Tom Dunne: Electric Picnic in August is like having Christmas in May
A view of the Electric Picnic Festival in Stradbally, in 2023. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire
The Electric Picnic is in the wrong place. No, I don’t mean Stradbally, nor its choice of acts (Kylie, Raye, Damien, Kneecap, Kojaque: be still my heart) or its curation in general, no, it’s the August thing: having the Picnic in August is like having Christmas in May.
I know it’s only two weeks and a once off occurrence, but I am finding it very discombobulating. I don’t know whether to make further holiday plans or just give in and start covering schoolbooks. I like to deny summer is ending as long as it possible. But this is confusing.
It doesn’t help that it is one of two things that are not where they should be. The All-Ireland finals too have gone AWOL. Those other September stalwarts are also no longer where they should be. It has become very hard to get your bearings.
Many of us do not find September easy. When you reach school going age it becomes synonymous with “back to school” and that is never good. Some people loved it, no doubt, but for most of us it meant the end of all craic, the end of round the clock five asides and the surrender of all hope.
Summer from a very early age was seared into my imagination. I still remember turning the corner for home each June and throwing my school bag venomously into a cupboard. June, July and August were mine. September was the far, far distant future.
The end of your school or college days should have ended that dread, but somehow it didn’t. By your early twenties those feelings have been hard wired into you. Seasonal Affective Disorder, they called it. September was my own name.
At some point too, music festivals became each summer’s essential moment. Outings to various racecourses pressed into service to host various bands punctuated the endless summer days. There was before the festival and after the festival. They defined the summer.
This, sadly, only exacerbated the fear of September. As June, July and August seemed to go by in an increasingly fast blur, the festivals seemed to take on more and more significance.
The minute you arrived home, broken, battered and happy you’d realised “that’s it now. The countdown has begun.” RTÉ would advertise its Autumn schedule. The words “school uniforms’ would get bandied about on radio. School books were mentioned. You were doomed.
And then the Electric Picnic arrived. It was bespoke, it was chill, it was cool and, vitally it was either in the dying days of August or by its second year it was in September. By September 2005 you could sip beer in a field while enjoying Kraftwerk, Nick Cave and Arcade fire.
It seemed on arrival, determined to learn from the mistakes of previous festivals. It was “bespoke” limited in size so that the numbers attending didn’t make it uncomfortable. The toilets were civilised and the food wonderful. Parking was good and the traffic manageable. It wasn’t an ordeal.
The curation too was like nothing that had proceeded it. Acts that might have been seen as a little too niche for a festival were interwoven with bigger acts to create something multi-faceted and vastly more interesting. And, interestingly, todays “niche acts” often became tomorrow’s festival headliners.
There was also comedy – the new rock and roll - and interviews with people that an interest in music had opened you up to: directors, writers, artists and actors. There were art installations, the Body & Soul area and loads of fun activities. It had something for everyone.
It became an unmissable part of the summer. For many, attendance was soon almost mandatory. You didn’t need to ask people if you’d see them at the Picnic. That was a given.
My own particular Picnic experience soon became enjoying a takeout from the Kinara Indian, sipping a cold beer and chatting with friends as the sun hit that unique end of summer angle. It felt more like an end of year experience than anything December would later offer.
Knowing Blur or Future Islands would be on soon it was a delicious moment to savour the end of another music year and festival season. Knowing the All-Ireland finals were still to come, September with its back-to-school vibes, suddenly didn’t seem all that bad.
So, next year, the Picnic will be back in September and everything, bar the GAA, will be in the right place again. Once we are in Stradbally in September, I can cover schoolbooks ‘til the cows come home.
