We talk about festivals a lot on No Tags, and usually the negative side of the circuit: the monopolisation, the immoral ownership issues and the overpriced cheesy chips.
But good can still prevail, and are hopes are pinned on Field Maneuvers: an LED beacon of hope in the darkness, and an event that puts the comfort and enjoyment of ravers first. Perish the thought!
It’s notable the FM crew often avoid using the word ‘festival’ to describe their three-day event in rural Norfolk. The current tagline states, ‘FM IS A NO FRILLS RAVE (now with a few frills)’ – but it’s previously been billed as a ‘dirty little rave’ and even, paraphrasing the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy, ‘Worst. Rave. Ever.’ And it definitely doesn’t count as ‘boutique’ (though we’d argue that a festival with slot machines is its own sort of boutique).
In this episode, FM’s Henry, Ele and Leon explain how they’ve just about stayed afloat for 12 years – or is it 13? They can’t quite remember. We talk about building a rave utopia from scratch, the influence of free party culture on FM, adapting to festival life as new parents, and the momentum behind the current boycott of KKR-owned festivals. (We recorded this episode the week before Field Day.) There’s also a story about the time they nearly called off the festival due to excessive amounts of duck poo.
Before the interview, Chal and Tom chat about the lack of muckracking journalists in the music industry, following on from the latest First Floor newsletter, and get into some of your emails on side-of-stage access, the babushka hood craze, Afrohouse and Keinemusik. We’ve had some golden feedback emails lately – please keep them coming!
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Where is the transcript, a very select few of you will be asking? Transparently, we ran out of time to get it done, and we decided it’d be better to send the podcast into the world without one than wait any longer. But we will get it up on Substack as soon as we can – as you’ve probably noticed, we’re very bothered about maintaining digital archives, so that’s a promise.
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