All in All

God I love YouTube



Check it out at 1.13 and 2.26mins. That man in the red shirt grew up to be our very own Ian MacMillan!

A couple of posts down, I detailed my disappointment with the Field Day festival. I was equally disappointed with the rather insincere apology that the organisers published on their website a day or so after, especially when they seemed to rub salt into the wound by saying how great it was backstage in the artists area.

Anyway, after this bad experience, I can’t deny a little trepidation at attending last weekend 3-day Electric Picnic festival in Ireland. However, all I can say is that I wish the Eat Your Own Ears Field Day organisers had gone to see exactly how you should organise a festival. It was well organised and coped with 30,000 people a damned sight better than Field day handled 10,000. There were a decent number of toilets and queues were kept to a minimum (no more than 10 minutes max for the ladies), and sufficient bars with a sensible queuing policy, I never had to wait more than 5 minutes at any time of the day. For me, the only minor complaint was that the sound on the main stage seemed a bit iffy, but nowhere near the same level as the Field Day sound according to Mac. Yes, you can argue that this was year 4 for Electric Picnic so of course they will have ironed out all the problems, but we also attended year 2, and read reviews of year 1 and they seem to have got it right from the start, at a push there were only negligible changes in two years, and they were mostly to do with the camping arrangements as far as I can see.

It’s funny reading the reviews of it in the Irish press on the way back to the airport. People were moaning about little things (mostly about the number of toilets in the camp site area, but I didn’t think there was a problem here and to be honest I think you'll always get that comment in a camp site, even if there was one portaloo per tent. Anyway, the number of toilets at the festival site itself was certainly adequate) and all I could think was that they don’t know how lucky they actually were. Traffic was also a nightmare for those coming by car on Friday afternoon, something we experienced last time so took the coach instead and queue jumped the jams. A sensible decision from us for a change.

So having praised the festival organisers and arrangements, what was the actual music like? Well, suffice to say that we had a really great time and saw some great performances – Bjork, Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, Ladytron, Sons & Daughters, Patrick Wolf, Bat For Lashes (having missed them at Field day), Fujiya & Miyagi to name but a few. Unlike Field Day, I wouldn’t hesitate in saying that I would go again (line-up permitted).

Labels: Electric Picnic, Field day