Jul 16, 2010

Off to a Festival

I'm off to a music festival this weekend, to see bands like The National, Vampire Weekend, Spoon or Grizzly Bear. Live music makes me happy like nothing else, and the last time I went to a music festival was three years go. As you can imagine, I'm ridiculously excited!

I'm taking The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley with me - I'm not sure how much actual reading will get done, but this sounds like a good summer festival sort of book, and I'm very excited to get to it at last. (As much as I'm loving them, Middlemarch and the Rosalind Franklin biography I'm reading will stay home, as I really can't imagine them working as vacation books).

I'll be back home on Monday, but I'll probably be too overwhelmed by exhaustion and dirty laundry to get online before Tuesday or Wednesday. I hope you'll have a wonderful weekend, and as they say, don't break the Internet while I'm gone! I'll leave you with one of my favourite songs by The National, Lemonworld.


Posted by Ana S. at Friday, July 16, 2010

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43 comments:

  1. Hope you have a lovely time (I doubt you'll have much time for reading though!!)

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  2. Thank you so much! And no, probably not :P But there's always the five hour trip there and back (provided I don't get nauseous if I try to read on the coach, which does happen sometimes :S).

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  4. Wow, my eyes perked up when I saw Spoon and Vampire Weekend. How exciting! Have fun and we will see you back next week! (I won't be around this weekend either...I'm getting together with high school friends and going to a festival called "Dancing in the Streets". Woo hoo!)

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  5. Have a fantastic time, the festival sounds amazing! :)

    Really hope you´ll love The Sweetness, and I think it´s a great book to take for a fun weekend :)

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  6. Have a great time! And I hope you enjoy the Alan Bradley book. :)

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  7. Ooh, I had never heard of this festival until this week when everyone was discussing it on Twitter! One of my friends is there.

    You'll get to see Jónsi so you must be extremely excited!

    Personally I'd be more interested in the Literary Arena and Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake!

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  8. Hi Ana :D

    I found a website you might like, I was impressed at the quality of the sculpted fairies!

    http://www.elfwood.com/~pixiwillow/Fawn-Girl.3122857.html

    Have a great week-end

    Sylvie

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  9. How exciting! Have a great weekend, and I hope you enjoy the book - it is a good vacation read, I think.

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  10. Oh, sounds like fun! Enjoy your time there! :D

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  12. Have a lovely time, Ana. It is just wonderful how live music can give us so much joy. I thinks it is all that creative energy.

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  13. Sounds like the perfect way to spend the weekend! I'm envious of all the great bands you'll get to see. Live music can be so exhilarating!

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  14. I will confess to my loserliness by saying, the first thing I noticed is that that is a REALLY nice suit he's wearing in the video:D. That, and you get extra points for being the only other person I know who goes to the trouble of slapping the purple skin on embedded youtube clips. :D

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  15. The National are great! I hope that you have a wonderful time.

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  16. Oh, I love me some Spoon! You are so, so lucky to get to see them!! Have a great time Anna!

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  18. Wow! Fun - enjoy yourself!

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  19. Thank you so much, everyone! Also, I started Flavia on my lunch break at work and I already love her :)

    And Claire, sadly it's not Latitude I'm going to, so no Jónsi or literary tent for me :( But the line ups ARE very similar overall, and I do have tickets to see Jónsi over there in the autumn, so it's all good :D

    Okay, off for real now :P Have a great weekend everyone.

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  20. Sounds like a fantastic festival! I love live music, but have never been to a full weekend festival. Enjoy your weekend :)

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  22. I hope you have a fabulous time!!

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  23. Oo, Vampire Weekend! I am listening to their album right now--wish I could hear them live. Have a great time!!

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  24. Ahh! Exciting! Have tonsa tonsa fun!

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  25. Sounds like a weekend of bliss!! Enjoy!

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  26. HAVE FUN HAVE FUN HAVE FUN HAVE FUN!!!!! Of course you will :D And try to see Beach House too if you can :D They're so good! Give the National a hug for me :p

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  27. Oh goodness! Terrific bands! Have SO much well-deserved fun!!

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  28. Oh I love Grizzly Bear! Have a great time :)

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  31. Ana, I've caught myself thinking about you guys at the festival half a dozen times today...and every single time it puts the most enormous smile on my face!!! Hope you're having a ball!!!! :D

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  32. I am of course extremely jealous of you attending a festival and seeing so many acts that I still have and want to see! I hope you have a great weekend!

    Btw, I can't believe you are bringing a book to a music festival. Most of the time I am too tired to do anything but sleep by the time I've finished day one of running around trying to catch every band I want to see. Imagine what I feel like after 3 days ;)

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  33. Eeep--I haven't heard of any of these bands but I'll be looking them up! Have a great time at the festival. I used to be a pretty frequent concert-goer, but since graduating from college I just haven't made the effort to attend any concerts as I usually have to go too far and I'm lazy. :)

    I can't imagine Middlemarch is good vacation reading--you're probaby best leaving it home! I do look forward to hearing how you like it, though.

