It's that time of year again. The clocks have sprung forward, the sun is starting to shine, the leaves are doing shit that's - I'm sure - indicative of the fact that it is, indeed, Spring. How else do we know that it's Spring? A keen indicator for me is the seemingly neverending slew of people all asking me the same question they asked me last year. And the year before that and the one before that. "Are you going to Oxegen?" they ask with a dull, empty look in their eye, probably from years of going to bland, corporate rock festivals, and an unnoticed drip of saliva hanging from the side of their mouth, probably from years of being utterly boring and stupid. Not even caring that I've said "No" this time and every other, they continue to blather inanely on about "how cool the line-up is," not realising the dull, empty look in my eye because I'm daydreaming about how awesome The Goonies was and not being asked about going to shitty Oxegen.
Do you know why the line-up is cool?, I mentally punch this question into their vapid brains. The line-up is 'cool' because the organisers of music festivals are not morons. The line-up isn't cool; it's lucrative. They haven't scouted out the finest talents in music and wrapped them into an amazing festival, they've watched your collective spending habits and capitalised. And when they've sorted out the most popular bands for their target demographic, they spread out and try to cover every target market imaginable, which leaves you with a complete cluster-fuck of people who don't actually give a shit about the music, save maybe one or two bands, yet spend hundreds of euro to essentially wallow in their own filth, drink themselves into oblivion and endanger their health in a very dull impersonation of 'having fun'. I could do that at home for €40 and I wouldn't have to shit in a portacabin that's dangerously close to being tipped over by passing scumbags.
When that excruciating nightmare is over and I think I can finally free myself from conversing with this corpse, they ask the second question, "Are you going to Electric Picnic?" This is essentially the same question as the first except hearing a 'no' to this one apparently affords the inquisitor the luxury, nay social right goddammit, to get on some sort of high-horse of cool, like somehow not wanting to go to this supposed event means that my brain must be working backwards. Perhaps I need therapy or lessons in not being a social retard. And again I have to listen about 'how cool the line-up is'... The line-up is not cool; it's doing the same thing as the other one. It's not cooler, you've just shifted your mode from 'banal' to 'pretentious.' If I could find your 'off' setting, you wouldn't last longer than it took me to decide not to ram a pencil through my eye-socket. 'Offing' you is not a difficult decision.
Apparently though, "everyone is going" to these festivals so apparently, "there'll be nothing to do when everyone else is gone." Somehow I think I'll find something. Like continuing on with my life. Enjoy your music festivals, kids. When you're vomitting in your tent-mate's shoes at 7am and holding in your shit so you don't have to sit on one of those disease-ridden portaloo seats, I'll be snoozing comfortably in my bed, not being a complete and utter waste of an article.
Im going :D
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