One Festival — Hundreds of Scenes

Because I have already dealt in my post „What do you believe?“ with the belief of the black scene I would like to be sunk my thoughts in music and festivals of some scenes.

Cyber-goths? So colorful glowsticks with LED lights, stolen from their room lighting at home, wagging their arms back and forth to a monotonous, electric "tone" and seal the mouth with their fake gas masks? How ridiculous!

Metalheads? So smelly, bearded men and scruffy men-women who spin their hair to neighbors to bawling and guitar strumming and bump into each other? How ridiculous!

Similar statements have once heard everybody determined from one of the two scenes. Unfortunately.

The metal scene has usually nothing to do with the so-called „cyber-goths“. For them this strident forms are to take more ridiculous than serious. And the other way around feels this scene metallers rather than scruffy and somehow disgusting. Of course I can not claim that this is always so, but similar statements I've heard of some people. And as I've noticed the „normal“ Gothics like the two scenes so more or less. On a range of festivals and concerts they are to be found.

Now quite apart from: I think this division of the „scenes“ and this stereotyped thinking „I 'm in the scene“, „you're in this scene“ is somehow totally nonsensical. Everyone is different and everyone wears, listens and does what he wants. Each is individually — except perhaps those who are trying to be like everyone else and aren't able to develop themselves properly. Having a role model is in turn something else. Just the other day I read about it again. Wvery person needs an idol, consciously or unconsciously, he even has one or more. Through behavioral imitations and variations thereof our own character develop, which we do not even want to imitate someone, this happens also completely unconscious. You know certainly the statement that if a man "rub off" on another. This is exactly this mechanism that I have just touched on briefly. But now I'm digressing enough from the topic. About this topic could one (I) actually write a whole separate article, so extensive it is...

Now back to the scenes.

So there are scenes that did not get along with each other and some who are quite neutral attitude towards them. Let us look at them now more closely. In my opinion they all have, even if each scene has a different origin, something in common: they are „different“, fall on and are more or less „gloomy“, also the taste in music extends into every scene far beyond the charts. In any case I don't want to lump all together, I just want to clarify that we have all somehow something in common. Therefore: Why some groups „be at war“ with each other so much?

Let the cyber goths and metalheads yet so run around as they wish. Let them party hard to their music at a concert as it makes fun. Let them wear the accessories that they like. Just let them be what they are.

Well maybe I should say a few words about me. The impulse of this little text was that I have realized that the festival season this year starts again soon or has perhaps already begun. I am since I'm 16 years old every year at least at one festival, and over the years my musical horizon expanded of course. Starting with rock, to Metal, Gothic, then Medieval and Folk, and then Industrial - to name just a few genre. To this day, I listen to songs from various style areas, where one can not so easily defined my taste in music. In addition to music has become my Festival spectrum increased slightly over the years.

1. 2006 — Wacken Open Air in Wacken (SH) — 03.08. - 05.08.2006
2. 2007 — Wacken Open Air in Wacken (SH) — 02.08. - 04.08.2007
3. 2008 — Hexentanz am Bostalsee (SL) — 02.05. - 03.05.2008
4. 2008 — Hörnerfest in Brande-Hörnerkirchen (SH) — 04.07. - 06.07.2008
5. 2008 — Wacken Open Air in Wacken (SH) — 31.07. - 02.08.2008
6. 2008 — Ultima Ratio Festival in Oberhausen (NRW) — 01.11.2008
7. 2009 — Irish Folk Open Air in Poyenberg (SH) — 13.06.2009
8. 2009 — Wacken Open Air in Wacken (SH) — 30.07. - 01.08.2009
9. 2010 — Irish Folk Open Air in Poyenberg (SH) — 12.06.2010
10. 2010 — Hörnerfest in Brande-Hörnerkirchen (SH) — 09.07. - 11.07.2010
11. 2010 — Wacken Open Air in Wacken (SH) — 05.08. - 07.08.2010
12. 2011 — Irish Folk Open Air in Poyenberg (SH) — 04.06.2011
13. 2011 — M'era Luna Festival in Hildesheim (NI) — 13.08. - 14.08.2011
14. 2012 — M'era Luna Festival in Hildesheim (NI) — 11.08. - 12.08.2012 (planned)

Where I've always wanted to go:

