Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Hav­ing atten­ded the local (and very large/commercial) sum­mer music fest­ival, in the shape of V Fest­ival, a couple of times I’m always on the look-out each year for the impend­ing line-up announcements.

Tick­ets for this year’s fest­ival go on gen­eral sale on Fri­day, but already rumours are cir­cu­lat­ing online about sup­posedly con­firmed acts. If said rumours are to be believed, it seems that the fest­ival may be back “on form” this year. How­ever, it appears ticket prices have sky-rocketed yet again.

Accord­ing to my source, punters will be asked to stump up a whop­ping £58.50 for a day ticket — a £19 increase from day ticket prices only 4 years ago (and thats before adding on a fiver in book­ing fees). Surely, thats not on, is it?!

I mean, lets face it — “reg­u­lar” gigs are about 20 quid a go (for a pretty suc­cess­ful signed band). You get a roof over your head, a fully flush­ing toi­let and wash basin facil­it­ies along­side the chance to see at least 3 bands in relatively-close proximity.

For over three times the price, you get a muddy field, pissy weather/heat stroke and toi­let­ing facil­it­ies that should be con­test­able in a court of Human Rights. Admit­tedly, there are more acts on offer, but you can only be in one place at any one time, so the aver­age festival-goer only gets to see about 6 acts a day, tops. Nine times out of the pro­ver­bial ten, you end up miles away from the stage and have to resort to watch­ing the screens (and this is dif­fer­ent to watch­ing TV, how?) All this is before you have to stom­ach pay­ing a fiver for a 38p can of Coke at the end of the night because all but one vendor is out of stock and is there­fore tak­ing the right royal piss. Just because they can.

It’s a shame as I was really con­tem­plat­ing going again this year… But, if it’s going to cost over a ton before pet­rol and food — and that’s just for one day for K and I to go, then unless David Bowie, Prince, The Cure, Placebo and Mar­ilyn Man­son turn up and Marc Bolan resur­rects him­self from his grave and reforms T-Rex just for me, its simply not worth it.

Talk­ing of Placebo, they’re return­ing in the next week or so with a new single, album and sub­sequent sold out UK tour.

In a pre­dict­able fash­ion, I have switched to Fan-Girl-mode and have been frantic­ally record­ing pro­mo­tional TV appear­ances. I am also eagerly await­ing the arrival of my gig tick­ets. Hav­ing not seen them since 5^th Novem­ber 2004 at Wemb­ley Arena, their new tour is long over­due for this obsessive.

Keep an eye-out for the new album, I have every faith that its going to be amazing…

Cue shame­less plug:

EDIT: I’ve just listened to clips from the album — they f*cking rock!! Listen to them HERE.