Everything You Wish You Knew Before Your First Music Festival

Going to your first music festival feels like losing your virginity. You spend two hours prepping for what you label as the climax of your life, run from one stage to another hunting for the music hero that will hit the spot, and you have no clue about the wheres, whys, and whats of your situation.

All of that just to wrap it up with the “so that was it?” upshot. 

Music festivals speak a unique language where words of wisdom keep you alive and the lack of a game plan transforms your party animal spirit into a decomposing corpse. But who needs guidance when those music temples are all about reckless abandon, right?

Wrong. Not knowing a thing or two about ecstasy comedowns and trek-planning will shift your festival express’s rails to wreckland. 

With that in mind, here is a handbook scattered with spiritual advice every veteran wished they knew as a festival virgin. 

Music festivals come with a shocking price tag

You’ve booked a music festival ticket as a budget-friendly plan B after you found out how much a water bottle costs in Amnesia? You might as well go for clown face paint because that’s how this foolish mistake makes you look. 

Instead of daydreaming about moshing in front of the headliners that sucked your bank account bone dry, think about which savings account will save your ass from dehydration, hunger, and misery.

It doesn’t matter how many homemade peanut butter sandwiches you pack or how many beer cans fit in your backpack.

By the end of the beat-fueled utopia, your bank account will sob as if it went through a sappy movie marathon – and frankly, you will too. 

Lodging will cost you a few hundred, on-site burgers won’t be any gentler, and drink prices will be salesmen between you and the consumerism gods.

If you look at each expense, costs are not that blood-curdling – but when they add up, you will wish you were at Amnesia, splurging tenners on H2O bottles. 

Good financial planning and budgetary control might be part of the picture, but don’t take them as a safe bet. A few G&Ts during Diplo’s set will fill you with so much euphoria that you will either forget what budget-friendly is or simply won’t care. 

There is no bigger vibe killer than the VIP area

Every music festival gang has that one member who will bring in the “shall we pay double for VIP?” dilemma. The short, unforgivingly nit-picking answer is no. The long answer takes you through a speech about how the live-saving amenities rob you of the bona fide festival experience. 

Unless your VIP pass is a one-way ticket to shaking hands with your beloved music hero, it is not worth the price tag. 

Away from the dusty, hot-boxed, and barbaric land of the general passes, VIP’s cushioned claw catches the ones willing to pay extra for privileged treatment.

As a fellow festival-goer gasping for air while trying to reach Peggy Gou’s first row, you might throw some green-eyed glances at the aristocracy who never took an elbow in the face.

Fancy toilets and defeating bar queues in under ten minutes sounds like the type of music heaven you want to set foot in. But living the high life in the VIP section is far from the festival experience you need. 

Nobody wants to feel like an outsider – but if your guilty pleasures sit on the darker side of things, buy the VIP pass. You won’t surf the packed crowd, put on a Mortal Kombat show for a better stage view, or have to say a prayer before entering the portaloo.

Don’t roll for three days in a row

Any music festival is plagued – or upgraded, depending on how you want to see it – by the presence of illicit substances. Drugs are so present in these circumstances that if they would stank as much as weed did, breathing fresh air on festival grounds would be mission impossible.

It doesn’t matter if they are in your pocket, your mate’s stomach, or making Oliver think tree leaves are piranhas. Drugs will be everywhere, and most of your two-legged surroundings will devour them eight hours per day.

Since a survey revealed that 73.4% of festival-goers are recreational drug users, we can only advise you to avoid biting off more than you can chew.

Illegal substances are entrepreneurs. They give you a euphoric high and the power to dance for 30 hours, but it needs to be a mutual trade-off. The outstanding balance you take upon yourself will transform your brain into a foggy room with no serotonin. 

Molly is the obvious festival poison of choice, but that doesn’t mean you need to take four pills per night for three nights in a row. By the end of the festival, you will be a pupil-dilated creature, lacking happy hormones and a good night’s sleep.  

Not to mention the two-week-long comedown will make you want to scrape your skin off while begging the festival gods to save you from the drug-induced misery hole. Always test your stuff, have some vitamins packed, and be as careful with your dosage as a dealer is with his baggies.

Show some responsibility, for Christ’s sake, you are an adult. 

Being out of shape is a silent killer

Music festivals are amorphous dreamlands. Besides the endless dancing, you will trek from one stage to another, go find the missing friend who is tripping balls and survive the mighty queues.

If you are post your GCSEs era, your cervical spine, hamstrings, and toes will probably sob at this backbreaking journey. 

Don’t be that friend who whines about his feet pain every half an hour. Festivals are a marathon, not a sprint – so prepare yourself beforehand. No need to be one of those guys who wake up uber early to be sweat-covered in the middle of the park by 7 AM. 

Getting off the couch and walking daily steps a week before the festival should be enough of a bootcamp to survive the physical test.

Tear up the itinerary

For most festival virgins, there is no difference between attending a multi-day music event and going on a Paris city break. Some make schedules, a few force their friends to respect a strict itinerary, and others worry about how lunchtime will overlap with their favorite band. 

All of them are a big, fat example of “this is not the way to festival-ing.” As a ticket holder, you didn’t pay to stuff as many bands as possible in one day.

You’ve paid the price for an ineffable music experience beyond the singers, stage effects, and hideous merch. Music festivals are about the rapturous feeling you share with the crowd when the beat drops.

They are about the foot stomping you give zero fucks about because Nina Kraviz just dropped the unreleased track you didn’t even dream about witnessing live.

Suck it up, ride the wave, and watch the three music heroes you actually want to see. These will be the only ones you will remember ten years from now anyway.