I had this ridiculous notion at a young age that one should write a list of things to do before one died. (I was going through a morose, philosophical stage.) As well as learn a foreign language (crossed off the list the moment I learnt to swear vehemently in French) and take time out of each day to stare at the clouds (morose, philosophical and an emo), I had scrawled in barely legible handwriting ‘Go to Glastonbury.’ Standing in the middle of what could only be described as a bog, I cursed that Godforsaken list which, eleven years later, I still felt compelled to follow.

‘Wellie Henge’, a sculpture marking the sacrifices the fallen rubber comrades had made was constructed in the middle of a mud pond, as a reminder and a warning to all those trudging through the conditions to not buy cheap footwear.

The fields of Glastonbury resembled the Somme. Cheap wellies which had leaked or had been abandoned in an attempt to save their owner’s foot from being lost to the sticky mud were deserted as far as the eye could see. ‘Wellie Henge’, a sculpture marking the sacrifices the fallen rubber comrades had made was constructed in the middle of a mud pond, as a reminder and a warning to all those trudging through the conditions to not buy cheap footwear. On the edges of the camping grounds, single-skinned tents were cast aside after one night of downpour as their occupants feared they may drown if they continued to stay in their leaking tents. Bodies, hidden beneath rain macs bought from a near-by stall, moved in groups in-between stages bracing against the wind and rain in an attempt to keep warm.

Image supplied by www.bluesky-world.com, copyright Blom UK.

Watching the quagmire (no giggidy, just supressed sobs) that was Glastonbury unfold, I started thinking about festival ‘must haves’ and what really gets you through- what can potentially be- camping torture. Yes, everyone knows that you need tents and wellies, but how can you be sure that your festival fun will not be affected by the temperamental British weather?

Double-lined tents are imperative; I know jelly baby and cow print tents look cool but the moment the rain starts, that tent will be leaking more than BP’s oil pipe. Get decent wellies; one of the top sellers at Glastonbury this year was anti-fungal cream for all the damp, suffering feet. Delightful. Get a decent sleeping bag and ventilation mats or a blow-up mattress; you lose body heat through the ground and there is nothing more miserable than having your cosy warm beer jacket stolen from you.

Toilet paper is gold dust; bring enough of it and who knows what you can barter it for.

Save your pennies by bringing your own alcohol but not in glass bottles; decant anything banned by the particular festival you are attending to avoid it being confiscated (check out your festival website for more details). Toothpaste, baby wipes and deodorant, are the essentials; do not go anywhere without these bad boys as five days can be a long time to go without showering or normal hygiene. Toilet paper is gold dust; bring enough of it and who knows what you can barter it for. Bring plenty of money (and keep it well hidden); Glastonbury provided enough food stalls for every diet and although many festivals will just have the standard burger vans, it will still beat lugging hundreds of pot noodles, stoves and kettles through your campsite. Bring a few breakfast bars to give you enough energy to drag yourself from your tent to the closest breakfast bar and then spoil yourself with the catering provided. Leave all valuables at home; swap your iPhone/iPod for your old Nokia (playing snake again will be a luxury) and cassette player as, unfortunately, crime can happen so do not be a victim.

Most importantly, choose the group you festival with wisely. These are the people who will pull your wellie out of the mud for you after you accidentally got your boot stuck and the only way to salvage the situation was to leave it behind and continue to walk through the squelch with one wellie on and a ski sock (with a hole in may I add). These are the people who, when the weather turns glorious (which it will- it is a condition of all festivals. Tease us for a few days with shoddy storms, then bring out the rays), they will love you despite the five day smell which lingers around you (no amount of baby wipes or deodorant can properly hide the smell). These are the people who will justify wearing ski gear, a cow boy hat and bright red lipstick whilst covered in muck by naming the look ‘festival chic’. These are the people who will escort you to the portaloos, despite the stench, just because you are too scared to face the grubbiness alone and cannot pee behind a bush due to stage fright.

Finally, enjoy it; you are living life on the edge, you are working on that list of things to do. Sure, there are people out there who do amazingly dangerous things such as wrestle with wild animals, (do not think of Steve Irwin as he is not the best example, we all know how that turned out.) But sod them. Ladies and gents, if you make it through Mudbury or similar festivals and survive, you are made of tough stuff. You are the true heroes. Campers, I salute you!