• Amphi Festival in Köln (NW)
• Metalcamp in Tolmin (Slowenien)
• Summer Breeze Open Air in Dinkelsbühl (BY)
• Wave-Gotik-Treffen (WGT) in Leipzig (SN)

I love festivals. The atmosphere, the people, the music, everything. I could go every year to several, even to the most diverse. I would be very happy to be again this year at the W: O: A (rather rock, metal), but unfortunately the tickets were sold out very quickly indeed (weeks before Christmas 2011), on the other hand I'm looking forward to the M'era Luna (rather gothic, rock, industrial) in August. Also on the Hörnerfest (rather folk, medieval) I would love to go, which is temporal probably not possible. And as you see, on these festival play bands whose music is later on in different genres.

Now I wonder why the different scenes can not celebrate together peacefully? Why can not someone who dances in discos to electric music normally, do not go on a metal festival, without that he will be looked at silly if he says that he usually also hear a lot of electric? I do not understand anyway. Everybody should go to where he feels comfortable and what he likes, provided that the love for this music is real and not fooled, or is only considered good because it is „cool“ or „in“! Of course, then you should not be a rebel to deliberately provoke and to prove that you're different. You should have fun together peacefully and live your shared passion: music. And if one do not like so fundamentally different kinds of music, why not? What about the look beyond your own nose or the blinkered vision?

And the clothes... should be somehow appropriate after all. Cyberlox are on the Immortal- or Endstille concert (Black Metal) rather misplaced. The other way round a corpse paint on a Blutengel-concert (Electro, Dark Wave) looks also strange. Why? Because it simply does not fit visually, otherwise I can not justify in any way. That would be as if you wear to a festivity at the restaurant jogging clothes — just inappropriate.

But basically, a festival is still there to have a lot of fun with friends and great live music! Therefore: Fuck what else you listen to, the main thing you stay true to yourself and you don't fool anyone. Be open to new ideas and not condemn people just because they listen to something different or look different from you. We are all only human and want to simply live a happy life — why give yourself a hard time?

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Leo N. Tolstoi (1828-1910), russian writer

In the next lines I would like to describe a typical festival-flow a little closer to you, so you can see that festivals have commonalities, always cause the certain feeling and cause the same moments of happiness. Even anger and frustration is similar for every festival. Regardless of what music is played there and what scene resides predominantly there.

The Festival Season 2012 starts soon!

It's summer. Early in the morning.

You pack your work clothes aside, dress up yourself to your favorite band shirt and put on your steel-toed boots in leather with 15 holes and buckles. Or you take the little figure-tere variant (for girls) and put on a black top, over a satin waist corset with a lace skirt, layered mesh and normal tights and convenient heels leather boots 30 hole, with buckles. Accessories such as cuffs and chains give your look the finishing touch. Then you complete everything with eye-catching make-up.

You're looking for your tent, your folding camp chair, your mattress, your sleeping bag, your air bed, your air pump, your water heater with pots and plastic crockery/cutlery, the recently purchased disposable grill, barbecue briquettes, a cooler with grilled meats and baguettes, convenience food (ravioli, pasta, tomato sauce, soups), drinks, two 5-liter canister that you have just filled with tap water, your bag with clothes and hygiene items, your Navi with directions, the running order and finally the festival ticket and put them into your car and fill the last square centimeter with another food, drink and clothes. But then rings your phone. A good friend suddenly has no carpool more and he asks if you still had a place in the car for him. You agree and have to wait a few minutes until he's on your mat. You now repack the car together, so you also can accommodate anywhere his stuff. Finally, you have stowed everything and can finally start driving.

You meet your friends who plan the entire process with you. You have a 3-hour drive ahead of you, so all should be well thought-out so that you forget nothing. Well it turns out that a colleague can't accommodate her bag in her car pool. As you drive alone with one other friend, you have agreed to store her stuff in your car. Now you have no square millimeter place there. You then buy together the last little things at the supermarket next door: a few drinks and some chips. Then you can finally set out for the highways in a column to haunt the streets. After hundreds of kilometers, many nerve due to congestion and a few pee breaks, you are finally a few kilometers before the festival place. But there is again a traffic jam, the festival jam. The entrance is not open and you now have to serve the time approximately one hour in a seemingly endless line of cars. You're upset about it, because as it seems, all preparations have been completed and there is no apparent reason to not open the campsite yet. But it's no use. After you had a few nice conversations with your neighbor, it 's finally progressing at a snail's pace. On a paddock./p>

