My random music for this week is on: Music Festivals

It’s summer. And for many people I know, summer = music festivals.

For me music festivals are a unique concoction of bands, hispters, denim shorts, booze, sun burn, queuing and Hari Krishna food. They are a social phenomenon unto themselves – not quite rave, not quite street party. Each festival is totally different, and yet there are undeniably common elements: 


Risking the mood of the weather gods to bop along with a ray-ban wearing crowd at stage A before moving to stage B to catch the second half of a set. You agree to pay outlandish drink prices on top of the exorbitant entry fee because, you reason, this way you don’t have to go to expensive sideshows to see everyone you want to see.

This clever calculation can be destroyed by the following:

• Your mate getting drunk too early and having to take them home
• The scheduling gods overlapping two acts you really wanted to see
• A freak change in the weather (Apparently muso’s are not keen to perform during lighting. Bunch of weaklings). For those camping, a wind change can also result in untimely tent punctures whereby the Spinifex cheapy you bought on ebay impales itself.
• An extraordinary long wait to get bar tokens backed up by an even longer wait at the bar only to discover it’s a two drink minimum per person.
• Your favourite band cancelling on the day
• The inevitable fight for public transport after the festival. Also known as the “how many people can we pack into one CONNEX train carriage” game
• Or, and this one is the worst, your band playing all their songs EXCEPT the one you’ve been dying to hear (despite the fact you’ve been yelling “sound of settling” for the last half hour. Bloody Death Cab).

But despite all that can go wrong, I absolutely love music festivals. I love the elation of discovering a new band, or the joy of a great posi where you can both see the act and dance around. I love spotting the artists themselves walking around, and subtly photographing those I recognise. Most of all I love the collective peace you feel when you are sitting in sunshine on the grass, beer in hand, mates around you, and, for that moment, no cares in the world. 


I wonder when I will get too old for music festivals. Maybe never. Maybe I will become one of those mums at Falls who bring their hipster babies along. But changing nappies in a tent? No thanks.