Added: 1080 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Music | 10 Comments

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<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/17854/Music-Festivals-The-Regurgitated-Vomit-Of-Love/'>Music Festivals - The Regurgitated Vomit Of Love</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

The festival season is upon us. The season of good will, ill-will and willed self-destruction. Of earache and brainache. So dust off the silly head-gear, bust out those multi-coloured, oversized shades that look like blinds and tell the girlfriend she really won't need a Marc Jacobs pleated dress, plus there's no room in the rucksack for it anyway because you've filled it full of high-grade mary-jane and tequila.

There's a myriad to choose from, you can go watch some hippies hugging flora and fauna, go see your favourite comedians, drink pear cider until it becomes your blood, reject money for a week, dance on the beaches of Spain or the fields of Denmark, take the kids, your parents, friends or enemies; there's Glastonbury, Burning Man, Benicassim, The Big Chill, Ozora, Bestival, Roskilde, Boom, Sziget, T in the Park, Ozzfest, Reading, Download, Creamfields - the list really is endless. It seems every possible musical genre is covered from techno folk-fusion, to experimental dubstep blues, easy listening metalcore, avant-garde country jazz, junglist Britpop and classical gabba. Make up a musical genre like I just did and I guarantee you'll find a festival playing it.

You could say the market's oversaturated, or you could just shut the f#ck up, drink some booze, say a little pray to Discordia, put some ridiculous shades on and go check out what's on in the dance tent. "Whoop, whoop" Is that the sound of the Police? It better not be, because I f#cking hate Sting.

The experience of a music festival is like falling down the rabbit hole. You wake up after 4 days of absolute filth-ridden partying, you're naked in a field/desert/river/trench/someone else's tent with your genitals covered in fluorescent paint and haunting memories of such sinful debauchery that you've earned yourself a rank in Satan's army. What to do but reach out for the nearest bottle of Wild Turkey, and use it to wash back those weird coloured pills you've found lying next to you. You fight back the gag reflex as you wash them down, stand up, your brain feeling like it's taken a train head on, and you stagger off, naked, into the desert to the sounds of fellow debauchees whooping in the distance, the sounds of joyful laughter and the peculiar noises of abandon that only a festival can unleash. It sounds like maddened jackals dressed in clown outfits, eating fairy dust, while howling for the insane. You stroll on through this human safari park, listening to the surrounding echoes of these mad, stoned fools.

You look up into the glaze of the bright sun, squint, smile, look around you at what looks like the set of a new Mad Max movie, and then dutifully follow the sounds of some thumping bass line in the distance, calling you like a Siren. You may be naked, you may've lost all your friends, your clothes, your tent, your money, your sanity and your dignity, but by Lucifer's balls, you're still going to enjoy the rest of this festival. They'll be time later to lament the loss of everything you came with. Now is the time to dance to that hallowed music like it was your saviour. To meet some day-glo hipster freak in the techno tent who's wearing a headband made from the baroque dress of a 17th century duchess and looking like Ziggy Stardust at his retirement gig. Who's frothing at the mouth and dancing like a monkey teleporting through a sandstorm, occasionally stopping to freebase amyl nitrate off a medieval dwarf's winkle pickers. Good. Times.

Or perhaps you're wandering about in a field, taking a Rabelaisian ramble, dazed and confused, crying chemical tears of joy for reasons unknown, and you pass a stall selling what looks to your mind like multi-coloured pixie brains and elves' genitals. You're staring intently at them, wondering whether they really are these things or just candy, when suddenly you hear the beautiful rhythms of Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere travel wistfully to your ears like a goddess's caress. And that's it, you start laying down some freaksome forms right there. Forget making it to see the headline act, some past it rock star playing the bongos with his testicles, while farting the lyrics to this latest comeback album with U2 guest-riverdancing on his schlong - it's happening right here, right now. That is until the song ends and you drift off, desperate to find out what that weird light on the distant hill might be, that light that's been blinking at you suggestively, willing you over like a comely minx. It's going to be a long, strange, crazed night; a night that could easily be mistaken for the manic, frenzied dreams of a drunken lunatic.

Later on while chanting with some dreadlocked hippies who smell like incense and stale urine, you'll experience what you think is true gnosis, but then realise it was just you sh#tting your pants. And now you're laughing uncontrollably, the belly laugh, the good laugh. Here come the tears again, and now you can't see as they stream down your face. Someone hands you something, then a bottle to wash it back with. So long cruel world, I'll see you for the long coach ride home...

Whatever happens, it's guaranteed you'll bring back hazy memories, some even hazier photos, a tan, puke-stained clothes and quite possible an STD. But, hey, it'll all be worth it.

If you see the glaze-eyed, haunted, mysterious-looking children-of-fesitvals wandering around train stations and coach terminals looking like frightened lost deer, be kind to them. It could've very easily been anyone of us.

Added: 1080 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Music | 10 Comments

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