Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I haven’t been to a festival since the Sixties. There are so many reasons and excuses for this that I won’t list them, but the main one was that I didn’t think they did festivals like the ones I enjoyed so much any more. At least I didn’t think they did.
I did a lot of the standard things in the Sixties that are no longer standard. I listened to LPs in Mono and became very excited about the introduction of Stereo. When we borrowed LPs off each other we used to record them onto reel-to-reel tape, using a microphone placed in front of the speaker(s).
Ploughed by a blunt needle
It was all very new and exciting, and of course things have moved on light-years since. I don’t miss lending my favourite records and getting them back ploughed by a blunt needle, or with a horrible scratch right across my favourite tracks. I love having enormous amounts of music available in my pocket now.
I do miss the weekly ritual of finding out the Top Twenty on the radio, which always contained just enough music I really loved as well as teeth-grindingly awful stuff. Of course, time rubs the edges off. I can now hear Jim Reeves or the Marmalade (supply your own pet hates) without running from the room with my hands over my ears.
Being deeply emotionally involved
I also miss being deeply emotionally involved with the music that was coming out. I know it rolls forward every year, it all changes with the new fans picking up on new stuff all the time. The fact that I can’t find anything of interest in a lot of new music doesn’t mean it’s no good. It would be weird if I did. I do miss the sense of inhabiting a musical landscape that really matters to me.
One of the really good benefits of this lowering of emotional intensity and greater availability of music is that my musical landscape has spread to include so many genres and styles and ages of music that I really can’t answer a simple question like – ‘What kind of music do you like?’ any more. The answer is – ‘Almost everything’.
I never saw the point in not answering a question properly
A few years ago I applied to go on Big Brother, and the application form included the question – ‘What music track have you listened to most in the last week?’ Being a literal sort of person I duly wrote down – ‘And the Angels Sang’ by the Benny Goodman Orchestra, sung by Martha Tilton. What a gig that would have been!
My friends at the time ridiculed me, but I never saw the point in not answering a question properly. Had it been another week it might have been Kraftwerk, or Albinoni, or almost anything else. Anyway, I got the penultimate laugh, because I was in the last hundred to be selected. I have no idea why or how they didn’t throw my application in the bin, but it was a lot of fun. I could have been a contender!
Something to do with brown rice
The reason I stopped going to festivals was because they changed. At the beginning they were a bit ramshackle and disorganised. You never knew what they would be like when you bought your tickets (and a lot didn’t). Facilities were primitive, and a lot of the food was supposed to be macrobiotic, although I never found out quite what that meant. Something to do with brown rice. But the music was fantastic, every festival became a sort of community, and they had a human scale.
Then the festivals became huge, and there were security guards, and people were searched going in, and they enforced ticket-buying rigidly (at the same time as the price rocketed). They didn’t seem to have the same spirit any more. As a young and extremely foolish idiot, I was so incensed when I came to the Isle of Wight Festival back then that I sold my tickets and went on the beach instead. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!
Specks on screens in the extreme distance
Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. I would never have forgiven myself had I not seen Hendrix a couple of years earlier, at Woburn Abbey. Of all my festival memories, Hendrix doing Red House towers above the rest. Funnily enough, Donovan gets the second slot, singing Laleña with a small orchestra on a lovely summer afternoon.
Having said all that, we went to the RhythmTree Festival last weekend, and I had a lovely time, because it reminded me of the festivals I used to go to. It was small and good-natured, you could get right up to the stage to watch the bands playing, rather than seeing specks on screens in the extreme distance.
You could even talk to the musicians afterwards, because they were strolling around listening to the other bands. It was very relaxed and the quality of music was very high, not only on the main stage but also in the Didg Tent, which was full of settees and small bands having a great time playing in front of really appreciative audiences. We had a wild time, and we’ll be returning.
I didn’t find any macrobiotic food though.
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