Thoughts on music: An off-the-cuff thought on music and festivals.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

An off-the-cuff thought on music and festivals.

I'm not going to Glastonbury. Indeed I never sought to do so. Were I there you would, without any doubt, find me at one of the smaller stages.
As it turns out of the three main stage headline acts, following Dave Grohl's unfortunate and unforeseeable accident just recently resulting in the withdrawal of Foo Fighters and a band that I would very much like to see live, I have seen two of the now Glastonbury 2015 headline acts before and both when playing their first ever significant festival headline set. As for Kanye West, the other headline artist/act, let's just say that I'm not sad about missing that. It's quite simply not my thing.
I seem to have no usable pictures of Florence and The Machine playing Latitude Festival 2010, although I remember that the performance was excellent. As for Arcade Fire, well that was the final impetus that prompted me into festival-going - and that was Latitude Festival 2007. I shall not be at Latitude 2015 either but I'll be out and about at other festivals over the coming summer.
Whatever festivals you may be headed to have a great time and remember the things that become memorable are often the acts on the small stages and including the ones that you have almost no, or indeed any, prior knowledge of. My personal view is that festival line-ups, although usually announced from the head-liners down, are best assessed from the bottom up; that is by examining those artists playing on small stages and also the opening acts on any stage. I don't see any reason to change my view - it is a issue of sustainability - in the light of what I saw and heard last year. Some will cut the grade and others won't - but at the very least you will know it for real.

To reinforce that idea - and just in case you arrive five days early for some reason - check this out. I pretty much guarantee that you won't regret doing so.