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Why it's Crap, Standing at The Back
Why it's Crap, Standing at The Back
-Raz- by Raziq Rauf November 17th, 2002
I stood at The Back for a long time this year. I didn’t enjoy it. I could easily gauge how much I would, or should, be enjoying it, but that’s not the point. Is it?

I love being a barfly. It means you don’t have to traipse through the crowd to get back there and it’s alright doing that at some gigs, like at the Barflys. Actually, fuck that and fuck you if you think you believe it. You can’t breathe their sweat from the bar. You can’t hear them screaming in your ear. You can’t accidentally knock your head against their monitor. From the bar.

I probably had my least enjoyable Reading Festival so far due to that fact that I was stood at the back of the crowd because a) I was too goddamn scared of getting my head trampled upon as it was 2 summers previously and b) because I was more interested in sitting around on the grass and it would take aeons to get to the bar from the front. Oh if only I could go back and smack myself around the head.

Just because you’re ‘down the front’ and even down there ‘with the kidz’ it doesn’t mean that you have to mosh or pogo like a madman. Oh sweet mother, no. I am a lazy bastard and a couple of years of lethargy are all it has taken for me to become a wheezing mess when confronted with a half hour of perspiration inducing activity. It is quite feasible to just stand there. You know what you’re in for: crowdsurfers, people moshing into you, and a great view of the band.

What? You’re only there for the music. Ain’t that what CDs are for? Stay at home, loser. Get down the front. Get what you’re paying for. Live the music you are seeing.



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