixture of cider, pot noodle and heroin flavoured lip gloss.

Aside from the main ones, there’s little festivals popping up all over the place and there’s not much to choose between them all. The seasoned genericoholic can immediately see through each festival’s attempt to present themselves as a flower sniffing hippie love in, with names like “Petal Floppyhat Kooka Mania”, “Nostalgianthaystacks” or “Groin Swirl”. No matter how hard they try to inspire whimsy, it’s all blown apart once you try to order your tickets and find the Krypton-Factor like hoops you need to train your dogbox brain to leap through. Demanding £750, a cheek swab and an imprint of your arse in a bit of concrete for a weekend camping ticket is rationalised by the curious allure of sleeping rough, not brushing your teeth and consuming falafel butties twice a day at the special festival price of £9.50 a pop.

The joys of the summer festival are multiple. For some it’s the camaraderie of the camp fire at the end of a long day’s moshing. For some it’s leaving the group and returning late at night to discuss the ‘amaaaaaaaazzzzzziiinngg’ world music tent, featuring bands called something like “Anal Spectrum” or “Peruvian Corn Lighthouse”, your enjoyment of which was in no way influenced by 48% cider and the giant pipe being passed around by a bloke in dungarees called Flute. Other’s like to chase the hit monsters, barging themselves to the front for all the big name acts, trying to look meaningfully into Bono’s eyes and wishing they could get close enough to really test that court injunction. For my part, every time I’ve been to a festival it’s been about avoiding trench foot, locating the bar and bouncing semi-rhythmically until my head feels numb.

I really enjoy the camaraderie of a solid weekender. It’s across between a prison break, an orienteering holiday and a really weird dream. It’s a mix of making friends immediately with people you’ve never met, sneaking rum past security men with foreheads larger than the main stage and falling asleep standing up despite the “Acid-funkinghellthatsloudotronical Bloodlung Remix” of the theme from Emmerdale blaring into your earcups from skyscraper sized speakers four feet from your face. You’d probably find a more relaxing break spending four days in an Afghan desert pothole while a bearded 1890’s circus strongman hammers foot long nails into your temples whilst bellowing the word “SOUND” continuously into your face.

In spite of the cost and the camping, the rain and the rancid, these complaints are still just woods obscuring trees. I absolutely bloody love a festival. In fact, right now I’m turning to the back of the Review section of the Observer (confirming my official position as a middle class, left leaning, humus muncher) to see where Morrissey's going to be, if I can catch Richard Hawley and find out if this is the year that Yaz makes her main stage return, surely ushering in a new era in popular culture. We all know pop wears cycling shorts, don’t try to fight it.

Overtheteethandroundthegumslookoutstomachhereitcomes xxx