Festival Fever

At this time every year I feel really tempted to crawl into the loft, find my old tent, dust it off and head for the nearest music festival. They tell me that festival business is booming and Britain will stage over 500 festivals this summer. Not that many years ago there were no more than a dozen to choose from and I did more than my fair share of crusty festival-going. Reading, Glasto, Stratford, Leeds, I've waived my lighter at all of them. I wasn't just going to festivals, I was being paid to go to festivals. One of the few perks of working with teenagers for a living, was that I got to ferry them to festivals and make sure that they came safely home again; dazed, confused, oddly different in a new-worldly sort of way...but safe. Onerous as such duties were, I still managed to find the time to see every band that I had on my list. And that was the kind of list that any serious self-respecting Q-reading muso would have. It was a long list. I even saw bands that were woeful, just to tick them off the list; Bjork, American Music Club, Ice Cube, Hole...I'll never get that wasted time back. My only real regret was missing David Bowie, who played while I was stuck in a two-mile-12-hour traffic jam just outside Stratford. The pain of lost opportunity has only recently subsided.

Time is the great healer. It's also the great deceiver. When I get festival wander-lust, I seem to forget the discomfort, the standing up for 12 hours each day, the queues, the warm expensive beer, the sweatiness, the toilets (OMG the toilets!) and the tripping over tents in the dark. I conveniently forget that my last festival experience culminated in a moment of shocking revelation. It was 1998, I was moshing in a dance tent to Shed 7, when it suddenly appeared to me that I was the oldest person there; including the band. It was an epiphany and I couldn't reconcile myself to the jarring reality that all the other 30-something musos were at home, probably listening to Gram Parsons on Denon hi-fi systems with cold beer in hand. I haven't been back. But every year I ask myself the question, 'One more time?'

This year, the answer will still be 'No'. But it's worth noting that this year's Saturday night Glasto headliner will be a 59 year-old Bruce Springsteen. Sunday will be topped by the 63 year-old Neil Young. So maybe there's a chance for us all to go back. We'll be throwing a bit of a party to watch the Boss from the comfort of the lounge at Clow Towers; a few nibbles and cocktails, 3-course dinner, clean toilets and then, when it's over, off to a real bed. Much better than the real thing. Anyway I saw Springsteen live in 1985 at St James Park in Newcastle. Neil Young was ticked off the list at Reading in 1994, (or was it '93?) Now where did I put that list...?