The season of frolicking in fields has finally arrived! We collect some of the memories.
Festivals inspire wildness. The cool breeze of liberty inflates your sails as you realise you are free to do whatever you like, whenever the mood strikes. With this ‘anything goes’ concept in mind, we thought it might be interesting to find out just what the Spoonfed team get up to when they think no one’s watching. This is a collection of our most memorable festival experiences of all time. Good, bad, crazy, cringe worthy…read on. Do feel free to add your own in the comment box below!
Burning Man
It took us three days to make the pilgrimage from San Fran to the Nevada desert. Our RV built in the early 70s was temperamental to say the very least. Every time we turned the ignition off there was doubt that Brian (Brian RV = “Brain Aarrvey”) would ever start again. A trip to a Walmart located at the bottom of an unfortunate hill to fill up on enough water to survive The Burn left him a spluttering, growling, smoking mess. A few stressful mechanic jaunts and two gloomy days later, we hit the outskirts of the desert. The moment when we glimpsed the Playa glimmering like a white wave ahead of us the excitement hit us all and the RV was filled with screams and whoops of joy. None of us could believe we had made it… Thank you Brian you bastard. LC
Glastonbury
One year at Glastonbury in the wee hours of the morning I sat with two friends watching the outdoor cinema screen. Most of the 2000 odd people watching were treating it more as a giant 'magic eye' poster than a cinema screen, but nonetheless there was a silent black and white film playing. I won't bore you with the details of the plot mostly because I have no idea what it was but the climactic last scene was the moment when the male protagonist opened a door of a room where he finds the female lead on a bed, naked, and dead. Just as the shock of this sunk into the assembled masses my friend screamed "F**K HER ANYWAY!!" and in an instant created the biggest mass belly laugh I've ever witnessed. Puerile? Yes. But the timing was the stuff of the comedic greats. TO
Exit Festival
Exit Festival 2006 gave me many memories. Some happy: dancing on the Danube riverbed, finding the secret drinking grotto selling moonshine, crossing the bridge to the Petrovaradin fortress every night, my friend Ollie dressing up as a goth and trying to infiltrate the emo stage (and failing badly), the sun coming up over the dance arena as James Zabiela closed with R3volve’s remix of Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide and Seek’.
Some bad too: the putrid loos, forever overflowing with every kind of waste known to humanity, gurning Serbians with white contact lenses, everything tasting like dust after four days chain smoking, constant drinking and lack of any proper nourishment. Still, I cherish all those memories. Even the bad ones - they just added more hilarity to a very extraordinary few days with some of my favourite people. EM
Secret Garden Party
I know that anyone who was awake and sitting on the hill on Sunday morning, 2006 will remember the quadraspazzed chap who was allowing his ‘friends’ to experiment on his tolerance. He had a bucket over his head, was being fed regular nitrous hits, and was variously placed on a bicycle and pushed down the hill into the lake and made to hula hoop while staggering wildly (an image which now adorns the SGP T-shirts). He eventually ended up foraging around under one of the venues, where he found a can which simply read ‘food’. The massive crowd who had gathered took bets on the contents of the mystery foodstuff. It turned out to be a potato salad. LC
Norgstock
When nature calls, the worst place to be is at a festival. Famous for being relentlessly repulsive, the portaloos are definitely to be avoided. With that in mind and in my slightly 'over-refreshed' state, the Norgstock toilets are not for me. Bounding off into the closest forest and I find myself walking while I wee into the darkness. The next thing I know, I'm free-falling 6 foot, still weeing, only to find myself shoulder-high in a river. The aim of urination is to avoid wetting oneself, this time I came off drenched! RS
Festival Skabazac, France
Invited as a journalist in that festival, I got requisitioned as a last-minute translator for some press conference of a Cypress Hill member in the middle of the night. Heavily dizzied by the tropical heat and the free bar as well as unfamiliar with live translation and hip-hop itself, I managed to keep my composure and credibility, even for the most ridiculous questions by the local journalists: "how do you feel as a West Coast rapper?" - "Sorry, I'm from New York". TC
Latitude
At my first Latitude, next to the river there was a tent, with a piano in it, open for anyone to use. As the sun reared its head over the vines on the riverbank, three people were left, one of which was a large, rather worse-for-wear guy laid on his back. My piano skills are lacking at best so – not over optimistically – I asked if he could play. After staggering to the piano, the stranger preceded to play Yann Tiersen’s ‘Watching Lara’, a song and moment that will stick with me forever. RM
Reading
Mine is from Reading in 2006 - A few brought hay to sit on, as it was so muddy. The sight of hundreds of fully grown men and women stealing from under people and then running away giggling made the festival for me. AC
Ramfest, South Africa
Standing meters from the front of the stage, amidst a massive audience your personal bubble disappears, festival goers unite and form one, big, rather raucous, but essentially happy family. One genius couldn't keep it in and took a dump on the floor. Right there. In front of the stage. Standing close by was horrendous - making space to avoid said dump in sardine style crowd was not fun. No more happy family. A couple of hours later, it was rather hysterical. SC
T In The Park
Standing 5'10”, I've always envied petite girls who get shoulder-lifts at festivals, so I'll forever be grateful to the burly Scot who briefly made my dream come true. It was T in the Park 2008 and Kings of Leon were playing my favourite song from their new album. In a move that demonstrated how close a connection can come from an afternoon of Bulmers-fuelled bonding, my new pal of two hours, sensing my excitement, hoisted me atop his shoulders, and there I was, on top of the world. SK
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