Survival Punk Rock Festival

10. Have Fun and Go Crazy

            Now you are ready and prepared to have an awesome experience at your festival. Festivals are way better than regular concert because you get so much more than what you paid. More show for your money. This is because festivals are longer, with more bands and more fun. This is kind of like the six flags motto “More flags more fun”. Who cares if you’re half deaf for awhile if you know you had a blast at your festival.

            Be crazy and spontaneous during your festival. Give crowd surfing a try, trust me it’s not bad if you follow my advice from my crowd surfing blog. I’ll guarantee you after your first crowd surfing experience you will want to crowd surf again. With crowd surfing, also try being in a mosh pit and get to tell your friends about all your new battle scars, a.k.a bruises. Usually you get a couple during a huge mosh and really hard core metal song. It happens and it always makes for a funny story to tell your friends or family.

            Also, don’t forget to get your tickets early just in case they sell out quickly during the first couple weeks. Usually the sell out quick especially if the festival is like Warp Tour or Edgefest. Once you get tickets, have a budget plan meeting with your friends so you can discuss how much should everybody spend at the festival.

            Meet and support bands is a must if you want them to stay around. Especially the new ones to the industry. Usually concert goers get introduced to their new favorite bands or new favorite genre that’s out now at a festival. Take pictures and videos and post the on Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace so you can help that band get their name and music out there to the public.

  Take this blogs in and they can help you not have such a bum time from getting hurt from crowd surfing or getting your new band merchandise stolen. I tried to cover everything I know and seen during the few festivals I have been to over the years and trust me I still learning new things every time I go to a show or festival. This blogs are just the basic survival tips I have noticed that everybody uses to make their festival fun and safe and it works every time. Also for those you haven’t been to a festival you are missing out on a fun and awesome experience. 

Also check out my Prezi presentation on history of Warp Tour. http://prezi.com/qv48a_dnevz0/vans-warp-tour/

Survival of a Punk Rock Festival

9. Making a Budget

            Festivals are always an awesome experience, but they can make you go broke in less than a second. Then the festival becomes a bum experience because you have no money to get food or buy the new band album of the headliner of your festival. It can make a huge increase on the factor if you and your group of friends sit down a week or two before the festival and discuss a budget for the day or however long your long festival is.

            Usually, festival goers mostly buy a lot of merchandise from the different band merchandise tables set up throughout the day or days of the festival.  So make a plan about how much you want to spend on your favorite band.  Also, you should decide how much you want to spend on a new band you just heard play and you want to buy one of their CDs. This is where a lot of concert goers spend most of their cash.  They suddenly decide they want a CD of the new bands they hear who are about to hit it big in the music industry. This is because we as concert goers love to support new artists who have really great music.  So with a budget in hand, you can decide on which new band you want to support.

            When making a budget with your friends, it’s always a good idea to pick a time to decide how much you want to spend on food. Trust me!   You don’t want to go a whole day without eating anything at festival.  Venues will have either a restaurant, snack bar, or both places around the concert venue.  If you have the set list of when the bands are performing,  you and your group of friends can decide which bands you don’t want to see and take a lunch or dinner break during those performances.

Making a budget helps you know how much you want to spend. Usually, you want to spend around 100 or 200 dollars for the whole festival day. If your festival is more than a day, try to spend less than 100 dollars per day.  After it’s over, you will have enough band merchandise and autographs from band members to make your friends jealous.  You will also have some extra cash you didn’t spend at your festival to help you get started with your week. To us concert goers, that’s never a bad thing because we love to go to festivals and support our favorite bands.  So it’s worth every penny spent.

           

Survival of a Punk Rock Festival

8. Getting Your Tickets Early

      Being at a festival is always a fun experience, but it also can be really expensive or hard to buy a ticket. Tickets for a festival usually start at 30 dollars when they first go on sell to the public on such websites as Ticketmaster or Stubhub. Then as the time comes closer to the date of that particular festival, you’ll start to see the ticket prices increase to 40 or 50 dollars a ticket. So it’s always a good idea to get your tickets early especially with Edgefest and Warp Tour, the most popular festivals.

     My favorite ticket ordering website is www.ticketmaster.com because it is user-friendly, and they have affordable prices. Ticketmaster also can provide you with information on what shows or events are happening in the next few months or the venue of your next festival. Sometimes you can even find better shows than what you expected.  I know I have found some unexpected gems. I found out about the All Stars Tour Festival in Dallas last summer using them. Ticketmaster has a feature where you can print your tickets for free after you purchase them.  This feature certainly makes it easier for you and your friends to avoid a long dreadful line at the ticket window at your show venue.

