Music

A Festival Guide for People Who Hate Festivals But Love Their Friends

Back in February, when the trees were still bare and enough snow fell to ground flights out of British airports, at least one of your group chats burbled into life. For what felt like 22 hours a day, for what felt like three weeks, the words ‘Primavera’, ‘Airbnb’ and ‘cerveza’ were bandied around with a regularity verging on the outright willy nilly. Then in April, a similar thing happened. Except now, it was ‘All Points East’, ‘Dalston Superstore’ and ‘cans’.

Panic set in. Then dread. Festival season was fast approaching and you weren’t ready for it. Truth be told, you’ve never been ready for it. Usually tiring, always expensive, and occasionally very stressful, festivals can – for those of us out there for whom the idea of a summer spent largely trying to find a stray filter tip in a sweaty tent while New Order go through the motions – become the kind of social obligation that makes the very concept of friendship feel a little too much like hard work. You know that Angus will want to see Grizzly Bear when everyone else wants to see Vince Staples. You know that the drinks queue will make you, briefly, ponder a life of sobriety. You know that in all likelihood, the whole thing will cause a kind of inter-group resentment that may simmer for years, if not decades, to come.

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But you’ll have to go. Why? Because this is what we do in the summer. We enlarge our carbon footprint and keep camping shops in business. As such, we’ve decided to put together some very cogent advice for anyone out there who really, really, has to force themselves into being a festival person. Grab a bucket hat and a lukewarm can of cider and steel yourself for another few weeks of grassy jeans.

CITY FESTIVALS

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, AND YOUR OWN SENSE OF FINANCIAL PROPRIETY, PLEASE BRING A PACKED LUNCH

The likelihood of being surrounded by a glittery cluster of 17-year-olds fizzing with sherbet-cut MDMA is somewhere between “exceptionally high” and “Jesus Christ they are literally shaking where are their mothers someone please call home please please oh please just bundle them all onto the last chopper to Surbiton.” And that means that the hi-vis security unit charged with sliding his fingers under your socks in a hunt for pinger dust probably isn’t going to be too focused on finding an errant Cornish pasty. It can sit happily stuffed into the bottom of the tote bag you got at the Central Saint Martins’ open day half a decade ago.

This is very handy because by and large, festival food falls into one of two categories. It is either expensive and very bad, or very expensive and bad. You can have a barely broiled compact disc of hoof and lips masquerading as a burger, or you can root around the final remnants of an overdraft and stand in front of a Rudimental set eating a Yorkshire pudding rolled up like a burrito, each piping hot bite knocking you further and further off the property ladder.

DON’T ARRIVE HUNGOVER

Yes, yes, I know, I know, beer is cheap out here, and yes, I know you’re on holiday, and yes, it does feel good drinking cold, crisp continental beer for pennies, doesn’t it, but there’s going to be a point tomorrow when you’re stood under the baking sun trying to work out where exactly you pick your wristband up and you’re going to miss Car Seat Headrest at this point and your mate’s been sick around but not into a bin and the festival staff have got you pegged as pissheaded little Englanders and it is all going to go very wrong very quickly. Avoid reaching that point by going to bed early the night before, with a book of crosswords and a bottle of Vichy Catalan.

ALTERNATIVELY, JUST DO

Sometimes the only way to survive an early afternoon Gilles Peterson set is to be so brutally hungover that everything becomes spectacularly funny. And I mean absolutely everything: beards, Tim Lovejoy’s ongoing career, the unavoidable fact that one day this entire world will be engulfed by flames and then an eternal darkness. Funny til about 2PM, by which point the idea of a pint is almost, nearly, possibly sort of palatable again.

TRY AND RINSE THE GIFTING AREA

A top tip from someone who has been to at least five festivals: try and sneak into the VIP area. And then from there, head to the even more exclusive sub-section where they give former Pointless contestants free bags of posh popcorn and New Era hats. Failure to procure said items will probably lead to you getting kicked out which is, quite handily, a guilt-free excuse for when people start asking where you’ve gone.

Photo via Pixabay

EMBRACE THE FRENCH EXIT

If you’ll allow us to be semi-serious for a split-second, it is totally OK to find these kinds of festivals utterly overwhelming. The combination of thousands of people converging on dusty parks or concrete car parks – practically all of them half-cut by mid-afternoon – desperate to catch a glimpse of Dua Lipa or Fat White Family from a distance of around 3000 feet from the stage can be utterly hellish. This is fine, and happens to everyone but the most festival-hardened crusties. If you feel that way at any point go home. Just go the fuck home right this second. Text a friend the second you’re out of the gates and on a bus home, on your own. Then sit on the sofa with the yumyum you didn’t eat earlier and watch an episode or six of that new Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam on Netflix. Far more relaxing than squeezing into a tent to sort of nearly see James Murphy play the Grange Hill theme tune.

CAMPING FESTIVALS

JUST ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO WATCH NILE RODGERS AT SOME POINT

It is day three in the depths of Wiltshire. Twelve hours ago, your three-year relationship broke down, quite spectacularly apparently, at the side of a second stage Django Django set. Neither you nor your now-ex liked Django Django. Perhaps that was the problem. Either way, your analyst can deal with that in a few year’s time because right now you’ve got to smile your way through “Le Freak” while someone’s mum wraps you in a feather boa and tries to explain the origins of the song but you’re tired and sad and there’s a faint residue of some substance or other roiling round your extremities so you’ve zoned out and all you hear is a complete stranger shouting “AHHHH…..FUCK OFF!” in your ear. This will all be a horrible painful memory one day!

SPEND MORE THAN A TENNER ON YOUR TENT

I am 28 years old I have not spent a second in a tent for more than a decade and will likely never do so again. But even then, I know that if you’re going to have to sleep in one of the fuckers for several nights in a row, you’ll want one that allows you to somehow air out the stench of ripe boxers and Strongbow while simultaneously providing a high quality of on-site visibility and being safe enough to ensure that your step dad isn’t having sleepless nights worrying about your bumbag full of tatty Rizla being pinched as you doze next to a second-year Camberwell student. Now, my grasp on economics is relatively poor, I’ll grant you, but surely that costs more than a tenner!

REFUSE TO AGREE TO ATTEND ANY FESTIVAL WHERE FANCY DRESS PLAYS AN ACTIVE ROLE IN PROCEEDINGS AND THEN ATTEND BECAUSE LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE YOU KNOW IS BUT STILL REFUSE TO DRESS LIKE WHATEVER “RICK AND MORTY IS” EVEN IF IT QUIETLY MAKES YOUR FRIENDS SORT OF ACTUALLY DISLIKE YOU QUITE A LOT

You owe yourself this. You do. You really, really, really do!

HIDE IN THE COMEDY TENT

After a day or two of trudging between acoustic performances by Big Shaq and Wolf Alice DJ sets, it is OK to find the very idea of music utterly reprehensible. Handily, then, the modern festival experience offers a plethora of similarly stultifying diversons. Learn how to whittle! Watch someone make pavlova! Write in quiet internal agony as yet another Oxbridge graduate makes a Very Funny Joke about Peckham, where he lives now, and where you probably live too, come to think about it, being Exceptionally Dangerous. Its the new rock’n’roll!

BRING WET WIPES

Everyone in the world will tell you that wet wipes are the only way to get through camping without wanting to crawl feet-first into a mincer come Monday morning. Yes, they’re terrible for the planet (sorry!). But for once, everyone is right. Wet wipes – they’re brilliant!

You can find Josh muting a group chat about Glastonbury 2019 but he’s also on Twitter.