The mercury is rising and the sun is lingering in the sky a little longer each day, which can mean only one thing: The summer festival season is upon us.
All around the country, music lovers are bracing themselves to face sweltering heat, $4 bottled water and epic B.O. – all in pursuit of the perfect concert experience.
As a service to our readers, I have compiled a list of tips for maximizing the enjoyment of these events, ensuring that festival-goers come out alive when it’s all over.
1. Be prepared for the heat.
This one should be fairly obvious to anyone with half a brain, but every year thousands of festival-goers suffer from blistering sunburns, heat stroke and severe dehydration. Don’t be one of these people.
Sunscreen is your friend, so don’t be afraid of it. Whatever SPF you choose, make sure it is waterproof so it won’t sweat off while you’re shaking your ass to some sweet tunes. Don’t forget to reapply throughout the day. Try doing this every time a new band takes the stage. It may seem excessive, but it saves you a lot of pain and peeling in the long run.
Also, don’t forget the H20. It keeps you alive, you know. Last year, architecture junior David Swaim chose to rely on his ingenuity to find water during the Coachella Music and Arts Festival rather than paying $2 for a bottle of water.
“My clever solution was not to drink,” he said, “which, by the end of the day, resulted in me lying on the ground fidgeting and hallucinating that my knees were battling. When I heard someone behind me say ‘Look, that guy’s on acid,’ I realized that my ingenuity had failed me. Sometimes water is worth $2 a bottle.”
2. Get plenty of rest.
Festivals involve 12-hour days of music and assorted debauchery that often stretch out over the course of an entire weekend, so don’t burn out early.
Finance junior Jeff Stern likes to catch up on his sleep before he leaves for Humbolt’s Reggae on the River festival each year.
“Get plenty of sleep the week before because you’ll be up, tired and sleeping pretty uncomfortably for most of your time there,” he said.
UC San Diego graduate David Bahner, 24, takes this one step further and recommends catching up on sleep during down times in the day as well.
During Audiotastic 2003, the early wakeup time, long drive and hard partying caught up with him later in the day. Rather than wussing out and heading for the car, he decided to “take a nap in the middle of everything.”
“Forty-five minutes later, I woke up and the festival was still in full swing,” he said. “I walked over to the bar, did some shots with my friends and partied ’til the last beat of the last headliner dropped.”
3. Avoid the chill-out tent.
While it may afford you the chance to meet Wavy Gravy (study your festival history and you will find that he is much more than an awesome Ben & Jerry’s flavor), the chill-out tent is not somewhere you want to be. Sure, you get all the free oranges and water you can consume, but it’s not as glamorous as the Hold Steady song makes it out to be.
Let’s be honest, while the Mustang Daily does not condone drug use, we understand that festivals and drugs have had a deep connection since . forever.
You don’t have to be a buzz kill, just be smart. Don’t be excessive; know your limits and hopefully you will be just fine.
Don’t use festivals as a place to experiment. The middle of a crowd of 50,000 people is not the ideal place to experience hallucinogens for the first time. Stick to what you know and, again, stay hydrated so you don’t wind up semi-conscious on the back of a golf cart screaming about giant bats and manta rays in the sky.
4. Don’t be a jerkface.
This one comes straight from Cal Poly alumnus and long-time KCPR DJ Paul Sittig (better known to the public as Sasquatch), who demands you refrain from acting like an ass, even if you.
“.are really tired of standing in line. So is everyone else!
.can’t see well and arrived late to a stage. Just because you have elbows doesn’t mean you need to use them to get to the front of the stage. If you were the biggest fan ever, you would have been two hours early like everyone else at the front.
. really love this song! Getting drunk and/or high then singing off-key and stepping on people while you dance only displays you’re a jerkface/douche to everyone around you, not how in tune you are with this song and the whole of the cosmos.”
5. Choose your company wisely.
Festivals are great places to make new friends, but, as is true for life in general, choose those new friends wisely.
Political science graduate of UCSB Brian Galvin, 23, learned this lesson the hard way while attending last year’s Vegoose festival after some friends bailed and left him scrambling to find a Vegas hotel room “on the cheap.”
He wound up staying in room at the Tropicana with a friend of a friend of his roommate’s, along with 15 of that friend’s friend’s friend’s friends.
When Galvin left the room in search of food and drink, his new Bulgarian roommate, who had made the trip out just for Vegoose, overdosed on heroin and was rushed to the hospital.
“The next morning I go to the bathroom, and while scrambling to find something to read while I do the deed, I find a crumpled paper detailing how the guy had his stomach pumped and was then set free back into the wilds of Vegas,” Galvin said.
The next day, Galvin sprained his ankle and wound up stuck in the hotel room while everybody, the Bulgarian gentleman included, headed out for the festival.
“In the morning he shoots up in front of everyone, making 15 people look at the wall uncomfortably,” he said. “Then they smoke a bunch of pot and go to day two. In the meantime, I’m stuck in the hotel room with the dude’s heroine and a bunch of acid and miscellaneous other drugs (in) the same room that is stinking up the floor and was visited by paramedics the night before. So Vegoose and my new friends come back and drive me back to Santa Barbara after a 10-hour freak-out session in the room.”
6. Don’t be afraid to ditch your friends.
One of the best things about attending big festivals is the ability to completely customize your experience. The variety of acts that play these events is usually pretty overwhelming and not everybody wants to see the same thing. Don’t let your friends’ musical tastes get in the way of your good time, or vice versa.
Keep your cell phone charged and set meeting places and times to meet back up with your group. This will ultimately help in avoiding the obligatory “.but I want to see this band!” argument.
Kinesiology senior Juan Ramirez figured this one out after the first time he attended Coachella.
“I was in a decent sized group, and everyone was afraid to break apart,” he explained. “I was really annoyed with the other people in my group, because I was dragged to shows I had no interest in seeing. I did have a lot of fun that year, but I was pretty pissed off at times due to missing some great shows at the expense of ‘sticking together.'”
7. Wet wipes and talcum powder.
You know what they’re for and when you don’t get to take a shower for three days, you’ll be glad you brought them. ‘Nuff said.