You will be signaled to drive on the camping and parking ground and you're are glad to have finally arrived. You build up your tents in your little camp and ask your neighbors if they have still a couple of pegs left for your tent because on last festival the other visitors have stumbled on the tent cords and ripped out almost all the pegs. Recovery is then rather pointless in the long grass. But kindly you can borrow some from the neighbors. But now the sky is covered slowly. You can see in the distance, that a powerful shower will pass soon. Fortunately, one of your friends has a pavilion. After all the tents are build up, you have quickly begun to build the pavilion, so that you remain in the dry more or less. The first drops came down already, as you in a foursome pulled the tarp over the bars. Quick you fixed it. Then came even the expected rain. So, as you bridge the rains? You have not many choices, so you grab some chips and drinks with which you clink glasses once. After a felt eternity the downpour is over, so you can finally get the remaining things from the car.

You turn on your grill and frizzle a little steak with herb butter baguettes for all of you — or else you can grill. The official stands open not before tomorrow, so you have to make yourself something to eat. Because you have grilled too much food, you invite your neighbors to eat as a thank for the borrowed tent pegs. After dinner, you explore with your friends the area and the other neighborhood. You will be warmly welcomed and invited every time to sit down and to celebrate with them. You clink glasses with a little brandy and simply have fun. The people, the atmosphere, everything is totally awesome and beautiful.

Gradually you lose your good manners, celebrate further with your friends a few more or less hours of boozy jollity. Even for a drinking game you're ready, in which you actually don't believe. But hey, you're on a festival, you might as well just make an exception. Finally, you will experience something like this not every day, so you are thinking that you'll regret it later if you have not done all what was possible. But you are good and even win the game.

Now you take cover before the next rain starts again. Gradually the moistness transforms the entire camping grounds to a small slime pit. Perfect for a slime battle, some think, and jumping joyfully in the mud. Luckily you wear your firm boots, with which you can not sink so easily. With a slalom you handle the small mud pits. The weather is really annoying but not annoying enough to ruin you and your friends the festival. You make the best of it and still have your fun. Rain or Shine! Fortunately, it rained only these two times, as you state in the evening. Where has the time just gone? Now it's late at night and it's getting quiet on the site. So you also decide to go to your tent to sleep.

At seven o'clock in the morning you get up and fled right out your tent. The sun has turned it into a sauna and it is impossible to reside there longer. After you went very late to bed in your tent this morning, the camp neighbors had still turned up their music system til dawn and the generator, which is almost next to your tent with whirring noises to illuminate a part of the campsite, directly beamed at your tent, the sun robs even the last sleep. Where you bothered rather less the music, cause you prevent and slumbered with ear plugs at night.

You're on the way to the morning toilet and have to take a five-minute walk to get to the next mobile toilets, in the hope that they have been freshly cleaned, as it would be otherwise unacceptable to enter one. But you're lucky and your prayers have been answered. Even toilet paper is still present, what the entire rest of the day is never really the case. Of course, you also bring your own paper.

You return back to your little camp where your friends have prepared breakfast: there are bag bread rolls with chocolate or instant food, e.g. noodles. You decide to eat the chocolate croissants, instant meals in the morning is not your scene. In one hour, you may at last go on the festival site and actually the first bands, even your favorite band, start playing their concerts. You look forward to that and can't wait until. But time passes quickly. You decide to go ahead and wait at the gates to the opening. After you finally allowed to enter the festival site, you run and squeezes with a thousand other fans through the narrow passage where everyone is checked and scanned. Spikes will taken way from you, but because of the experience of recent years you have left your studded belt and spike collars in your tent. In front of the stage many other visitors have gathered, so you unfortunately have to stand further back. But the first sounds of the band displace the small trouble. All celebrate together and party hard to the music.

The people entrain you in the circle pit, which always goes traditionally around the mixer at this band, and run with them in a circle. Suddenly, you trip and fall on the dry earth. But after just one second on the floor you will immediately came up from the fans behind you. You you do not even want to imagine what could happen if they did not. When it was all over, can get a place which is closer to the stage. Only now you realize how strong the sun is burning you in the neck. You forgot to apply sunscreen, like almost every time. But what can you do. You stay there and enjoy the end.

