GRAPHIC CONTENT
What we’ve been talking about Ah, summer festivals. Think blisteringly hot afternoons. Think ice-creams by the crateload. Think sun-soaked crowds lazing away their baking days and balmy evenings to a backdrop of dreamy live sounds. Of course, maybe you should think again what with this being the United Kingdom of Rain, Sleet and Wind. But we’re a hardy lot who wouldn’t let a little old thing like brain-damaging hailstorms to put us off enjoying an outdoor event, now, would we? So, we gathered up a scientific sample of people who have attended festivals both home and abroad to tell us about their best (and less best) experiences of attending summer festivals down the years . . .
THE GOOD • Paul Weller dedicating ‘You Do Something to Me to ‘all the ladies’ at the second T in the Park: a collective swoon ensued . . . • Forum Hotel is a former Soviet business hotel in Krakow and regularly used during the weird and wonderful Unsound Festival • Watching Kevin Rowland singing ‘The Greatest Love of All’ while wearing a little silk dress with two strippers dancing Festival. It beside him at Leeds Festival. It Festival. I was bloody magnificent, ent,e though not sure anybody else agreed • Only £20 for the full weekend at Y Not Festival when now it’s pushing £100. And the sun was shining: in the Midlands! • Connect 2007 was the best festival ever! It was the first ‘boutique’ event I went to and made me realise that festivals could be nice! • I did Live 8 (Edinburgh and d d London) which allowed me to see pretty much everyone ever live • Seeing Manu Chao followed by Rage Against the Machine the final night of 2007 Coachella: ‘Killing in the Name’ with 50,000 people was an out-of-body dy d experience • Beck and his band at T in in the Park, late 90s; probably bly y the coolest people to ever r grace a medium-sized tent • Listening to Edinburgh DJ Craig Smith play Sandy Barber’s ‘I Think I’ll Do Some Stepping on My Own’ on a sun-drenched boat in the middle of the Adriatic Sea; one of many memorable SuncéBeat moments
2 THE LIST 7 Apr–2 Jun 2016
CONTRIBUTORS Publisher & General Editor
Robin Hodge Director Simon Dessain
EDITORIAL Editor
Yasmin Sulaiman Senior Digital Editor
Scott Henderson Research Manager Rowena McIntosh Senior Researcher Murray Robertson
Research
Alex Johnston, Rebecca Monks, Henry
Northmore, Kirstyn Smith Subeditors
Mercy Breheny, Brian Donaldson
SALES & MARKETING Media Sales Manager
Chris Knox Senior Media Sales Executive
Debbie Thomson Media Sales Executive
Rachel Cree
Sales Support Executive
Jessica Rodgers Promotions Executive
Jade Regulski Digital Business
Development Director
Brendan Miles Partnership Director
Sheri Friers
PRODUCTION Senior Designer
Lucy Munro Designer
Jen Devonshire Production Simon Armin
DIGITAL
Senior Developer Andy Carmichael Digital Designer Sharon Irish
Software Developer
Iain McCusker Senior DBA Andy Bowles
ADMINISTRATION
Accounts Manager Sarah Reddie
SECTION EDITORS Around Town / Music
Kirstyn Smith Books / Film Scotland
Yasmin Sulaiman Comedy / Front Brian Donaldson Dance / Kids
Kelly Apter Film Reviews Emma Simmonds Food & Drink Donald Reid
TV
Henry Northmore
Theatre Gareth K Vile Visual Art
Rachael Cloughton
THE NOT SO GOOD
• Being thrown ten feet across a muddy field by a large, moshing Pogues fan at Reading in the 90s • Arriving days late to a very washed- out 2008 Bestival on Isle of Wight due to delayed and diverted flights, plus the airline lost my camping gear • LCD Soundsystem’s moody James Murphy at Connect 2007
e r • The year it rained very hard at Latitude • TheThe year it hen when I learned that a tent from the when I pound shop was not a bargain, pp popo and had to buy a new one in the andand d hd h middle of the night, put it up in mimi iddidd torrential rain while deep in tt three feet of mud
• Stupidly pitching our tents at Y Not near the loos thinking it would make life easier for us mm after drinking all day, except the next morning excx we woke to find loo roll wrapped around our tents and all the portaloos knocked over; you can imagine the smell • Some weirdly inappropriate neo- nazis sieg-heiling while Frank Black played T in the Park in the late 90s; did they think he was Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini or something?
• A two-hour wait to get into Coachella while festival-goers were searched in 35c+ temperatures and no shading • Losing my car keys whilst on one of those mental fairground rides at T in the Park and realising that I had no way of getting either myself, my tent or my friends home to Edinburgh the next day
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