All in All

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

Things are getting out of hand here in the UK. Once upon a time there were only a handful of summer festivals, now there seems to be one held somewhere in the country every weekend from late June through to mid September. With so much variety, we have to be very careful in choosing which ones to go to, based on location, line-up, organizers, size etc.

This year we have chosen to go to two ATPs (Dirty Three’s in May and Portishead’s in December), Electric Picnic in Ireland at the end of this month, Latitude in Suffolk for one day (although thanks to inept ticket delivery three days after the event we didn’t attend at all. We now try to avoid using See Tickets wherever possible and recommend this to anyone reading), and finally last Saturday a new one, Field Day.

On paper, Field Day was perfect for us. The location – Victoria Park in Hackney, easily accessible, nice size space. The organisers – Eat Your Own Ears, behind many of the decent gigs we go to, as well as the lovely Homefires festival which we couldn’t make this year due to Mac’s filming schedule. The line-up – plenty of good stuff, Battles, Bat for Lashes, Chromeo, Gryff Rhys, Justice, Electrelane, Adem, Four Tet. The weather, warm and sunny. Our team – Mac and I, Kieran and Janet, Kathy, Kieran’s sister Claire, perfect gig buddies all, what more could you ask for? As I say, on paper, a perfect festival.

The positive review first. The music was great. There was only one clash that mattered to me. Unfortunately this was the two acts that meant the most to me, Battles and Bat for Lashes so I chose Battles and they didn’t disappoint, but I would have loved to see Bat for Lashes too. I’ve never seen the Concretes before but I will be looking out for them again now – Swedish pop rock in the Cardigans style. Chromeo were stunningly good fun. Gryff, Adem, Battles and Justice all great. Some have said that the sound was off and perhaps a bit too low but (a) it was just the right level for me, and (b) I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was off if I tried so that didn’t matter to me. Yes, musically it was a great event.

BUT it was quite simply the most atrociously organised event I have ever attended and to be honest this really did ruin the day for me. Two simple reasons, the bar and the toilets. It’s not rocket science, if you are having an all day music festival which has sold out 10,000 tickets and is banning you from bringing in your own food and drink, you must be ready to cater for the ensuing demand. They had two bars, each with no more than four staff serving. The first time we queued up for a round we were in the queue for over 45 minutes. The second time longer still, which was coupled with people losing patience and pushing in the hope that might get them to the front sooner, and at one point the crush was so bad that I thought I was going to pass out, you just couldn’t move. Needless to say, once people did get to be served, they were all ordering two or three times their needs so that they didn’t have to face going through that crush again. This just added to the delay – Mac witnessed someone with a bar bill of over £80 (which at £3.50 per drink I calculate as being around 24 pints), and I witnessed a girl buying over a dozen glasses of wine in one go. Yes, that is selfish but I don’t blame them at all.

They also had a “wine bar” selling nothing more than glasses of wine. This was no better. When it was open the queue was barely moving despite the fact that surely this was a simple service as the glasses were pre-poured with a peel and seal lid on (probably the fault on only having one person serving). I mean, customer says how many, bar person puts them on the counter and takes money. This little transaction should only take seconds so why was I standing in a queue for nearly 30 minutes? Not that I was served; after half hour of standing in a long and hardly moving queue they shut up shop saying they had run out. This was around 6pm when the festival had another 5 hours to go. To say I was livid was an understatement (I petulantly stormed over to Mac in an equally long queue for food and shouted that if it wasn’t for the fact that I wanted to see Battles and Justice I would have gone home at that moment. I meant it too).

The toilets were no better. The queue for the ladies/portaloos seemed to have an average wait of an hour. The urinals were better but they filled up (literally) by mid afternoon leaving just about every guy in the place pissing against the fence regardless. I mean, do you have to judge that you may need to go in an hour so you’d better start queuing now? How many people missed the bands they came to see because they were stuck in a queue for the toilet, food or drink?

Surely it was a no-brainer, hot day, 10,000 hungry, thirsty people there for the whole day, lay on sufficient facilities. If nothing else, you stand to make more money if the queues move fast and efficiently. It was seriously appalling. Will we go again next year? Line-up notwithstanding, that really will depend on what guarantees they can offer to say that things will be far better organised next time around. 10,000 dissatisfied customers is not a good advert (well, I would say if not 100% dissatisfaction, they were looking at a good 75% based on comments I heard at the festival and what I’ve read on the Drowned in Sound messageboard).

In other news, I have now passed the 100 separate live bands seen in 2007. Phew! And Prince was spectacular last week, and the bars at the O2 Millenium Dome were really well organised, even though they only sold Carlsberg.

Labels: Field day