You'll still surprised a few times during the concert by crowd surfers who somehow show up every time from nowhere. Only when she/he is half on you, you try to carry her/him to the front. So, one is still okay, even two or three. But if you must be on guard continually, that no surfer falls on your head or you get any boots in your face, then that's kind of annoying. But eventually you come to terms until the concert is now slowly approaching the end.

You want to bridge the gap to the next good concert by watching some shows. The offer is very large. From dance groups to strip shows and fashion shows to the freak show and jousting tournaments. Because you can not really decide you want to watch all anyway. To you it is not so important to see the full program, but rather want to collect as many different impressions as possible. Therefore, you take a look first a Riverdance performance, followed by a small alternative fashion show. Medieval exhibition matches and the horror circus you attend at a later date. Finally you don't want to miss the beginning of the concert, that you are waiting for.

After the shows You get hungry again. The fast-food offer is on the festival really very comprehensive. The selection is so large that you you're not immediately sure what you just appetite. In the front there are hamburgers and fries, later you have spotted an Asian state, and you can remember that you have seen a baguette and next to a kebab stand at the entrance. Vegetarian food can be bought at the other end of the "food court". Buy you decide to eat at an overpriced pizza stand - and it tastes very good. But at the sight of the prices you get abdominal pain again and again. For the money you get double the amount usually - but hey, it's a festival and indeed these people have somehow get in their reasonable expenses.

Now you're going shopping in Gothic-, Metal and Medieval market, where you get upset something about the high prices. But the clothes and accessories simply look so good that you need to treat yourself to something small. Here you really get everything a "black heart" desires: fancy dresses, shirts, skirts, coats, capes, special accessories like warmers, hair accessoires or synthetic hair dreads, shoes, normal stable boots made of leather, flashy boots, e.g. with buckles, in leather or of patent leather, high platform boots, platform pumps, high heels etc., silver jewelry, such as rings, chains, pendants or earrings, collars with or without studs, piercings, bags, belts with or without rivets, tape patches and much, much more.

You met on the way back to the tent new, nice people waiting just like you on the same concert highlight. You feel really well with the strikingly dressed people.

Finally you can struggling forward to the stage in the second row two hours before the concert starts. Now it is time to wait. Before that a different band plays their songs that you actually don't like to listen. It's okay. But to stand by your favorite band as far forward as possible, you accept it gladly. Slowly your feet hurt already and you would like to have a drink, but then you would indeed lose your good standing room. So you hold out. Time passes still quite fast and it will gradually close around you. The long-awaited concert of your favorite band starts now. They all start frantically run around and crush you almost, stepping on their feet each other, and yours, too. But you've fortunately got your boots on, so nothing can happen to your feet. In addition to the absolutely awesome music and great atmosphere offers you the weather a beautiful sight. By the time the sun moves around the ground and disappears gradually, so that the sky is colored reddish at sunset.

You experience this time as in another, an unreal world. The daily routine is fully pushed into the background and it counts only the here and now. You have fun with lovely people, get to know new like-minded people and really experiencing good concerts. For days you are surrounded by lovely fans who want to do every possible (lovely) nonsense with you. You just celebrating. You celebrate you and your band.

You're leaving the terrain after the countless concerts and set out for your camp, where the party continues. Completely exhausted, you go quite early in your tent to sleep. The next morning the departure follows. You pack up all your stuff and then you can leave around noon the paddock. That's it now. The festival...

Anyone who has found yourself in these lines? You're welcome to post a comment! I would be happy!

Maybe you see, my dear readers, just all the negative aspects of a festival, but I suggest you to have at least experienced one small or big open air festival in your life! It is absolutely worth the experience, and if you go there with a few nice people, then that will be a few super great days! And that even in bad weather.

Sources of some images

marked with * in the title

1. meraluna.de
2. facebook.com/meralunafestival
3. fkpscorpio.com

Special thanks to the M'era Luna Festival Team (especially Matthias), Alex Tra., Christian R. and Mareike K. for the permission to use your images here.

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• The Blood Countess
• ... like in Silent Hill
• Impressions of the Amphi Festival 2015
• Do good and listen to music