      Don’t get me wrong!  I’m sure there are plenty of good ticket ordering websites that you may find user-friendly, such as www.classictickets.com or www.tickets.stubhub.com. Use what you know best when purchasing your tickets online, and always be sure the website is real and legit. You don’t want to have an identity crime crisis on your hands because you have entered your information and credit card number on a fake website.

      When ordering your tickets early, know you will need to exercise great responsibility in keeping up with them. You never want to have to re-enter all your info just to get another copy of your tickets printed at 2 in the morning before your show. Some ticket ordering websites don’t even let you re-print what you order. Put your tickets somewhere you know where you can find them.  For example, you can pin them on your bulletin board, place them in a desk draw, or even give them to your parents who can keep up with things better than you. Personally, I place the tickets I ordered on my bulletin board.   This way when my friends come visit me in my dorm room, they can get jealous and ask me about the concert.

Survival of a Punk Rock Festival

7. Always Go In A Group To A Festival.

     It’s never any fun, for any reason, to go alone to any genre of music festival. Some reasons not to go alone include: getting harassed by creepers if you’re a female, getting into a fight, or getting lost at a venue. Sticking together with a group of friends is the best choice for a safe and a more enjoyable experience at a festival. Plus, with a group of friends, you can always get a good spot in an autograph line to see at a band at their table.

    At most venues there is a bar, or for outside festivals, a place to buy alcohol. For some strange reason, concert goers think it’s always fun to get drunk at festival.  Being drunk, as we all well know, makes us not have very good judgment, and mistakes are made. This is especially so for who are drunk in a mosh pit, if they get hit the wrong way, they start fighting with whoever hit them. Having a group of friends with you can also help you avoid this situation. They can pull you out of the mosh pit when things get really bad, or they can get you away from the drunken guy who is trying to swing at you. With a group a friends by your side, you can avoid a dangerous situation.

    Being a female with a group of friends can help make sure that other guys don’t touch you inappropriately or stalk you. If you’re a female, you should never walk around a venue alone.  Always go with someone while you’re exploring the venue.  Preferably, take a guy with you, but if there are no guys in your group; get one of your girlfriends to go with you. There is always that one guy that will follow you everywhere in a creepy fashion. Walking around with a friend or two will help keep you safe during a festival.

    Going with a group of friends ensures you can always share your experiences for years to come with each other. Also, you can make your other friends jealous who didn’t join your group at the festival.   That is always kind of fun to watch their reactions.  Remember to show off all the crazy pictures you and your friends took at the show as well as the ones you took with the bands at the festival.  It is especially fun to display them on Facebook or Twitter. Doing this can help a particular band get their name out to all of your friends on your friend’s list. I’ve always gone with a group of friends to concerts, and it has always been an awesome experience.

Survival of a Punk Rock Festival

6. Meet the Band

     Meeting the bands after they have played their set is always an experience. One band can be your idol.  Another band may be the reason you started a band of your own.   The ladies may think band members are the hottest guys on the planet, same for guys I guess, but you get the point. Last summer, I remember the meet and greet for the punk band, Blessthefall, after they performed their set at the All Stars Tour Festival in Dallas.  As soon as the lead singer, Beau Bokan, walked out to his band’s merchandise table, all the girls started screaming. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster at Six Flags.  He was just that cool.

     When it comes to meeting your favorite band, it helps to know where the merchandise table is. This is where a roadie (a guy who travels with the band) sells shirts, CDs, and other merchandise with the band logo on it. This is the table where the band members will come to sign autographs, take pictures, and just hang out with the fans. To avoid a big line, it always helps when you know that the last song of the band’s set is almost over. Trust me, you will know this because it is always announced it to make the crowd go crazy. Once you know the end of the song is coming, go to that band’s merchandise table to get a good spot at the front of the line.

      One crucial thing to never do while meeting a band is offer them drugs. Sometimes you’ll see a member of a band walking around the venue, and there is always that one stupid guy that will offer him a blunt to come smoke with him. Please don’t do this because they will either be nice about it, or get in your face and be very angry. The next thing you know is that you’re either about to get killed by a band member or escorted out by security. Now granted some bands do smoke weed, but never with fans.

