“Well Reading line up is crap for this year, roll on Glastonbury 2013”, that was a tweet I read from someone who shall remain nameless. I was absolutely in shock, and slightly angry, when I read that. This was for two reasons; 1) Reading 2012 has a bloody excellent line up, which in my humble opinion is worth the ticket price for just the three headline acts alone. And 2) this infers that the person in question is not even going to consider going to another music festival now ’til next year. This is what has really gotten at me. There are so many music festivals out there, especially in Britian these days that you couldn’t visit them all even if you tried. From the colossus that are Reading/Leeds, Glastonbury or T in the park to the smaller unknowns such as Loopallu, Indietracks or Two Thousand Trees there are hundreds of them. Surely someone who would like the Reading line up could find some interest at lets say Rockness or Download?

This isn’t a rant to say how dare someone not agree with me because I like the Reading line up and they don’t. Of course you have the right to not like the Cure (god only knows why though because they ROCK!) and you can say that there is nothing else you want to go to. My question is has this  person even looked? Have they ventured beyond what they already know and and thought perhaps I might see what’s on at Hop Farm this year? It seems to me that if all they want to know about now is the next Glastonbury then probably not, and I think that’s quite sad.

I feel that this is probably quite a usual response from Mr. Joe Public to not even realise the existence of the smaller festivals because their line up was not announced on Radio 1. Perhaps we should lobby the radio stations to announce ALL festival line ups throughout the country. In fact YES, the more I think about that the more it makes sense. If the radio had a responsibility to announce the acts playing at all of the UK festivals then the smaller festivals would be heard, the name would be out there and people could make a decision on what festivals to go to actually knowing what festivals are there to go to. Now you might say that the charm of the smaller festival is that no one knows about them and that they are best left under the radar where only these that go looking will find them, leaving audiences that appreciate the music and provide the right atmosphere and yes I get that. However people won’t go to a festival because it’s name has been read out on the radio. I once sent a message into the radio which got read out on air, no one wanted to talk to me afterwards! But seriously people will know that a band that they like are playing and THAT is what will attract them. Generally most festivals will have a sort of musical vein which they travel down, collecting different artists from the same genre (I doubt Lady Ga Ga will ever be playing at Bloodstock). This means that the smaller festivals which can only afford one semi-well-known headline act will attract the attention of those interested people and they in turn will discover similar unknown artists, helping to improve the music industry as a whole by giving more exposure to the underground and unknown but within the genres of the festivals.

I think that this is a great idea and I hope it makes sense, in short ALL festival line ups should be announced on the BBC so that people have the chance to decide from the full list of festivals where they want to go. This will in turn help those starting out by showing casing more unknown artists to a wider audience that will attend the smaller festivals as a result. Or is this wasting too much of Fearne Cotton’s valuable time when she could be telling us all about her terrible shopping ordeal?