Words: Danann Swanton

Bilbao BBK Live – 7-9 July
Bilbao, Spain
TICKETS: Day prices range from £48, three-day prices range from £96

LINE  UP
THURSDAY: Coldplay, Blondie, Beady Eye, The Twilight Singers, Crystal Castles, Russian Red, Ken Zazpi, Neon Trees
FRIDAY: Amy Winehouse, Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs, The Mars Volta, Vetusta Morla, TV On The Radio, !!! (chk chk chk), Noisettes, Zarama
SATURDAY: The Black Crowes, The Chemical Brothers, Jack Johnson, Thirty Seconds to Mars, M-Clan, Seasick Steve, Japanese Voyeaurs, Enkore

COMPETITION – We have a pair of tickets to Bibao BBK LIVE

How to enter:
QUESTION – In the festival section of our sister publication Area Culture Guide we mention that THE CURE will be headlining a Saturday Night at one of the festivals. Just tell us which festival….

Send your answer along with: Your name, date of birth, address and telephone number to competitions [@] fusedmagazine.com.
Please put ‘BBK’ in the Subject Box.

Deadline for entries is 20th June.

(please note this competition does NOT include travel).

Mostly Jazz – 1-3 July
Moseley Park, Birmingham
Day prices range from £28.50, weekend prices range from £77

LINE UP:

FRIDAY
Leftfoot Presents Main Stage
The Cinematic Orchestra
Gilles Peterson
Alice Russell
Brandt Brauer Frick
No Fakin’
Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra
Alternative Dubstep Orchestra
Sam Redmore

SATURDAY
Matthew Herbert Big Band
Manouche
Dele Sosimi
Hidden Orchestra
Milestones play ‘Kind of Blue’
Matthew Halsall
Andy Hamilton And The Blue Notes
Birmingham Jazz Stage
Beats & Pieces Big Band
Levi French Trio
The Steve Tromans Debop Band
Lluis Mather & Noose
Chris Young
Birmingham Jazz Ensemble

SUNDAY
Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club
Booker T
Brassroots
Smoove & Turrell
Pigbag
Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra
The Paris 1940s
Yardbird Stage
Craig Charles DJ Set
Cantaloop
Oya Batucada
The Atlantic Players
The Moves
Keith York Quintet

TICKETS
Adult – Friday £28.50, Saturday £35.00, Sunday £35.00, Weekend £77.00

Children aged 12-16 (when accompanied by a paying adult):
Friday Ticket £13, Saturday Ticket £15, Sunday Ticket £15, Weekend Ticket £35

Family (two adults and two children aged 12-16):
Weekend Ticket £165

COMPETITION We have a pair of tickets for Mostly Jazz.

How to enter:
QUESTION – In the festival section of our sister publication Area Culture Guide we mention that THE CURE will be headlining a Saturday Night at one of the festivals. Just tell us which festival….

Send your answer along with: Your name, date of birth, address and telephone number to competitions [@] fusedmagazine.com.
Please put ‘MOSTLY JAZZ’ in the Subject Box.

Deadline for entries is 20th June.

Music is many things to many people. The reason anyone that can get away with making sweeping statements like ‘the most piss poor band of the decade’ or ‘will make you want to pour red ants into your brain’ (Athlete for both by the way) is that it is understood that these are our truths. Our job is for you to trust us, our voice, and the context of our other opinions to make your own judgements.

Supersonic is weird as festivals go, they know you won’t enjoy every band. The music spans such a range that it would take an almost psychotic lack of judgement to like everything. But what you are quickly made to do is drop all your preconceptions and judge everything on its merits. Now the band you are watching may only be good live, hell, they might only be good for that particular performance, but this knowledge is inborn in the crowd. And the artist gets something rare, not a crowd full of fans waiting for specific songs, but a mass of people ready to be part of something, something special, unique and new.

On my way to Digbeth, thanks to the travel beers, I needed to go to the bathroom. I nipped into the City Tavern, the sort of yellowing old man’s pub that in no way benefited from the smoking ban. Being a gentleman, and an alcoholic writer, I bought a drink. The secret to old men’s pubs like that is even though you imagine you’re going to get funny looks, record skips and the tutting of a lifetime, they’re not judgemental at all. The older you get the more the hate and fear drains and all your left with is shadows and habits of prejudice. I’m sat there in make-up and a tail coat and not an eyelid has been raised. I sat watching a man in NHS sunglasses and a fishing hat slur his way along with the jukebox, occasional his more extravagant hand gestures would knock his crutches over. He was just as much as a music lover as the people I spent the weekend with. In fact probably he’s more of a music fan, he evidently doesn’t need the safety blanket of a festival or peers to feel one with the music.

And that’s what really good gig’s do, give us the space where we can be that guy, introduce us to new experiences and put us in a crowd of people wanting to do the same.

My picks:
Necro Deathmort
High arches and vaulted ceilings in the Old Theatre, dirge like bass lines but ascending melodies, that is actually lifting spiritually. Massive echoy sound, like the vast waiting room to hell. Engrossing and invitingly industrial. Dry ice helping atmosphere of desecrated church vibes. Potent and hopeful, like an angel crying you to orgasm. Steam powered angels, pressing brain buttons.

