Coachella: Music Festivals’ Equivalent Of A Slap Up Meal At McDonalds

Writing in the Guardian’s rather good music blog, Alex Needham puts a not so muddied boot in to the private areas of the Coachella music festival that takes place in April in California. He says:

The weather is beautiful and the setting is spectacular… everything else, however, seems intended to deprive you of any enjoyment at all. The worst is Coachella’s attitude to booze. First, you’ve got to queue for ages to get a wristband after showing your passport to prove you’re over 21. Then the only beer you can buy is halves of Heineken. Finally, you’ve got to drink them in roped-off areas miles from the stage…

This sanitised atmosphere had a due effect on the crowd. Picking my way through the throng in the dance tent to get a half-decent look at Madonna, I was astonished by the amount of people who moaned about the odd trodden toe (and I’m not just being an oaf here – I really was being as careful as I could). Surely you don’t have to be a regular in Slayer’s moshpit to realise that the odd boot in the shin, elbow in the face or stagediver on the bonce is a price worth paying for the pleasure of sweatily enjoying a gig with a load of likeminded people?

…Michael Eavis gets a lot of stick for Glastonbury’s increasingly corporate and safe nature. Yet Glasto is like Sodom and Gomorrah compared to Coachella. Even V seems like a cesspit of wonton licentiousness once you’ve found yourself sobering up on the walk between watching Animal Collective and Kanye West. I can have a good time without booze (he says defensively), but come on – a music festival is not the place for moderation. Coachella is to Glasto what a sun lamp is to Barbados.

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog – music: Would you like fries with your festival?