THE VICE GUIDE TO FESTIVAL DUDES

Personally, I can’t think of anything worse than getting freaky with someone at a festival. A little kiss, some second base, sure, but I’m just not sure my primal urge to bone could override the inevitable build up of dick cheese after three days of sweating in a field and getting stewed in your tent. And I’m sure there isn’t a woman alive who feels flower-fresh down there after hovering over a piled-high Portaloo and then having to drip-dry.

Still, for many, festivals are the perfect opportunity to find a mate or an easy lay. Here are some of the men you might encounter. You will probably wonder why you are paying £356.43 all in to hang around a mud patch with these people, but just remember, it was your choice so make the most of it.

WHO: Crusty
WHERE: WOMAD, Glastonbury

If you’re going to worthy world music fest WOMAD then don’t act all shocked when some dude with an entire ecosystem in his coagulated dreads starts twitching his ginger non-lashes at you while performing some seriously complicated fire poi in the hope that this will impress you enough to climb into his burlap drawstring trousers. You can avoid this situation by being on constant smell alert. If the tang of stale patchouli wafts over, turn on your welly and walk away. Other dead giveaways include patchwork flares, clothes with fringing, soul patches, bongos and a comprehensive knowledge of Phish’s back catalogue. These kinds of guys only smoke pot ’cos ganja is a gift from Mother Nature. Plus he had a really bad acid trip five years ago where he ended up totally butt naked in Glastonbury’s teepee village hollering the Levelling the Land album in full while his fellow hippies pointed and laughed.

WHO: Lad-rock convert
WHERE: Isle of Wight, Wireless

Holy SHIT! How brilliant are these guys? This sub-sect hadn’t even heard of music with guitars till Oasis! Isn’t it rad that “indie music” (meaning One Night Only, the Fratellis, Kooks, Pigeon Detectives, Kaiser Chiefs, Twang et al) is now scaling the charts? Thanks a fucking bunch, the Enemy. At the high end, these guys will be wearing graphic tees from Diesel (at the low end, River Island), and their trousers remain defiantly straight-legged. A can of Stella will be surgically attached to their right palm and they will constantly be checking that you are okay (“Awriiiight daaawrlin’?”). How considerate. Luckily you can spot these guys at 50 feet because they travel in packs shouting “Let’s ’ave IT!” and swagger around like they’ve just been riding bareback for ten days. They want you to think: “Swoon! Look how he’s walking all bowlegged. His cock and balls must be ginormous!” What it actually says is: “My penis is the size of a cornichon.”

WHO: God-botherer
WHERE: GodFest

Held in Godalming, Surrey (see what they did there?), GodFest is probably the only festival on earth where all the unmarried, young ticket-holders are purple with sexual frustration, but insist on passing off this sweaty sheen of horniness as some gilded holy glow. Chat up lines will probably include, “If Eve was tempted by an apple than you must be my fruit” and “I didn’t believe in predestination until today.” This is all fine and funny in broad daylight but if he asks you to come into his tent for some prayer time and Jesus juice, do not enter for fear of conversion. This year’s line-up includes Sounds Of Salvation (perky onmessage ska from Reading) and 14- year-olds Heroes In Error, which I initially read as Herpes In Error and thought, “Wow. Christians totally have a sense of humour when it comes to promoting abstinence.” I was wrong.

WHO: D-list celebrities
WHERE: V Festival

If you are looking to pull someone from Hollyoaks or Skins then you’ve hit the jackpot at V! But only if you go to the Chelmsford site. No telly stars go to Staffordshire. For the most part, Dlisters spend their time away from civilians in a gated community called the Virgin Mobile Lounge where everyone reclines on promotional blow-up chairs, checking out who’s who behind their Ray-Bans and mirrored aviators. When the D-listers have had enough of listening to their fellow ’slebs DJ Hot Chip’s “Over and Over”, they’ll go check out some Radio 1 indie bands. I know one girl who was busy getting squashed watching Kasabian (her first mistake right there), when she found herself in front of a certain star of the small screen. He noticed her checking him out amid the throng and promptly shoved his hands down her shorts to give her the finger. D-listers are like some streamlined super-race where all the bullshit pick-up lines are cut out because they just assume you want to get with them. If you actually want some conversation just zero in on your prey and lure them back to your tent with gak. I condone neither.


