Page 1 of POLL: Have/ Are you going to a summer festival in 2006?

No option for "No, I`m not going to any hippy-infested dirge-fests" :/

Off to V festival tomorrow ...wahooooo :) :D :)

Not much of a summer festival but I am going to a thrash festival called....



floyd

Did you have fun Sminty? I live about 7 miles away from Chelmsford. Went last year but couldn`t make it this year. Maybe next year though. May see ya there. ;) :x

The Jackal

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Did you have fun Sminty?
Hey :D . I just got back from the Weston Park, Stafford v… was good, (feeling rough now though). Needs to be re-named to the queue festival, you had to queue for everything. But even with the queues and lots of rain and mud, it was money well spent :) . I paid 120 but people were selling tickets for 25 pound in the end :o - (lots of people didn`t want to go becuase of the rain me thinks.)

Packed tent up at 6am to make sure we didn't hit the heavy traffic that they are reporting on the radio now. Lots of campervans were getting stuck in the mud hehe …some very unhappy people when we left this morning.


I went to see.

Faithless - Front row :)
Paul Weller
Hard Fi
The Dandy Warhols
Keane
Beck
End of Radiohead when they played creep - so cool :)
Razorlight (near the front and had to crowd surf my way out as i thought i was going to get squashed to death)
The Charlatans
The Feeling (Near front on guys shoulders - hoping I got on channel 4)
Kasabian
Editors
Kula Shaker
Orson

Tickets are on sale for 2007 already :o :o .. http://www.vfestival.com

I went to V in Weston Park too. Queues were probably a bit worse than usual festival queues and £10 for a programme (with no other clues about when bands were playing) was a bit greedy. Security were crap - they were stopping people taking water in to the arena and spent a lot of time charging up and down the camp sites on quad bikes. The food was extortionate (£6 for a burger and chips) and not much cop, although my girlfriend had a Mexican wrap that she said was delicious.

Toilets were as bad as ever, made worse by the contractor`s claims that they couldn`t empty them overnight Sat/Sun because of the weather! Doh! If you`re providing facilities for an open air festival HAVE A WET WEATHER PLAN!!!!!!!!

There were signs up asking people not to drop litter, but hardly any bins!!!

The worst thing for me was the absolutely ubiquitous marketing - Virgin, Carling, Lynx, etc...I know they don`t sponsor events for the common good, but there was too much, and the money spent on high tech advertising compared badly with the apparent poor investment in facilities for the punters.

The bands were good, bad or indifferent, depending on your taste. Joint best for me were Divine Comedy and Kasabian, with Faithless, Beck, Mew, Keane and Radiohead getting a special mention. Having watched a snatch of Radiohead`s Chelmsford show on telly yesterday I suspect they`d be in my top two if I hadn`t gone to see Kasabian on the C4 stage while Radiohead were on the main.

Biggest disappointments for me were Razorlight (I heard a load of their demos about 3-4 years ago and loved them, all short, punchy, catchy punky pop; but now their act just seems to consist of an boring, overindulgent and extended Boomtown Rats homage), Morrissey (I liked the Smiths, but he`s just so smug these days: I think he believes all the hyperbole his fans spout) and the Young Knives (apart from Weekdays and Bleakdays they just didn`t move me).

We got in late on Saturday (my girlfriend thinks `punctual` is one of those thinks that other people do) so I missed a load of bands I really wanted to see.

Any one else got any comments?

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Queues were probably a bit worse than usual festival queues

:o Q festival queues were awful. But you do say you got there late on Saturday and most of my queueing was done on Friday and early Sat.
People were waiting 1 ½ for the cash machine :o, you then had to wait ages in the porring rain for drink vouchers and then huge queues to use the drink vouchers and buy a drink. Considering one of the benifits of V is how good they are at customer service etc compared to most festival this year didn`t cut it.
But thank god I manged to get up in Monday morning to miss most of the traffic. It took my mates who slept in 3 hours to get out ..haha.




[quote.. £10 for a programme (with no other clues about when bands were playing) was a bit greedy. [/quote]

Considering it would be easy for them to put a map and times on the internet to print off - it is extremely greedy >:( . I was the silly volunteer to buy one of these over priced programs and everyone kept stopping me to ask me times - at least I got to meet a lot of people - good conversation starter.




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Security were crap

I disagree - my experience with them this year were really good. I nearly got squashed to death in Razorlight gig and as soon as I wanted to get out (feeling a bit claustrophobic) they helped me out with out any problems.
My sister lost her wallet with 50 pound in and it was handed in by security to the police station.


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The food was extortionate

Yep, food and drink were well over priced. I paid 3 pound for a burger that was stale but as soon as I complained they swapped it for another one so still smiling :) .
They were stopping you taking in alcoholic drinks I never saw them stop any one take in water. I managed to smuggle in my JD and coke in a little coke bottle.


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Toilets were as bad as ever,

The queues in the arena were stupid for the toilets. I had so many arguments with people pushing in >:( .
But I thought the toilets weren't too bad - the majority of the time I managed to go in just after they had been cleaned:-D


The worst organized V festival for sure! But I still love the fact you can look around and they have people of all different ages from about 5 - 70. So I will be going next year. :D

Hi Sminty,

We did enjoy the weekend, don`t get me wrong, but only despite a lot of things that could have been avoided. I might do V again, if the line-up is good enough. It was a bit of a last minute decision; we saw cheapo tickets on Ebay and bought them on a whim. Did you pay full price?