Arras, France, 5-7 July 2013
Britain’s unpredictable weather is usually a fleeting consideration for those booking tickets to one of our many legendary music festivals. Most people expect at least a bit of rain at some point during the proceedings, even making cursory preparations for the odd downpour by taking a festival poncho and digging out their obligatory festival wellies, and maybe taking a blow up dinghy just in case.
But last summer was different. No one could really have predicted how wet the entire festival season was going to be. It is one that will go down in Britain’s music festival history as decidedly soggy.
At the Isle of Wight Festival many were stranded in gridlocked traffic, unable to reach the festival site. Those who did manage to get onto the site were met with a deep quagmire and the prospect of spending the entire weekend sleeping and dancing within a deep sea of mud. It was much the same picture at T In The Park and Download, and Creamfields even closed a day early, cancelling performances by the likes of Tiesto, Deadmau5, Richie Hawtin and Paul van Dyk.
With last summer’s water logged escapades still fresh in my head, I decided to book tickets further afield in a bid to go to at least one rain-free music festival this year. So off I went to Mainsquare Festival in Arras, France, the little sister of Belgium's Rock Werchter Festival.
The site, as the name suggests, is set around Arras’s main square, with the Main Stage in the square itself, and the Greenroom (or second stage) in the adjacent park. Both stages were open and very close together, leading to the first two issues: lack of any suitable shade, and terrible sound clashes. The only real shade was cast by a line of trees and a church in between the two stages, but standing there meant you could hear both stages at the same time (something which had a devastating effect on some of the bands). So to have any chance of only hearing the stage you were watching you had to stand in the blistering sun on the far side of each of the stages.
I know, I know, I wanted sun, so it was my own fault…
Click below to see my reviews of each day, and my verdict of the festival as a whole.
Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 1
Featuring Candide, Twin Forks, Balthazar, Rival Sons, Haim, Biffy Clyro, Modestep, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Bloc Party, Green day, Enter Shikari, The Prodigy and Netsky
Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 2
Featuring Mike & the Mechanics, Klink Clock, Local Natives, Kodaline, Saez, Of Monsters & Men, The Hives, Asaf Avidan, Sting, Alt-J, Sting, deuS, C2C and Madeon
Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 3
Featuring Feini X Crew, Charles Bradley, Left Boy, Volbeat, La Femme, Puggy, Lou Doillon, Stereophonics, Kendrick Lamar, Archive, Wax Tailor and The Dusty Rainbow Experience and Indochine
Mainsquare Festival 2013: The Verdict
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