Five great music festivals, and five ways to enjoy them

FESTIVALS!

3. Go to Ieperfest. It’s in Belgium.

4. Go to Greenman. It’s in Wales.

5. Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons is running the Meltdown Festival at Southbank this August. Acts this year include well knowns such as Lou Reed, Cocorosie & Diamanda Galas, and other incredible names such as William Basinski (The Disintegration Loops) and legendary Anatolian folk singer Selda.

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WAYS TO ENJOY THEM!

1. Nobody needs you to bring the guitar. Seriously now. Same goes for poi et al.

2. Keep the chat topical. Primarily you’re going to want to talk to strangers, none of whom are interested in your novel, favourite philosophers, grievances with the system etc.

3. If you can’t manage that, just lie. Festivals are great for all manner of rumours & fabrications, particularly once everyone’s phone is out of battery. Dead politicians are a pretty good route to go down – more believable then a dead celebrity, but still quite funny.

4. Pick a band playing on the last day. From the minute you arrive, talk continuously about how much you’re looking forward to them. Don’t let up. Turn it into an in-joke. Start drinking in preparation a few hours beforehand. Then pass out in your tent and miss the show. This will automatically make you the subject of a thousand conversations at a thousand parties, and is in effect an indirect form of networking. And as you know, you should always be thinking of ways you could be networking.

5. There is no effective way to enjoy Reading / Leeds / T-in-the-Park festivals. If you are going to go to go to one of these, do not under any circumstances waste any time talking about how it didn’t use to be this shite and violent. They have always been shite and violent.