Fukpig
Disorganized aggression, sublimely fast. But a driving pattern to the chaos. A boot of hard. Glorious in its driving disorder. Watching the Lead singer, who looks like a hobo Rasta Biggles, lurch himself into the crowd. With bands like Fukpig you have to accept that you won’t understand the lyrics. You just know that the screeching is sincere and powerful, a vocalist controlling the stage with screeching and need.

But a lot of good energy, bouncy punk bass lines over dark shoutcore

Drumcorps
There’s not many bands that can intimidate using sound check. But the it produced a set of sounds so relentless and angry I wanted to move away from the speakers. Disorientating techno noise, hard enough that It should be weaponised. Gut Punching insanity from a spindly dread locked yank. On a table.Vocals as pointless as ear protectors but still a live hair metal edge to what is essentially a live gabba industrial sound.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pierre Bastien
French.
Delicate clockwork noise dohickies with jazz like sound structure. Big screens with a live feed from his steam-punk wanking machines. A tiny underwater trumpet, unprobable objects with a dreamlike sound to match. Big crowd, lots of beards and one girl in front of me even nodding along with the semi structured wonka-esqe tinker noise. Quite charming actually, music as tiny spectacle. Repeated refrain of old toys overlaid with mechanical persuasive elements. Like when in a dream one setting blends into another as the scenery fades, so do the musical elements blend and wind down.

Factory floor
Three people took to the stage, two scruffy men and a small lady in fashionably baggy pantaloon trousers and black bangs.

The music is complex sample drum and synth sounds that build and weave with the raw guitar sounds made by the girl. She uses sticks, samplers and a viola bow to produce these sounds and is more likely to be banging it, scratching and stroking it with contempt than strumming.
Then the live drums kick in, hard, quick and loud. All of a sudden the samples and synth sounds that made the layered bass line becomes a melody and the driving drums make it techno, hard techno, the sort I sent my twenties sweating too in small clubs.

It’s a hobby of mine to watch drummers expressions while on stage, they’re normally hilarious. From straight aggression to bewildered fear. Factory Floors drummer had a look of pure concentration that looked on his young furry face like a hamster performing heart surgery.

Black Sun Drum Corps
I did wonder if I was going to catch the star of these, luckily they drum paraded around the festival and led us all into the stage where we greeted to a stage of distorted guitars and a circular space cleared in the middle for the drum corps.

a Scottish piper with voodoo face paint pounding heavy metal rhythms. Shouting staccato grunts and orders like he was leading an army of the dead. Could turn into a great standard metal sound, if there was less theatre and fewer drummers. But its better than that. The drummers are not miked at all, but the still cutting through the deep bass on stage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Danny Smith

Kraftwerk, Massive Attack, MGMT, Klaxons, Bat For Lashes and loads more confirmed for Bestival 09. Plus VERY special Sunday night headliner still TBA shortly!

Plus even more live music from;

Michael Nyman / The Beat / Squarepusher / Future Sound Of London / Little Boots /Friendly Fires / Florence & The Machine / Bjorn Again / Fujiya & Miyagi / Metronomy /Dub Pistols / James Yuill / Free Peace / VV Brown / Chase & Status / Golden Silvers /Goldie Lookin’ Chain / Kitty, Daisy & Lewis / The Cuban Brothers /dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip / Ebony Bones / Altern8 / Passion Pit / 65 Days of Staticand many more…  DJ/MC sets from:Diplo Presents Mad Decent Soundsystem / Fabio & Grooverider / London Elektricity /Rob da Bank / Zane Lowe / Annie Mac Presents / Huw Stephens / Derrick Carter / DJ Yoda /Fake Blood / Gilles Peterson / Friction / Tayo / Johnno (Bugged Out) / Skream / DJ Derek /Monsters At Work DJs Present The Psychedelic Sounds of Monsterism Island /Beardyman / Coley (Luv Jam)and many more acts to be announced… Also featuring:A Brand New Site Layout / The After Burner Rave Up / Giant Bonfire / Story Telling /Outer Space Fancy Dress Themeand all the usual Bestival magic & mayhem…

In the rarest of free moments Bestival mastermind Rob da Bank commented:
‘I keep having to look at the scruffy piece of paper I keep the line-up on in my diary to convince myself that we are indeed bringing Kraftwerk to the Isle of Wight.  Ha ha!  Im so bloody happy I could cry, but then I realise we’ve also got Massive Attack, MGMT, Seasick Steve, Klaxons, Bat For Lashes … All my favourite live acts and DJs in a field in seven months’ time in what I can humbly proclaim is our best line-up yet and when you find out who the third headliner is and then the very special guest too you’ll join me in wetting ourselves with excitement.  Its gonna be out of the world – out of space in fact!’

 www.bestival.net