or: The Difference Between Music Festivals
I went to my first outdoor music festival in 1994. It was the Big Day Out held on the Gold Coast, Australia. I remember listening to The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Bjork, TISM, The Cruel Sea, Powderfinger, You Am I, Dave Graney, Severed Heads (and the Dead Eyes Opened is a tune I must have played at least 1,000 times in my DJ days on our student radio station) and countless others that aren’t springing to mind immediately. As I’ve written this, I realise I still listen to all these artists so it really was a great line up for me!
I was hooked. It was the start of many festivals which has seen me on lengthy road trips, camping out for the Bells Beach Surf Classic over a few Easter long weekends in Tourquay (it rained every year I was there and the surf was epic), Sydney (other Big Day Outs, Homebake etc), Brisbane (Livid) and others on the Gold Coast. Love music, will travel.
They all had numerous aspects in common:
- Some drunk teenagers
- Some drunk young adults
- A few older people (by ‘old’, at this time, I would have thought it was anyone that attended with their own children. There were a few who did exactly that)
- Drugs – mostly pot but a fair share of acid and ecstacy too
- Dodgy fast-food – typically hotdogs, pies and similar
- Disgusting toilets with a queue that stretched over at least one band’s set. The queue for the men’s toilets were always shorter and women tried to sneak in.
- Awesome music both local and overseas across a variety of genres (except for Homebake as that specifically focuses on Australian music)
- Some drunk teenagers (though proportionally less in HK)
- Some drunk young adults
- Drugs – mostly pot and if anything else is seen in HK, they do a lot better job of being discrete about it than in Australia not just in dealing it but behaviour-wise too
- I am yet to see a fight at Clockenflap over the years I’ve been attending and in all the ones I’ve been to in Australia, I’ve seen one punch thrown. This may have changed…
- The proportion of youth to older people is the opposite. Clockenflap is frequented by all sorts of people though predominantly those that are working and have been for a while. That’s not to say there aren’t high school and uni students too, it’s just they are very much outnumbered
- No crowd surfing in HK and little security for a mosh pit as there isn’t really a mosh pit. Yes, there are people that are jumping around like pogo sticks (thanks to Eddie Vedder for that reference made at a Pearl Jam concert in Brisbane many years ago. He was worried people would be hurt so had the house lights turned on and showed everyone how he wanted them to jump like pogo sticks instead of throwing themselves everywhere)
- There are no encores in HK. When the last band finishes for the evening, they are finished. It’s due to noise restrictions
- The food. Many of the restaurants in HK supply stalls to Clockenflap covering every nationality including Italian, Mexican, Korean, Chinese (not surprisingly), Vientamenese, South African, Thai etc
- Toilets – little to no queue and they are spotless. They are all portaloos too.
* Thanks to The Chemical Brothers for the title to this post. They were the last band I saw this evening and they were fantastic. Unfortunately they didn’t play this song but the set they did was great. They always put on a good show and this was no exception.