My feeds have just about recovered from the bukkake of Mighty Hoopla content—which I had Sunday tickets for, but ended up watching from my sofa while rabid Arsenal fans descended upon my quiet North London neighbourhood to fuck shit up.
This makes me so sad.
Mostly because I too had plans of drinking, womanising and being a menace all over London this weekend (more glitter and gays, less lads-lads-lads-lads).
When I was in my 20s and living in LA, I went to Coachella three times.
In 2008, 2009 and 2010, smartphones hadn’t gone mainstream yet.
Digital cameras were having a moment. It was pretty standard to wake up on Sunday with a nuclear hangover and tags in a 594-photo essay covering one night of shenanigans.
But in those pre-livestreaming days, we were free to go fully feral without dousing our dumpster fire decisions with real-time visibility so total strangers could shit on us in stride.
We didn’t go to concerts for the content back then—just pure, tits-out-pants-down, unhinged joy.
We were present.
Right, that’s the max level of Boomer cantankerousness I’ll expend regarding Coachella’s mutation into the mass-market branding exercise it’s known as today. Even Woodstock had a villain arc.
But I digress. Pull up a chair, whippersnappers, and let me tell you about the good old days. I even made a playlist to nostalgiamaxx to:
These are my favourite things about going to festivals:
Spotify DJ has nailed serving more of the music I’ve loved for decades. But music festivals are where I discover things that I didn’t even know I needed.
Have you ever felt seen by a song you were hearing for the very first time? It’s beautiful.
Imagine that moment happening at a live show (give or take a few other factors at play to… enhance the experience 🤪).
F U C K.
It’s the best.
The day I discovered Dan Deacon, he got the entire audience to form a human whirlpool that swirled out from the centre of his dance floor until it filled the 320-foot Sahara Tent.
I honestly believed I would never experience anything like that ever again in my life…
Until he came to Hong Kong to play Clockenflap in 2014 and I got to do it again!
I used to think Emily Haines was the saddest girl in the world (super thanks, Broken Social Scene) until I saw Metric’s 2008 Coachella set and realised she is actually the baddest bitch on the planet. And I have never stopped loving that band.
Fun fact: One of the jokes I’ve been telling for almost all the eight years I’ve been performing comedy borrows lyrics from “Dead Disco.”
Speaking of bad bitches, Atarashii Gakko’s performance at Clockenflap in 2003 turned out to be waaaay more memorable than the multi-course meal they served at my fancy hen do brunch the next day.
Festivals give us permission to be a dialled up version of ourselves, in the best — but also the fucking worst — possible ways.
They’re where people get the most dressed up… and the most messed up.
I think both are good.
Sometimes in life, we feel things so deeply that they’re too intense to express in words. So we slather on some body glitter, bedazzle our foreheads with rhinestones (fortified with eyelash glue, in case any of you were wondering), and boogie to Crystal Castles in the drug tent.
ORRRRRR…
We neck a 750ml bottle of 7-11 whiskey (smuggles on site in one of our Wellies) at 3:00pm, pass out crying in the middle of alt-J’s set, and pick a fight on the train ride home by shouting “I don’t like dumb bitches” in the face of the dumb bitch who gave you the stink eye.
Festivals are some of the only places in the world where I’ve never been pressured to conform and not just encouraged, but actually celebrated, for living out loud.
No one feels small if nothing’s “too much” (except maybe that 7-1l whiskey).
Your weirdest, most unhinged self isn’t just tolerated at festivals.
It’s rewarded.
This is my favourite part.
Thousands of strangers show up because they care about the same thing.
Music. Comedy. Art. Connection. Getting a hug from David Hasselhoff while queueing for the Port-a-Potties (true story).
Whatever it is, everyone’s connected by unanimous and unspoken agreement to suspend ordinary life for a little while.
People interact with each other.
Compliment each other’s outfits (see: top-right pic in #2, where I ran into this dude who was also wearing pretty much nothing except the exact same American Apparel booty shorts).
Share sunscreen. I’ve actually seen people share a bottle of sunscreen to drink out of because they smuggled whiskey in it (hope it ended better than when I did it).
Offer disco biscuits “snacks.”
Help reunite lost friends.
RANDOM PERSON: “Dude, are you okay?? Need some help?”
ME: “I lost my friends. I can’t remember how to get back to our meeting point, just that it looks like a giant, glow-in-the-dark butt plug.”
RANDOM PERSON: “Yes! I know exactly where that is, haha.”
It’s like somebody accidentally left humanity switched on.
A song sounds different when 30,000 people are singing it along with you. A joke lands differently when an entire room explodes with laughter. The experience becomes bigger than the thing itself.
You could be braying the lyrics to “Fuck the Pain Away” in unison with all the other indie sleaze/electro pop girlies in the crowd, terrifying all the men (but what else is in the teaches of Peaches) except Ron Jeremy because, yes — that is 100% on brand for a Peaches gig.
Or maybe your ride-or-die invites your entire gang of 12 party goblins for afters at her Mandarin Oriental suite, walking-distance from the festival grounds. As it turned out, the 5-star bender we spent annihilating our brain cells gave her much fonder memories than the situationship she booked that hotel with (see: left photo, #3).
In these delightful moments, you’re not just enjoying something. You’re enjoying it together.
And that’s what makes it unforgettable.
Which brings me to the thing I’ve been quietly losing my mind about all year.
Because at their core, festivals aren’t really about music. They’re about gathering.
About temporarily abandoning the idea that life should happen through a screen.
About finding your people, discovering something unexpected, and coming home with stories (not just the ones you posted on Instagram).
Which is exactly why I’m so excited that Bitches in Stitches is heading to Edinburgh Fringe this summer!
Not just because Fringe is prestigious. Not only because it’s a career milestone. But because it’s a chance to gather with people I love and make something ridiculous together.
The Fringe is basically a music festival for weird theatre kids, comedians, artists, dreamers and people who looked at stable career paths and said, “No thank you.”
For an entire month, an whole city becomes this giant experiment in collective creativity. Not even kidding. Last year, there were 4,000 shows in the comedy category alone. Thousands of strangers turn up hoping to laugh, connect, discover something brilliant and maybe, accidentally, change their lives.
Honestly? That’s my kind of festival.
A field, a room, a crowd or a city full of people chasing the same feeling.
And leaving with a little more joy than they arrived with.
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