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  35. Thank you so much, everyone! As some of you predicted, not much reading at all took place :P Not even on the journey back, because I was so tired I slept all the way through it. Getting a bit old of these things :P But I had a lovely time, and that's what matters :D

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  36. Basically would like to go sqqqqqqqqqquuuuuuueeeeeeeeeee about festivals (round up post to follow after sleep)! Got back at 19:15 today, went straight to the Speedway and am wired from drinking way too much tea to keep me awake. Agree camping shenanigans are way harder after early twenties (the ground is not my friend), but I still very much feel it was worth it.

    Hope you had fantastic weather for it. We did for once. Who was your top festival act do you think? I can't believe how many people were at your festival then flew straight here to do our festival.

    Ending with squuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeee.

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  37. My husband goes to concerts all the time but it's just too loud for me. I've been to a couple that were really cool, one where you could actually touch the band the venue was so small and close to the stage (it was Submersed and a few others). Have fun!

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  38. My two daughters were there and had a wonderful time - hope you did too!

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  39. Oh, whoops - not. They were at Latitude - hope you had just as great a time, though!

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  41. Jodie: Squeeeeee indeed :D You know, I didn't even camp this time and I'm STILL dead. The festival site was only about 40 minutes from Lisbon, so we decided to take the bus/train and stay at a hostel in Lisbon instead. All in all a good decision, even though there were transportation shenanigans the second day. Anyway, we did have great weather! Good thing too, because if it had rained there'd have been mud all over the place. As for my top act... hmm, I really loved both The National and Vampire Weekend, but I think VW work better at a festival - The National are more intimate, so they're better at small venues. I jumped like a crazy person through the whole VW show and had a lovely time :D What about you?

    Proof of how tired I've been: a few days ago I *almost* bought a copy of The Night Watch by Sarah Waters thinking it was The Little Stranger. I found it at a bargain bin and grabbed it immediately despite my supposed book buying ban. I guess I saw "Sarah Waters" written in the same font as The Little Stranger and my wishful thinking and overexcited brain did the rest. But it gets better: I was on the queue to pay for it when I opened it and read the first line. I had a moment of "...I didn't know the protagonist of this was named Kay too, just like in The Night Watch" before it actually sunk in that the book I was holding WAS The Night Watch, not The Little Stranger. I swear, two more minutes and I'd have paid for it and walked out of the store, happy as a lark and holding a book I already own. I don't know why I'm posting this here - I guess it's bizarre enough to be worth sharing, but almost too embarrassing to merit a post of its own :P

    Jen: Yep, they can be loud - earplugs are my friends ;)

    Katherine Langrish: My festival (SBSR in Portugal) was very similar to Latitude, but sadly no literature tent :( Ah well - there's always next year :P

    Wisteria: Thanks; I did :D

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  42. That is a very tired sounding story. I actually think you were very strong not to have a little tiredness breakdown in the queue once you realised that what you were holding was not what you meant it to be. But I can well imagine that pouncing on a gem feeling obscuring actual seeing ability, don't festivals just make you want to go out and hug everything by your favourite creative people to your chest? Oh and still dead, I hear you on that, trying to catch up on bloglines as well and it's not working. I hope you are a bit more recovered now.

    Lucky you not camping. That was a smart decision. We shelled out for extremly posh, already put up tents and still we were glad to see the back of them. Camping is not a fun activity in the rain at all (feels cheered about the lack of rain having never been to a festival without rain before). Glad you had a fantastic time!

    Belle and Sebastian have to be my festival highlight because they never come here and I was begining to consider going to another country just to see them. But I think there's tons of stuff they also didn't want do because it would work better in a smaller setting, which I imagine is similar to The National's situation (news is thaty may play some UK performances next year though). Yes, Vampire Weekend were an excellent festival band too, so high energy and yay I'm glad to hear you're a jumper, there was lots of jumping here in the UK too. Florence of course was le fab. But a close second to B&S had to be hearing Laura Marling sing 'My Manic and I' - had lost friends at that point so all of a sudden found myself suddenly squeaking to no one at all - very strange looks all round.

    Thanks so much for the tip off about Frightened Rabbit by the way they were fab, really got into flinging themselves about on 'The Loneliness' and 'Living in Color' was maximum fun times.

    Oh PS YAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY The National in Coventry (probably a bit too early to be excited about that, maybe...).

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  43. Jodie, I think that after a weekend to recover from last weekend, I finally am functioning properly again :P And I can completely see Belle & Sebastian being the highlight. So excited for their December tour! :D I'm also very glad to hear you enjoyed Frightened Rabbit. I've never seen them live, but I have tickets to see them in Manchester this autumn.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to comment - interaction is one of my favourite things about blogging and a huge part of what keeps me going.

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