Tom Dunne: The seven stages of festival attendance
The upcoming Electric Picnic festival in Stradbally will have people right across the generations of festival-goers.
A friend of mine spoke sad words to me recently: “I have to accept my festival days are behind me.” He shrugged knowingly, “I guess I just need a roof these days.” I smiled sympathetically.
“Yeah a roof, a VIP toilet, a bar, a gourmet restaurant and a hotel bed.” I wanted to scream: “It starts with not going to festivals, it ends with not being able to take solid food! Rage against the dying of the light! Take the VIP car pass and sure isn’t the Picnic only an hour from Dublin?” But it was too late, his Uber had arrived.
“This is not the man who hitchhiked to Macroom to see Rory in ’77,” I thought. The man who discovered later than he’d taken a lift with the Border Fox, who drank a slab of beer rather than carry it home, who didn’t go to the toilet for three days because he “wasn’t bothered.”
It was the upcoming Electric Picnic that had sparked our conversation. That annual occasion where we gather in a field in Laois and wonder, “How many more of these do I have in me?” A field, where it is September, in oh so many ways, where Philo could just as easily sing, “the days are getting shorter and it won’t be long, won’t be long ‘til winter comes, now that the boys are back in school.”
So how will you know if it is your last festival? Will you know? Does it lose dignity at some point? Is it a young person’s game? Or, if at some point, you find yourself in the throng with one of your favourite bands singing to you, does it really matter what age you are?
So how will you know? Perhaps this quick guide might help. The Seven Ages of the festival goer:
You are willing to walk, without a ticket, to any point in Ireland, sleep rough, eat bread and butter for three days, use nature’s toilets and share a sleeping bag with a hairy bloke from Donegal as long as you see a band. Mind you, you don’t know any bands.
You are willing to do all of the above but you’ve bought a ticket early and three of you are sharing a tent. You know two bands.
You have this: The tent, a place to eat and a ‘suss’ on the showers. You know and are a fan of every band. There are moments you will later identify as ‘the finest in your life.’’
You never thought you’d eat a ‘gourmet sandwich’ or indeed pay €22 for it but it was lovely. Camping is better, worth the money and the line-up is expertly curated. Oddly, some of your favourites are now on the ‘Heritage stage.’
It’s just unmissable these days. You hook up with friends and between the gourmet food and cookery demonstrations it has become a wonderful weekend. Fintan O’Toole in Mindfield is an unexpected highlight.
You are back to only knowing two bands, but you’ve got a hotel so you’ll probably just nip in for the Mindfield bits and maybe one band. Your friends have brought their kids! Their son is a ringer for a young Robert Smith.
You don’t even know anyone in Mindfield, never mind the bands. People are queuing to see an ‘influencer!’ Between that and podcasts! You’d pay someone to go to the toilet for you. The ‘ringer for Robert Smith’ has been arrested. Mary and John are distraught.
It’s worse still if you are in a band. There are only three stages here: Stage A, where you are happy to play for free; Stage B where you headline the up-and-coming tent; and Stage C where you are again happy to play for free.
But yet, there is still life to be had at festivals as long as there is life in you. To be in a field, with a beer (the non-alcohols are wonderful) and your friends, to sing along with a band you love, is life-affirming.
It is not without discomfort but it never was. However, to be out, “where there’s music and there’s people and they’re young and alive,” well, as the formerly great man said, the pleasure and the privilege, is ours.
