If you spend some time rifling through think pieces and op-eds about music festivals, especially from places like Vice, and Clear Mag, you’ll likely find one particular common thread – misanthropy.
Despite likely having attended the festival they’re writing about for free, a lot of music journalists just love to moan about festival culture, and by association, gig culture in general. The vast majority of their complaints are directed squarely at their fellow event-goers (the ones who actually paid to get in, mind), and in particular, the waster crowd.
When I say waster, it casts a pretty broad net, but you know them when you see them. One of them might have fallen through somebody else’s tent, loosing the contents of their 1.5 litre vodka bottle all over the inside, or perhaps there’s one in the crowd, shirtless and windmilling about with his fists out in the most egregious misinterpretation of moshing ever recorded, or perhaps you spied one clambering up onto the stage and attempting to either hug, molest or fireman’s carry a band member before being hauled away by hapless bouncers. You see what I’m getting at, the people who ostensibly only seem to be there to get fucked, and elect to do so in the most overt, in-your-face way imaginable.
It’s easy to hate these people, oh so very easy. Slatted shades and a vest that says ‘I [heart] MDMA’ rarely make a good first impression, especially from a distance. The attire is just the icing on the rage cake, most of the time, though, it’s the behaviour that’s really irksome. There’s no getting away from the fact that at most festivals, and a significant contingent of gigs, most of the attendants are going to be drunk, or on drugs, so it would be a tad hypocritical to single out a fraction of them simply for doing it in an unsubtle way. The real problem is the relationship these people seem to have with the music on offer – total indifference, or even worse, a desire to draw attention away from the stage and towards themselves.
Last summer at one of the festivals I went to, I spent some time hanging out with a new group of people (who will remain unnamed), and one of them was the epitome of this phenomenon. He spent most of the weekend shirtless, wreathed in sweat and ran around the site shouting at people. Through the course of the festival he tried to start a fight with stranger for absolutely no good reason, clambered onto the stage to run around harassing the band just as they’d finished playing and stole a fire extinguisher, only to exhume it from a hiding place later and spray it all over the campsite. Now, I don’t approve of this behaviour at all, but even I’ll admit I found some of it pretty funny, if alarming. Again, it’s easy to hate, but the fact remains that gig/festival/party culture simply could not exist without the people who insist on taking it too far.
The fact remains that without these latter day court jesters, who could be acting out for any number of reasons, the party atmosphere that fuels festivals and gigs would be sedated. Sure, it’s distracting, and sometimes upsetting when you’re trying to take in a performance from an artist you revere and the person next to you is so riddled with chemicals and wrapped up in their own ego that they’re making a spectacle of themselves, but however that energy with birthed, it always ends up resonating into the crowd and contributing to the vibe in a positive way. If you feel like no matter how stupidly you dance, you still look like less of an idiot than somebody nearby, your inhibitions recede that much further.
Sometimes it does go too far, inexcusably so. I’ve seen some absolutely awful, even dangerous behaviour at live events before, and there’s no upside to, nor justification for that, but it’s the very extreme end of long scale, and there’s a big dip between jumping up and down like a hyperactive weasel and clambering up the rafters and trying to monkey climb across the scaffold, endangering both your own life and that of the people 60 feet beneath you (sadly not a made up example, happily nobody was hurt).
It would be nice to imagine that any festival, or even gig, could represent that utopian paradise of like-minded people, all at ease with their surroundings and committed to having fun in an enthusiastic, but respectful environment, but such a thing has never existed. It’s nice to have your love of music mirrored by that of the people around you, but there will always be outliers, and opportunists, and it’s up to you not to let them bother you. Some writers may grouch and grump their way through ’10 things that need to stop happening at festivals’ and so forth, but how angry can you really get at people who are having fun, even if they’re doing it in a shallow, dishonest way? I’d say it balances things out, and it’s a helpful reminder that you’re there for your own reasons.
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