     While meeting a band, it’s always helpful to have a spare permanent marker in your bag or back pocket.  After getting so many autographs, you don’t want to miss out on more autographs because a marker ran out. Also, be sure to have what you want autographed ready to go when you meet the band member.   It may be a shirt, album, or hey, even your forehead (seen it) ready for autographs.  Be sure to have your camera or Iphone on the camera app and ready to go as well.

     After reading this blog, feel free to leave a comment sharing a crazy band meet and greet story or experience. From getting your shoes signed; some crazy fan girl crying because she got to meet the lead singer of the band or anything that you thought was crazy that happened. I would like to hear about it.   A band meet and greet after their set makes a festival even more of an awesome experience, and you shouldn’t miss out on this at your next festival.

Survival of a Punk Rock Festival

5. Crowd Surfing

            Crowd surfing is one of the most fun and crazy thing you can do at a festival.  Crowd surfing is when you have a group of people hoist you up, or you jump up on top a crowd of people then they lift you up and move across the crowd with the help of the crowd towards the stage. Then, once you get there, a big sweaty usually bald security guy grabs you and then sets you down and tells you to leave what is called the security pit area. It’s a railed fence area where security guards stand so nobody jumps on stage.

            There are a lot of different reasons why people do this at festivals.  Such as being drunk, going crazy because their favorite song is being played, and many other reasons as well. What is cool about crowd surfing is when someone falls from crowd surfing people are like “oh crowd surfing dude or girl” and they lift that person back up on and off they go. Ninety percent of the time this doesn’t cause of fight.

            Crowd surfing can be also bad. From getting injured or someone grabbing you inappropriately (and I don’t mean butt grabbing, and that happens to everybody crowd surfing). From the festivals that I have been to, personally, I have a girl drop on her head because that security guard didn’t get to her in time to catch her because he was in the process of catching someone else. Also seen a couple guys carried out in wheel chairs by EMS because security wasn’t there and they probably got a concussion when their head hit the floor. So if you do crowd surf, try to go feet first so you can land on your feet when you get to the front of the stage.  Sometimes when you don’t realize it you have the perverted guy at a concert that likes to touch people weird. So ladies try not to wear skirts if your crowd surfing.

            If you have never tried crowd surfing I would suggest it. It’s kind of a rush, especially when you favorite band is playing your favorite song. As long as you’re paying attention to what you’re doing you’ll probably won have to be carried out in a wheel chair. The only bad thing that’s happen to me was I dropped on my arm, but I just shook it off and went crowd surfing again. That’s how fun crowd surfing is. 
          Check out my awesome hilarious videos I made with stick figures and one with fellow festival goer Callie Carrell as well. 

Survival of a Punk Rock Festival

4. Be careful in Mosh Pits

            A mosh is a giant circle of people bumping into each other with crazy dancing in the middle of the crowd. This is one of the most fun and a little bit dangerous things to be a part of. Some people will try to fight you if you bump into them the wrong way, for example, below the belt. A lot of this can be avoided, and you can still jam out during your festival with these tips.

            During a Punk Rock Festival, the music is loud and the fans of the bands that are playing are going crazy. Next, you know you feel you’re getting pushed back a little bit but this means a mosh pit is being formed. How to mosh is pretty easy to do. All you do is jump in and run into another person with the side of your body with your arm and bounce of them and go to the next person and do the same thing. It’s like a chest bump but you don’t use your chest. During a mosh pit, you can get hurt if you’re not being careful.  If you bump into a person the wrong way you could come out with a bloody nose. Personally, I have come out with bruises and even one time I got slapped in the face because somebody was doing what looked like a windmill dance (I know weird right.) Just pay attention to what you’re doing and your surroundings and you’ll be good.

            Mosh Pits are usually the number one place at a festival for a fight to break out. Festival goers sometimes are drunk and don’t know what they are doing.  Some people are their just looking for a fight to get a so called badass festival experience. This is never the right thing to do at a festival because once you throw down with somebody beware ton of security personnel will throw you out of the venue. You do not want to this to happen because you’re missing out on your festival and you’re wasting your money by not staying the whole time. If you see a fight break, just move back and security will take care of it. They always come out of nowhere during a show. Once I saw a guy who swung at a security guard who was twice his size. Let’s just say that was a huge mistake on his part.

            Now if you don’t want to mosh, that’s ok too, it’s not for everybody. If you are close to a mosh pit and don’t want to jump in pay attention to what is going on. Usually a guy or girl will fly at you without you knowing. If this happens, all you doing have your hands up for example like someone is holding a gun on you and brace yourself then push them back in the pit.
          Check out my podcast interview with fellow festival goer Callie Carrell.