I’m no neat freak, but when one of your closest friends greets you with the words “You look so…clean!”, you know that something magnificent has gone down. In this instance, the ‘something magnificent’ was Electric Picnic ’09. The close friend in question was surprised because the last time he had seen me was 9am on the Monday morning after the festival. Sleep-deprived and mud-encrusted at a city centre Luas stop, my sartorial stylings were more ‘Courtney Love goes Mud Wrestling’ than the presentable Trinity student he’s used to.
To say that I let my festival alter ego loose for the weekend comes as no surprise. For many, this is part of the attraction of a weekend spent camping in the mud of the Midlands. Walking round ‘the picnic’ as it is so affectionately referred to, you can’t help getting a sense that the ticket price is not just about attending an event, but experiencing one. Your €240 buys you the opportunity to enter a sort of heightened reality for the weekend, and still be back on Monday for your usual 9 to 5 routine.
This year’s event had been critisied for presenting a weaker line-up than it had in previous years – a factor that perhaps contributed to the initially sluggish ticket sales. But in true ‘boutique festival’ style, there was something on the musical menu for all tastes. Madness, Brian Wilson and The Wailers could be found under ‘oldies but goodies.’ If you felt like dancing you could pick from the likes of MGMT, Bassment Jaxx, Orbital and 2ManyDJs. Passion Pit, Fleet Foxes and Florence and the Machine all drew huge crowds – many punters feeling especially lucky to have caught the luminous Ms. Welch in action with the news that her December gig in the Olympia has since sold out.
But, at this point I have to ask, do people go to festivals solely for the music? Wandering round the picnic I got the sense that, while festivals were once the preserve of die-hard music fans who wanted to get wasted, there is now a noticeable shift in tone. For starters, there are kids everywhere. Toddlers in rainjackets and fairy wings blend in surprisingly well with acid-drenched experimenters. ‘The Ticket’, the music and culture supplement of ‘The Irish Times’ prints a mini festival newsletter for both days of the festival, lending a tangible sense of community – albeit a mini community that sets up camp for the weekend and is then dis-assembled, packed into vans and backpacks and re-distributed across the world. Inkeeping with the ‘community’ theme, one area even feels like a village main street – shops designed to look like a fire station and an inflatable church where you can get hitched for real, if you so desire (reports say that the wedding chapel was booked out for the entire weekend). It’s a temporary community, a fleeting experience. But one that lives on in photos, treasured wristbands and the memory of items that you lost and will never see again (my favourite cardigan: a sacrifice at the alter of the mud Gods).
Of course, there are negative aspects too. And I’m not referring to the experience of ‘toileting’ (yes, it’s a verb now) over an open trough while the unfortunate in the next cubicle vomits the remains of the nights excesses. All this goodwill, community and non-stop entertainment comes at a price. Aside from €240 for the weekend ticket, you also need to pay for transport to Stradbally, food, alcohol and any other ‘substances’ you need to get you through the weekend. As well as this, you might need to invest in a tent, sleeping bag and other camping equipment. As for clothing, there is no point in even going if you don’t have wellies and wetgear. Many don’t let the spending stop at that, however. In a phenomenon apparently dubbed the ‘Kate Moss effect’, people are heading to festivals simply to see and be seen. In a survey conducted in England by Freeview it was revealed that a third of people bought new clothes to take with them, while 27% of people confessed to spending about £500 on a festival weekend.
For others, there is a nagging concern that ‘the Picnic’ is mutating into something it was never meant to be. The Electric Picnic Facebook fan page provides a space to give feedback on the festival experience. Most of the comments are overwhelmingly positive. However, for many the experience was soured somewhat by what one commentator saw as “a bit of a scumbag element”: “My fifth picnic and the last one for sure. Met more 15 year olds off their faces messing the place up…We used to come here to avoid the Oxegen crowd. Now they’re here too.” Another commentator confessed that although he had an “amazing” weekend, he too was concerned that the event could get out of hand: “A lot of tents were broken down I had a slab of beer taken.”
For all the festival naysayers, however, the fact remains that you could keep coming back to Electric Picnic year after year, and have a completely different festival experience every time. The Zen area offers massages in teepees while the Mindfield houses a literary tent (this year saw readings from Irvine Welch, Roddy Doyle and Florence Welch among many others). In the Leviathan tent, picnicers are asked to sit with strangers and pick from a set ‘menu’ of conversation topics, in exchange for free tea and cookies. The Comedy Tent hosted Tommy Tiernan and Trinity favourites Dead Cat Bounce. Stop Climate Change and Friends of the Earth organised a giant conga for climate change. Ark – Acts of Random Kindness – were also out in force, ‘pegging’ picnicers with little ideas to enhance the community spirit, everything from ‘share your toilet roll at the loos’ to ‘smile at a stranger.’ For me, it was this very noughties sense of progressive goodwill and attention to detail that differentiates Electric Picnic from other events. Big business needn’t mean that the punters have to feel like cattle being herded around a field. It is possible to have the best of both worlds – fine entertainment, quite a few laughs, great food and a personal touch – and rock a tribute to Courtney Love while you’re at it.
