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It’s easy to criticise giants, and T in the Park is definitely a giant - the first batch of 40,000 ‘early-bird’ tickets in 2008 selling out in just over an hour; definitely not, as one of my previous English employers described it: “some crappy hut in a field to keep the Scots happy.”
It seems like a year doesn’t go by where there are choruses heard of “the lineup for T’s Shiite this year” – Usually from people who haven’t managed to get any of the sought-after tickets, and who use the lineup as an excuse to avoid paying the inflated tout prices after the fact.
The truth is that T in the Park gets a bit of a bum rap for their headline acts. It’s not difficult to see why, when the majority of this year’s main-stage Acts – the Killers, Snow Patrol and Kings of Leon have all filled major slots on the very same stage in previous years. It’s an easy target, and one which is repeated so frequently that it’s worth giving a bit of a defence to. Those that complain about the larger acts consider themselves to be ‘good’ music fans – enough to reject the mainstream, yet who lack the insight or knowledge to see the other side of what T has to offer on its smaller stages, or during the day. There’s plenty for an Artrocker to see at the fest, provided that they’re willing to get up a bit earlier or seek it out a bit harder.
Dumfries boy Calvin Harris was one of the first on the Saturday mainstage, as the sunshine began to burst out from behind the clouds that had been looming overhead. I’ve seen a lot of Calvin around festivals and gigs, and sadly it wasn’t all that interesting. Maybe it was the lack of lights, or the lack of drive that was there in the early performances – at the cusp of success that came with ‘Acceptable in the eighties’, but the crowd ended up being far more interesting to look at than what was on stage.
Does Lady Gaga count as an artrocker? Either way, I have an unashamed liking for the New York oddity. It might just be ‘pop rubbish’, but at least it’s interesting pop rubbish. I hope she sticks around for a while. There was a definite irony in opening with paparazzi, with the scrum of photographers that was in the photo-pit. Done on purpose perhaps?
Last night ranks as my second worst festival camping experience ever. Admittedly, it wasn’t because of the T campsite, but more to do with an assortment of circumstances that culminated in me sharing my friend’s ‘tent’, which turned out to be a kid’s pink tipi. In my day they were called wendy houses. The rain came down in torrents, and I woke up in a pool of water, along with all my remaining clothes for the weekend. Brilliant.
The rain cleared up in the end, and the sun returned to the final day. Aside from going to see Lily Allen, which because, let’s face it.. You would, there was plenty on that I actually wanted to go see, and not just for the sake of watching. Big festivals always seem to distract you to the bigger names that you would never pay to see for yourself, but that you may as well check out out of curiousity.
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