Festivals Britannia Page #10

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There are hundreds and hundreds of festivals, and it's a big money-making thing.

It's a kind of, you know, we band people and put them through a gate

and they can have this, and then we shunt them from this fenced area to another,

guarded by a whole load of specially badged up semi-policemen.

MUSIC:
"Yellow" by Coldplay

A surge of television coverage in the past ten years has served to domesticate festivals even further.

Now even the weather has become a national joke.

Almost 100,000 fans have defied the worst weather at the Glastonbury Festival since 1985.

Now it's a multi-million pound business, attracting top performers and an audience of over 100,000.

On the first day...

This coverage has kind of inculcated a generation with the idea

that what you do in summer is go to a rock festival somewhere.

You know, it's a rite of passage for us all now.

How old are you going to let your kids get to before you let them go to a festival on their own?

A lot of what we worked out by trial and error, ad hoc stupidity, magic,

whatever, in the early days, has been codified, changed,

made functional by the entertainment industry.

Everything gets co-opted by the mainstream.

That is what happens in our world. It's very sensitive.

What the advertisers and the marketers see is "What's happening? I want to jump on that.

"There's a bandwagon. Let me get on it".

And they will get on it and make you an offer you can't refuse.

As a result of big business and TV broadcasting moving in, the ideological battle

for the heart of Britain has faded away as music and big name acts

have returned to the forefront of the festival experience.

MUSIC:
"Fire" by Kasabian

Obviously, the music scene has changed a lot.

Live music is really precious.

It's the one thing which is real.

You're in the field, you're looking at it, in a world where things

are increasingly online and communication is quite virtual.

Yes, you can experience the download,

but you can't download the experience, and that's what festivals give you.

They give you an experience you can't get anywhere else.

For some, the contemporary festival has become a place of weekend rebellion,

a corporate pastiche of its former self.

But perhaps the essence of the festival experience has never really changed.

We're all looking to be happy, and we're all looking to be part of the human family and to reaffirm that.

That's why people go to festivals. And that is something that can never be repressed.

I think people like to be together, you know,

in an environment where there's nothing to prove or nothing to gain.

You can just be yourself.

Why people go to festivals, the thing that really calls them, is spirit.

They are touched.

And sometimes that touch changes their life for ever.

# Sing along with the common people

# Sing along and it might just get you through

# Laugh along with the common people

# Laugh along, even though they're laughing at you

# And the stupid things that you do

# Because you think that poor is cool

# Want to live with common people like you

# Want to live with common people like you

# Want to live with common people like you... #

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