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Glastonbury Festival

Discussion in 'Tour Forum' started by Wall Of Arms, Mar 29, 2016.

  1. Wall Of Arms Mar 29, 2016
    (Last edited: Apr 5, 2016)
    Wall Of Arms

    LIGHTEN UP, BUTTERCUP Prestigious

    Festival season begins!
     
    phaynes1 likes this.
  2. Wall Of Arms

    LIGHTEN UP, BUTTERCUP Prestigious

    The Glastonbury line up just got revealed in its near entirety:

    [​IMG]
     
  3. phaynes1

    Regular

    I'm thinking about going to Wrecking Ball. Crazy good lineup and only a couple of hours to drive.

    [​IMG]
     
  4. phaynes1

    Regular

    This isn't so much a question about Glastonbury itself, but more the state of UK festivals, but how do you go about choosing which to attend? For us, most of our festivals are spread out every couple of months (Coachella in the spring, Bonnaroo early summer, and Lolla late summer, with smaller ones sprinkled through) and usually by hundreds of miles. It seems like the UK ones are fairly similar bills, around the same time period, and within a smaller gap of distance.

    Maybe I'm talking out of my ass here haha just how it kinda seemed to me.
     
  5. cwhit

    still emperor emo Prestigious

    Isn't the tour forum for this?

    Should have come with me last year!!!
     
    phaynes1 likes this.
  6. Wall Of Arms

    LIGHTEN UP, BUTTERCUP Prestigious

    Yeah only just saw that. My b.

    @Jason Tate Any Chance we could rename this to Glastonbury Festival and move to the Tour Forum? Sorry about that.
     
  7. George

    Trusted Prestigious

    Each festival has a different "vibe" - so you kind of base it on that, even though the line ups aren't always that different. For example, Reading and Leeds festival is a super young crowd, kids who just turned 17 going off the leash for the first time. Latitude will be an older, more middle class crowd. Download will be full of metalheads. Slam Dunk is the UK equivalent of the Warped Tour, so you get that type of crowd. I'm obviously generalizing a hell of a lot here, but that's the general difference between them.

    Also, the UK does distances differently to America ha. "In America two hundred years is a long time, in England two hours is a long drive". Again, exaggerated and taking the piss a bit, but going to a festival 6 or 7 hours away in Scotland would be such a pain in the arse that it would have to be an exceptional line up for me to consider it.

    Also, the weather is so relentlessly shit here that organizing a festival anytime other than the Summer is a disaster waiting to happen. We get mud flows and flooding in August, no chance a field in England could survive 150,000 people camping in February ha.
     
    phaynes1 likes this.
  8. phaynes1

    Regular

    That's fair enough haha. I knew the distances wouldn't be comparable, but it makes sense that it's all relative.

    And that's interesting about the vibes. I suppose it's kinda similar here: coachella tends to be more indie-leaning, lolla is a lot of alt-rock hanger-ons from the 90s, and bonnaroo is more jam-band kinda stuff. And then there are the ones outside of the top three. Yeah, idk why I was thinking it was so different than it is here haha.
     
  9. Wall Of Arms

    LIGHTEN UP, BUTTERCUP Prestigious

    Yeah it's definitely slightly true, at least with the more mainstream/larger festivals. The headliners will tend to differ but what you will see is that the same bunch of acts rotate the festivals every year and it gets stale. It's why the slightly smaller and less commercialised festivals are great for giving a shot to newer bands to headline and freshen up the festival scene. A particularly great one for this is Latitude, which will see Bon Iver, Foals, The National, Bombay Bicycle Club etc. headlining alongside more established acts - they dominate these stages and prove their worth with the chance given and go on to headline bigger festivals which should be celebrated...but is often met with "they don't deserve to headline!" - yeah well, stick with Foo Fighters and Coldplay every fucking year then shall we?!

    You'll see a lot of the smaller acts at most of the main festivals (Glasto, Reading/Leeds, T In The Park etc.). In terms of picking which out of those, I'll always go Reading because I know it like the back of my hand. I've been going since I was about 14 and I'm almost 30 now (not every year, mind). It also always has enough acts across the weekend to make me want to go even if the headliners suck (except this year - has to be said). So personally, I'll pick dependent on the line up because it does differ. A lot of people, people I used to go to various festivals with, would pay £200 (about $290) to spend a weekend getting high in a field and the music secondary. Always baffled me because if I'm going to pay that money to go to a festival, I'm going for the music primarily and to see as much of it as I possibly can - if you wanna get high in a field with mates, do it in your back garden for free.

    I digress, so I pick dependent on the line up and the price for the amount of acts I'd want to see, the distance travelled for the acts playing and how well I know the festival in terms of atmosphere too. This year for example, I'm doing Latitude over Reading Festival because it's about 1 hour drive from me, has a fantastic comedy line up as well as music and has incredible food markets there. Plus this:

    [​IMG]

    ...is far better than this (where I usually go):

    [​IMG]

    ...as you can see Latitude is giving the likes of The Maccabees a chance to headline the main stage alongside a more established band and a very established band. And that's what I love about the festival. Reading is going the other way and cramming 5 headliners over 3 days on one stage. It's excessive and confused - but you wouldn't see Foals headlining there if it wasn't for them headlining Latitude two years previous.

    Long answer, I just care a lot about festivals and could talk for hours about my thoughts on them and how they work and what I love/hate about certain ones so apologies. Haha.
     
    phaynes1 likes this.
  10. phaynes1

    Regular

    Thanks man. I appreciate it. Idk why since I've never been, but it's always been something that's been an interesting situation for me. Love festivals here as well, we're just a lot more bound by geography, which kind of sucks sometimes. Luckily, the difference between the big three fests and some of the more mid-range ones is shrinking, with fests like Governors Ball, P4K, Wrecking Ball, Shaky Knees, etc. gaining steam.
     
    Kyle Huntington likes this.
  11. Firefly

    emotional motion sickness

    I so can't wait to get back to Glastonbury this year. Last went in 2011.
     
  12. iCarly Rae Jepsen

    run away with me Platinum

     
  13. Firefly

    emotional motion sickness

    So sad I haven't got tickets this year. I've been wanting to see The National for years :( I might try in the resale in a couple of weeks anyway, because there's so many good acts playing.
     
  14. Wall Of Arms

    LIGHTEN UP, BUTTERCUP Prestigious

    Been watching all weekend. Love 'em or hate 'em - Foo Fighters know how to put on a show.

    Radiohead killed it last night.
     
    joe.boy.fresh. likes this.