As we’re in the thick of festival season on this side of the equator, I felt it was only appropriate to write about them, more specifically my hatred of them.  I have to confess I hate music festivals. Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word. Let’s say dislike… I dislike music festivals.

My dislike began in 2007, the year I attended my first; The Big Day Out. That day turned out to be 10 hours of burning sun and humidity, followed by a drunken exchange with a fuck-wit during Lily’s performance of LDN and a near death experience in an attempt to be front row for The Killers.  I hobbled home that evening with a broken shoe in hand and a tarnished sensibility in spirit, vowing it would be my last.

I haven’t always been this way.  In truth, I had been looking forward to my first music festival ever since my older sister told me she had bought us tickets. I was excited ! I imagined it would be something like the archival footage I had seen of Woodstock. A sea of beautiful - yet hygienically questionable - people, off their tits, oblivious to the fact their bodies swayed out of rhythm to the music, or that they were publicly nude in the middle of a field. I was also embarrassingly nave for a 21 year old.

When the day of the festival eventually arrived, all my idealised Woodstock preconceptions went out the window. It all started when my sister ditched me at the gates to help her then boyfriend sneak in by forcing open one of the parameter fences, thus allowing a barrage of other tight-fisted losers to enter for free. When she ditched me, she ditched me for good. I didn’t hear from her again till the next evening. I was annoyed, and the feeling stayed with me throughout the day . She invited me under the pretense we would do this festival thing together and then she deserts me, exacerbating my reformed abandonment issues.  So secretly, I hoped she and her boyfriend would be caught, and maybe thrown out.

The rest of the day proved only to get worse. First, a wanker, forcing his way through the crowd during Lily Allen’s set,  nearly knocked me down ( the only thing preventing me from falling on my face was the sweaty back belonging to the security guard in front of me) Insulted , I yelled out  “say fucking sorry” . To which he turned round and casually flipped me the bird. I reacted by throwing the remains of my rum and coke in his face.  

Next I decided to line up to watch The Killers on the main stage, a very big mistake that, in retrospect,  probably attributed to my current phobia of large crowds. As I watched the light to enter the designated standing area change from red to green, I felt the force of thousands of bodies push against my 54 kg frame. I panicked, and started crying out for help.

It was a 6 foot something German traveller standing beside me, who responded to my cry, first by trying to reassure me the situation wasn’t that bad and the by trying to  convince me he had experienced much worse having  survived a stampede of 100, 000 people during a Metallica performance at a  UK festival. Noticing I was not coping, he used his body to create a sort of cocoon around me to alleviate some of the pressure of the crowd. As I watched him I remember thinking “I don’t want to die like this, I don’t even like The Killers”

The day finally ended, when a purple-haired girl kicked me in the face with her stiletto. She was attempting to mount her boyfriend’s shoulders during Tool, and missed my left eye, by millimetres. After that I was done.  

It took me a few years to justify going to a festival again, and when I eventually managed to go, I was surprised, but not the pleasant kind of surprised.  On my return I found that the drink - throwing and near blindness experience of my past had been replaced by red tape and borderline paranoid authority types. I mean, before I could even enter I was body cheeked, bag cheeked and name checked! I couldn’t believe how scrutinized music festivals had become?!
Recently, I found myself at yet another festival (glutton for punishment) and within 90 minutes of arriving I was frustrated, overheated and in need of an ATM. My predicament got me thinking about my own experiences and as my OCD commands, I immediately starting compiling a list in my head.

So, drenched in my body’s own cooling system, I found a shaded area, pulled out the muesli bar I keep in my bag as reserve and began to write down my top festival peeves. In no particular order they are:

I know what you’re thinking. Yes I am aware we don’t live in an ideal society and yes I understand that most of these rules are there to protect us from the douchebags that walk through the turnstiles, but! you would have to agree, some of these rules are fucking annoying. That said, I would never discourage someone from going to a festival, this rant is based on my own experiences, you will most likely have a better one than mine, and you will probably come to like festivals as a result, and for that unfounded reason alone, I dislike you too.

-Bise