(ostensibly a review of Listen Out, 24/9.)

I had to ask myself yesterday: ‘Why?’ I was curious; stood inch deep in the quagmire, sniffling, giggling, losing my hair, losing my mind, and damn near losing my patience with the gurning bastard stood next to me, pestering me for a piece of Wrigley’s so he didn’t get lockjaw, I could not understand who might possibly enjoy this, and if they could enjoy it, how many pills I would have to have taken to do so. Granted, it was springtime, and I’d stand on human shit just to see Future, but the point remains; ‘Why?’

You see, in Australia- or at least Perth- we like to have our festivals in the summertime, when it doesn’t rain and it is generally more conducive to standing outside for hours at a time. It wasn’t until a cursory Internet search that I discovered and realized that the rest of the world isn’t quite as hard, fast, or as hung up on all of that bother as we are. Apparently, there’s mud at Glastonbury. And apparently, this is something people will pay £238 for; better yet, something they will endure across 5 days so they can watch Ed Sheeran, Halsey, and Clean Bandit. Apparently, that’s entertainment.

I make the exception for wet weather festivals because Splendour in the Grass, a pilgrimage, rite-of-passage, and waste-of-money for self-described ‘elite’ sandstone university students countrywide almost always transpires as the ground turns to mud and the sky goes grey. It’s a miserable experience all up, one that is best described by the colour of your wellingtons as much as it is the colour of your vomit the day after. Nobody wants to be there, and nobody wants to leave, and nobody least of all wants to admit that the idea of having a festival in the wintertime, or at the very least when it’s really wet and cold, is just about one of the worst things ever.

@realDonaldTrump – “Little @MacMiller—I have more hair than you do and there’s a slight age difference.” 5:46 AM – Feb 1, 2013

So, that’s why I ended up asking myself, ‘Why?’ Why was I stood in the mud? Why did I put myself through this? Why can’t my phone get a decent signal? Why can I taste vomit when I haven’t eaten anything all day? Why does it smell like somebody smuggled in crack? Why does this have to be right now, and not later? Or earlier? And why am I watching Bryson Tiller? 

I can answer that last one; I was watching Bryson Tiller because I wanted to be up in the action for Future. Which is not to underrate Tiller, who I came in expecting to hate and instead came away begrudgingly thinking was actually one smooth motherfucker when it came to a sexy, nasally hook. But I don’t know how much I can underrate the day of bilge I sat through just for Future Hendrix; so many DJ’s, so little time to try and remember what they were called or if what they played was house or trap music. One of those faceless producers was called What So Not, who is apparently quite popular, but to my ears sounded like every other Flume or Disclosure interlude smelted into something tuneless. Another was called Jai Wolf. He was Ok. Green Velvet played at the same time as Tiller, so I’m not sure of the merits of his set. It was probably good.

The stuff I did see and did come away with an opinion of was slim. Little Simz was one of them. I would say she was magnetic. She prowled around snarling and jabbing and stomping and crouching and spitting and punching and basically owning everything she did with a sort of swagger that I imagine only a black woman from London could muster. It wasn’t something I was too actively attentive towards, considering it was raining, and I was nauseous, but she did “Dead Body” and pretty much owned the daytime. It was magnetic. Mac Miller was directly after. Save “100 Grandkids” and “Dang!,” which were actually listenable, the whole thing was a bust; a hopeless wall of 2 very loud and atonal bass notes mixed with a crowd of eager, shove-ready jocks. The miasma of bad, store-bought deodorant was palpable. As were the three-whiskered moustaches on display. It was bad.

To the best of my knowledge, Donald Trump has never tweeted about Future.

Otherwise, Future was the $152 reason I was there. And I’ll be Honest, even though he only played bits of songs- the chorus to “Move that Dope” here, a single verse of “Jumpman”- whilst playing the entirety of other songs- such as but not limited to inexplicably long renditions of “New Level” and “Low Life”- he was enough to make me forget that I might have been developing hyperthermia. He did “Mask Off,” naturally, but by that point he’d tired everybody else out with “Fuck Up Some Commas” and “March Madness” and “Stick Talk” and “Shit.” “Mask Off” felt like an anthem, but it didn’t feel like the basic moment it had to be. It was pretty exciting, and I couldn’t remember- still can’t- a time when I felt that excited with a song, or a performer, or a performance. It was exciting.

So what did I come away with? A headache, yes; a 90-minute train journey, yep; an Uber with heinous surge rate, a-huh; a genuine feeling of dread for having to get to work the morning after, yes indeed. The big question I came away with however was, ‘Why?’ Why hold festivals in the winter? Well, I think I finally know why they hold festivals in the winter; they know that, come hell or high water (literally,) it doesn’t take much effort or hard work to drag thousands of financially irresponsible 20-somethings into the dreck of a field in the middle of nowhere as long as you make sure that Future is headlining. They know that we’ll pay money for this Shit, even as the entire day revolved around not being able to cram enough people into an area that was just very big and flat. It wasn’t creative, it wasn’t comfortable, and it must have made a fortune. At the very least, Perth got Future; Sydney, Brisbane, and Auckland have to reckon with What So Not headlining, and in the end, I think that’s a lot worse than the gastro that appeared on the West Coast. Little victories.

All-Time Top 5 Future Songs

“Codeine Crazy” (Monster)

“Stick Talk” (DS2)

“Fuck Up Some Commas” (Monster)

“Rich $ex” (DS2)

“March Madness” (56 Nights)