Off topic but is your username a reference to The Left Hand of Darkness?
You really don’t need to pay. Just get really really really high, and have somebody drop you off outside the festival where staff/security/cops will find you. Tell them in a barely understandable way that you wandered off to merge with nature and got lost. They will probably just drive you in. If you tell them you can’t find your tent, they might give you an artist tent. It helps if you have no clothes on, because that can explain the lack of a wristband. You will likely get a free meal too. Works everytime.
9 Likes
Yes it is 
1 Like
I checked into both Skinny Puppy and Depeche Mode tickets in the last week and each show would cost me a plane ride per concert ticket.
1 Like
I put quotes, I was joking here.
Having participated in an association for the organization of electronic evenings, one of our main statutes was not to exceed the 5€ entry typically so as not to practice this discrimination at the entrance which transformed the evenings in my region into “white evenings and own”.
1 Like
Festivals that don’t involve camping, etc. can be really nice. I was just checking out the lineup for Big Ears in Knoxville, TN this year. (I went a few years ago.)
Morton Subotnick is back!! And this time he’s rocking Ableton with his Buchla! Wow! Plus over a hundred other things which are also exciting! I don’t think I can go this year, but just the lineup will keep me busily listening and discovering for ages.
With all the travel expenses, etc., it can certainly get spendy (though a four day pass is only about as much as an OK-ish seat at, say, a McCartney show), but there can be a unique opportunity to see a lot of different things in one place, go someplace you might not normally visit, try some new food and coffee.
I believe ticketswap takes like 33% on top of the 300 euro ticket prices of lowlands haha
Honestly it’s all getting a bit comical at this point
You’ve got it! 
It has nothing to do with the quality of “modern” musician, and little to do with rising cost.
Somewhat to do with youth behavior en masse, but “bigger than” is not better for quality of experience with many of us.
I don’t think I necessarily felt that much differently as a youth, but certainly my novelty has worn off for grandiosity, and patience is much less when I can have far more exciting new experiences in smaller venues where I can come and go as I please.
Things weren’t better when I was young because the music was better in MY day (based on when tastes get fixed in your mid-teens), I was more patient because the novelty of being in fully uncontrolled environments hadn’t yet worn off.
I’m used to city life so proximity and density isn’t the problem, I like my experience to be dictated by the music and people engaging in it, but it becomes very diminishing returns at a certain scale. I can have a better reverent/excitable experience without getting lost in a mass of writhing bodies.
That has always been the case with my experiential, at least.
It wasn’t better because I was 15, the experiences most enriching were with local bands we all knew, in dives that got raided regularly by cops, and the “lollapalooza” type megafests cropping up were a miserable experience for me.
Money, commercialism, and their curation absolutely change the experience. Why would they not?
1 Like
I’ve not been to Glastonbury in over 20 years.
@Fin25 & @JBOT I’m not middle class, nor are my friends, nor were many of the punters back then. We were punks/crusties/greebos/Goths/football heads into music, laughed and took the piss out of hippies and got into the DIY nature of the rave scene.
There used to be a big mix of people there and it probably lost something when the travellers were banned from the site. It could be dangerous and exciting and I did see some amazing bands/gigs and comedy. But we couldn’t afford it and we (along with thousands of others) would break in.
Essentially we could make it want we wanted, however it has changed. Unfortunately the BBC (Channel 4 before that) promoted the festival to the kind of people that move near clubs (because the nightlife has made the area vibrant) and close them down.
This has happened everywhere in culture and I get annoyed with people pissing on (through gentrification) and taking the piss out of, precious memories (Blurred?!).
I’m not having a go, just saying that we’re not all twats with performative dreadlocks and opinions. My job is as shit now as it was then 
1 Like
My brother and a few of my mates used to go to Glastonbury about 25 years ago, they all seemed to enjoy themselves (but who doesn’t love a free party?).
This is exactly the point I was making.
2 Likes
I know, sorry for brain-dumping on you and on this topic.
2 Likes
No worries.
1 Like
I’ve been to Glastonbury about 7 out of the last 10 and would go to every one if I had / could’ve got a ticket. It is unlike any other festival in that the camping is mixed in with the festival itself which means there are no restrictions on going back to your tent to top up on beer/cider/wine, which adds a lot to the experience.
The BBC only show the main stages, there are tons of underground music stages with decent production and music all over the site.
In the 10 years I’ve been going I do believe it’s lost it’s lustre since probably the peak times of the 2000s but I would still probably choose it over just about anything else. The fact it’s on a farm, has loads of character and a mixed clientele makes it feel very different to the corporate sponsored festivals. In fact, the lack of visible sponsorship across the site is one of the things that makes it good.
Overall it’s always a great weekend.
2 Likes
I’ll be honest. I am so fucking tired of festivals that have become the core of music scenes because it’s…NOT the core of it. It’s rotting the core by pulling all the artists and the money from the independent venues and underground spaces.
And it’s doing it by stuffing a bunch of artists in with shorter set times and then just making it into a fucking commercial mall for people to buy stuff at inflated prices while they’re a captive audience.
Festivals could die tomorrow and I wouldn’t shed a tear.
2 Likes
Dour 2023 (Dour Festival 2023 | 12+13+14+15+16 July),
Belgium, Aphex Twin closing the festival. 
Regular Pass 1 day Sunday July 16: 70 euros, Pretty decent price,
in fact half the price for the day at other festivals in the area.
Sunday Line Up:
Probably three or four decent thing more than Afx,
especially if you like French trap/drill… 
It’s nice to see that my economic power starts can be a significant turnaround.
1 Like
i know they’ve killed their live sets since day one but Chemical Brothers absolutely destroyed it at Coachella tonight. just insanely great
2 Likes
They sure as fuck did. That shit was insane! Best set of the night, followed by Gorillas.
2 Likes