WFD

Going again after going last year. We were going to try Oya in Oslo instead, but opted for WOW when Blur were announced (only for Oya to subsequently announce them this week), though to be honest we didn't need much encouragement to go back to WOW, we enjoyed it a lot last year.

Rock En Seine announcing at noon on 24 January so bound to be some pointers from that.

Pleased with that, we booked early bird tickets when only Arctic Monkeys had been announced and its filling out nicely for us. Could do with a bit more added lower down but plenty to go at in the top end.

The other leg in the Scandinavian weekend, Way Out West, is also fairly slow with announcements so far, but have two big headliners already in Blur and Hakan Hellstrom (who is massive in the context of Way Out West) to drive pre-Christmas sales. The undercard so far is almost directly crossed over with Oya and Flow (Amyl, Polachek, TV Girl), apart from they have The Blessed Madonna too. Wouldn't be a big surprise to see Blur added to Oya and/or Flow.

Not quite an arena but Sigur Ros had similar prices the other week, £20 for a t-shirt. And on the queues, I was buying a t-shirt for my daughter and said I'd queue for it while she queued at the bar but the queue was too long (and slow moving) so said I'd go back when I inevitably went out mid gig to go to the toilet, did so and even then there was a short queue at the merch (and they were running out of sizes too).

When we went before Covid (2019) they were still announcing acts the week before the fest.

Plainsong was the biggest miss for me but other than that, incredible set. It was only when I was getting our tickets out in the queue that I realised it was "only" £50 - that probably seemed expensive a year ago when they went on sale but is now way lower than what seems to be the going rate for arena standing - and as you say, take into account a 2 hours 45 minutes set time and it was incredible value.

Ha! That explains it.

WTF is going on with the ordering of those dates?

Plus BMTH and Halsey emptied out long before 10 minutes from the end. The Halsey front section was only half full by halfway through her set and they wouldn't let people in to fil the gaps.

We did all five days this year and didn't have much to complain about - would have been nice to have the shuttle buses pick up closer to the exit but could see why they put them where they did. The communications were very last minute but once you were there it was fine - wristband pick-up was a doddle, never waited long for a drink and the toilets were fine. The food queues were horrendous at peak times but we quickly learned to work around that. We'd go again next year if it was in the same location, but opted for Bilbao firstly for it being a new festival for us, and secondly to see how Mad Cool's location pans out.

Most of the big festivals are quiet, could boil down to a few big acts holding up announcements. Feels like there will be a rush in the next couple of weeks, before the pre-Christmas payday.

Best atmosphere I've experienced at Barrowlands since LCD Soundsystem a few years ago, very impressed.

Got tickets in the general sale (some initial hitches but got through after a few minutes), so awaiting further announcements with interest!

(oh and the one thing I did miss from last year was the Friday/Saturday quiz on the literature stage - I won some prizes there last year and was hoping for another go at it - I know there's the quite-competitive one on the Sunday but this one was quite relaxed and a nice way to spend a quiet hour in the afternoon. I presume it was a victim of the Literature / Talking Heads merger?)

Second-timer here, after going last year. Last time I threw myself into everything - late Tipi sets, morning literature sessions, a movie, watching (not participating in) karaoke - not knowing if and when we'd come back. So this year I didn't feel the need to rinse every last drop out of it and it was still great. Also I'd had a packed schedule on the Friday and was feeling it by the end of the day so reduced the pace a bit on Saturday and Sunday and was more selective, and made it to Sunday night in decent shape. The only bad/ugly parts were the toilets, particularly on the Thursday - a festival shouldn't have overflowing toilets before a band has even set foot on main stage. It's the sort of thing that can put the more casual attendees off, when there is so much choice out there. Good music all weekend, I was a little disappointed by a couple of undercard acts, not going to name them as they were still ok in their own right, just not quite what I expected. Liked the Boat stage as an idea, needs some improvements if they want to continue to be able to accommodate popular acts on it. There was certainly a bit of a sense of occasion around the Jockstrap and Fat Dog sets on there, which might have been diluted if they'd been on bigger stages. Good food all weekend and I didn't use the bars as much this time but everything I did get was decent. I thought the Bright Eyes set was incredible for how he kept it together, it must be a form of autopilot - as one of the reviews said he barely dropped a line in what aren't exactly sparse lyrics, and then struggled to get to the end of a sentence when chatting between songs. We went to the signing and he was great with my daughter (who is now on her way to Glasgow to see him at Barrowlands tonight, after getting a pair on Twickets on the way home yesterday). All round a great festival and my daughter (who didn't come last year) had a great time, particularly on the Friday when she was happy to explore the site at her own pace while I tried to keep up with my stage-to-stage schedule, she said she'd had an amazing day discovering the place and stumbling across things. We stayed in Salisbury on the Sunday night, and left after Bright Eyes, straight into the downpour on the way to the car, then into the thunder and lightning going off all round, so it was a bit of a dramatic exit. Then the M6 was closed yesterday afternoon so we had to do a super-detour to avoid it. It is a hell of a trek for us, so it's not something we'll do every year - next year we're probably ruled out by holiday plans anyway, so we'll maybe be back in 2024 (though would like to do Green Man at some point as a comparison).

To be fair in the original Reddit post it is described as "much more of a wish list than a prediction", it is only other people who are calling it realistic or suggesting small tweaks. It does look like one of those posters where someone sets out to prove R&L could book a whole weekend of guitar acts with no rap/dance/pop (I know this one hasn't literally gone that far, but it's close).

I know it will change again by the time I finish typing this sentence but BBC currently showing it being dry til 9am Sunday.

Like at a right angle to MSE (but obviously a long way from it) rather than facing back towards it like it did last year. This year's positioning meant it faced towards the slope rather than across it, if that makes sense.

Yeah they wouldn't be able to do them at right angles at Leeds, at least not where "real" Main currently is, because of the hill (have to say though, it was the right idea to rotate "pretend Main" this year).

Yeah there was a big gap, I left BMTH without rushing, went to the street feast area, ordered and sat and ate food, came back out expecting AM to be well underway and it was still a while after that before they started (and even then it was some intro music that seemed to go on for a few minutes). To mention them again Mad Cool (with a different stage layout) do not piss about, as soon as one main stage finishes the other starts, headliner or not.

Muse only played 90 minutes at Mad Cool, Metallica 2 hours. R&L would find a way to accommodate most of those bands (especially when you see MTS only playing for an hour this year). Foo Fighters played 2.5 hours at R&L last time, which yeah would be a stretch to accommodate with another headliner, but R&L would find some way to spin it.

Evidently doing similar in Lisbon, using the NOS Alive site in the week after.

That will never happen, it's part of the attraction for most people, and removing camping would price out most of the crowd. Plus at Leeds at least the infrastructure isn't there to move that many people in and out of the current site every day, they can barely cope as it is.

It was similar when T in the Park started to unravel, they were having issues on multiple fronts but their social media was living on a different planet, and it just meant when things got more serious people didn't trust them to do anything about it. Mentioned it in the lost thread, but them tweeting the fire emoji on Sunday night, a couple of hours into the stream of reports abut tent fires, then following it up with "remember to take your tent home", then deleting that and tweeting "be safe and take your tent home" after people had replied to the first one with pictures of burnt out tents, was a poor run of PR.