WHO: Clubber
WHERE: Global Gathering

Ever wanted to know the cut off point between progressive trance and trance? Well that man in the Asics trainers and three-quarterlength water-resistant combats will be able to tell you. He wasn’t actually at the Haçienda in 1988 but this guy—let’s call him Gary—is bang into acid house and hits up Ibiza every single year. He’s heard of Hercules & Love Affair but doesn’t fancy seeing them live because “disco is a bit gay.” Gary wears combats because his pockets are filled with sketchy ketamine (“Go on, it’ll make you well giggly”) and MDMA crystals (“Just let me dissolve a pinch in your pint.”). If you bite the bullet you and Gary will probably have the ultimate connection at 4 AM during John Digweed’s set, but the moment will pass and Gary will leave you passed out and gurning by the Portaloos at 6 AM. By 10 AM you’ll come round and on the way back to your tent you’ll see Gary on a picnic table rutting with some girl with pink hair and a dummy round her neck.


Photo by James Pearson-Howes

WHO: Marketing guy from Orange
WHERE: Glastonbury

This guy has spent the past two months bragging that he’s got a VIP pass to Glastonbury and yeah, he’s never been to a festival before but so what, he’s going to the MOTHER OF THEM ALL to pop his festie cherry. He’s gone to Millets and dropped £200 on all the festival essentials and spent that again on cocaine which he hopes he can use to make friends with all the other media luvvies backstage. He’s really stoked the Fun Lovin’ Criminals are playing, he thinks the Ting Tings will be massive and that Editors are “totally epic”. Some pissed up Scousers will take offence to him braying to his mate all the way through The Rascals. They will follow him to the Portaloo and once he is in squatting position they will push it over and run away cackling. He will emerge crying and covered in excrement. He will subsequently contract scabies and take the next two weeks off work.


WHO: Metalhead
WHERE: Download, Ozzfest

So what if under that baggy Deicide shirt wobbles a hirsute belly? Or that his ideal holiday is a trip to Rock-am-Ring in Germany. Who cares if his steel-cap boots have crushed all the toes in my right foot when I accidentally found myself in the circle pit? It doesn’t matter that he still has a sunburn mark that reads “Dickhead” on his forehead when he passed out in the sun after drinking too much Strongbow. Or that he has Metallica’s “Metal Up Your Ass” shirt design tattooed on his back. Metallers make me feel safe.


WHO: Fashionista indie kid
WHERE: Field Day

These are not the indie kids of old. No, this is the species of music fan Hadouken! would call a “Hoxton hero”. The kind of chump who will spend £55 on a haircut from a salon like Tommy Guns yet has an aversion to shampoo because he wants to look artfully unmade. The requisite uniform is a white American Apparel deep-V t-shirt and skinny black jeans that haven’t been washed in 34 weeks. If you kiss one of these specimens then you’ll notice their innards taste slightly pickled from all the Sol with lime they’ve been chugging. If you’re next to him in the hourlong queue for beer he’ll tell you, unprompted, how he refuses to listen to Foals and prefers Fela Kuti circa 1972, or he’ll proclaim Crystal Castles as 8-bit trailblazers, but secretly Carl Barât is his God.


OTHERS YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER:

WHO: Sensitive music super-geeks
WHERE: All Tomorrow’s Parties
MOST LIKELY TO SAY: “I’d give the Bon Iver record an 8.6.”

WHO: Second-year performing arts student
WHERE: Latitude
MOST LIKELY TO SAY: “Shall we check out some slam poetry first? Actually, let’s go to the film tent and chillax. I really think you should see Un Chien Andalou. It’s seminal.”

WHO: Emo kids
WHERE: Reading and Leeds
MOST LIKELY TO SAY: “The flowers I gave you have died, been lost and thrown away. Just like me.”

KIM TAYLOR-BENNETT