So, around about the same time I committed a whole load of money to getting to a festival in Barcelona, a volcano under Vatnjokull in Iceland decided to explode and send a whole lot of ash into the atmosphere to be carried at the whim of the prevailing north-westerly's. These kind of events are usually a source of some amusement to me, as those who find themselves at the mercy of scaremongerers fret about and really come into their own. As you may have deduced from earlier posts, I'm quite fascinated by how the planet evolves, and multiple visits to Iceland will bear witness to this. All-in-all, then, another volcano, another tabloid-fuelled meltdown of modern society, another happy Mark.
But this time it was my flight at risk. This time a whole raft of planes had been grounded the day before I was due to take off. This time no two sources reported the same thing. This time I spent a whole day refreshing rolling news feeds. Who was I to believe?
Well. This time - I'm almost ashamed to admit it given the sour taste left in my mouth from 'excess baggage nightmares' in the past - this time I believed Ryanair. I was on the side of Ryanair, the no-such-thing-as-ash-the-met-office-are-liars-tin-can-veal-cart-flying beauties.
I spent the night before my flight in a bowling alley in Bristol (Rock n Bowl Motel, highly recommend it) and my flight went off without a hitch. Of course, there was the matter of where to stay in Barcelona. Fortunately, Kezz is a seasoned traveller and, by the power of couchsurf.com, unearthed the 'No Worries' Villa, a hilltop guesthouse in Montcada i Reixac on the outskirts of Barcelona. Quite how somewhere so amazing permits people to stay for free is beyond me, but I wasn't complaining at our reduced rates of board as I lay by the pool looking out over the sun-drenched valley below. Standing in the floods of Avalon for six days solid is one thing...
I last went to Primavera five years ago. That was the first edition to be held at Parc del Forum - a purpose-built concrete outdoor events venue. In 2011 the size of the parc had grown considerably, as had the number of festival attendees. Eight stages compared to three. Queues were beyond rife on the first night as guests waited to exchange tickets for wristbands, collect drink credit cards, load cash onto their drink credit cards and actually spend their credit on drinks. All this would, I assume, have been great, if only the optical card readers in the bars (a collection of ipads) were able to hook up to the festival WiFi and complete transactions. Never before have I been to a music festival with no beer. It is not a pretty sight.
Thankfully the proliferation of people and the, erm, unproliferation of refreshments was countered by the, frankly, incredible line-up; a festival with stages curated by ATP and Pitchfork has to be okay really, hey.
Here's some that I saw: Grinderman, Flaming Lips, Low, The National, Pulp, PJ Harvey, Caribou, The Album Leaf, DJ Shadow, Animal Collective
And some that I didn't: Sufjan Stevens, Warpaint, M Ward, Suicide, Battles, Smoke Fairies, Fleet Foxes, Of Montreal
A few highlights...Nick Cave demanding gimme your money from the crowd, flanked by two-storey high bottles of San Miguel, on the night everyones cash had been absorbed by the not-working San Miguel bar credit cards...the bemused look on virtually everyones face as Animal Collective headlined the main stage...a crowd comprised entirely of Europeans singing along to PJ Harvey goddamn Europeans take me back to beautiful England...
By the time the festival was done and dusted the whole volcano palaver was but a distant memory, and I made it to Wembley with time to spare to see Reading not get to the Premier League.
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