FLOWERS BELONG TO PRIMAVERA
or so stated the slogan seen on digital displays throughout the Parc del Fòrum festival grounds. It was spring — primavera en Español — in Barcelona which, in non-lockdown years, meant the return of Primavera Sound. Refracted sunlight glimmered on the Mediterranean behind the festival stages like so many NFT flowers, digital tokens cultivated into non-fungible existence to represent new life and new opportunities for capital. With the scan of a QR code and the creation of a new Binance account, one of the festival’s principal sponsors, a unique Primavera Sound NFT flower could be yours for your Primavera garden or bouquet or whatever.
I don’t pretend to understand what any of that means. It was a grift that would need to find another mark. Based on what I was about to witness, there would be plenty of opportunities.
Primavera Sound, from my perspective as a live music lover and frequent festival attendee in the United States, was the grand daddy of all music festivals. Each year, the lineup announcements from Barcelona would make me extremely jealous of the folks across the pond with easy access to Spain during high season. How one festival could bring together such diverse acts, from contemporary hit-makers to obscure artists rarely seen outside my Spotify playlists, boggled my mind.
Those I knew who attended the festival in the past urged me to go one day. The music, the vibes, the location, and the organization were all on a level unmatched by any stateside event. Primavera Sound was the festival all other festivals wanted to be.
2020 was going to be the year, until it wasn’t. 2021 similarly was and wasn’t, which brings us to 2022 when the stars and antibodies aligned just right and away I went to Barcelona with very high (perhaps unreasonably high) hopes.
I speculated in my piece on Cruel World Fest 2022 that perhaps my festival days were behind me. I had become too persnickety and the world had changed so dramatically. Primavera Sound proved my feelings to be correct but in ways I did not anticipate.
While the first Primavera back since COVID would inevitably have its challenges, problems for the 2022 edition (in particular the first Weekend) began to mount months before a single note sounded. International touring, a fraught endeavor in normal times, was made exponentially more difficult with COVID. Day 1 headliners Massive Attack canceled their appearance for health reasons apparently unrelated to COVID back in March. Other major acts like The Strokes and Bikini Kill canceled days prior to performing due to unwelcome positive test results.
One can hardly fault the festival for such difficulties. The show must go on, after all. Let’s talk about what we can fault them for.
Primavera a la Ciutat and Brunch on the Beach are Primavera Sound’s versions of festival club shows, adjacent concerts held in local venues in the days before and after the main festival. These shows are added value to festival attendees and (on paper) free to attend. There were caveats, however. VIP ticket holders and attendees of both festival weekends would gain priority access to these events. 15% of the total capacity of each venue (small caps between 500 and 5000 people) would be sold to the general public, in theory making them available to non-festival attendees but in actuality many of these tickets were snapped up by festival attendees seeking guaranteed access. Those attending a single weekend would be allowed entry based on remaining capacity.
What stunned many people, myself included, were immediate and apparent capacity issues at every single show. Long lines of single weekend wristband holders formed outside each venue, many stretching for city blocks on end. Those unfortunate enough not to get in line several hours before doors opened were not likely to enter. For example, we lined up outside the venue Razzmatazz four hours prior to doors for Megan thee Stallion (9 hours before her actual set time). Had we queued any later and we would have wasted hours in line without getting in.
The sheer number of festival attendees this year had a dangerous effect on the main festival as well, leading many to speculate that the organizers had oversold the event by a large margin. Indeed the number of attendees for 2022 had more than double from 2019, from 220,000 to 500,000. On the first day of the festival, one would have to wait 45 minutes to an hour at one of only three water refill stations, an remarkably stupid oversight considering that attendees could only bring in an empty 30cl (~10 ounce) water bottle without a lid, policies that were strictly enforced by over-zealous security.
While free water was scarce, finding water for purchase equally difficult. While the Parc del Fòrum boasted many bar areas that each sold water, severe understaffing created even longer lines, with many waiting for over an hour before being served.
The crush of people was felt at many points throughout the grounds. The two main stages of the festival were oriented side-by-side one another, creating a large permanent concentration of people in one area of the festival grounds. On Reddit, many attendees noted dangerous crowd conditions at the Binance stage, an elevated amphitheater type area with large drops, during Sharon Van Etten’s set. Security, outnumbered and unable to enforce capacity, sometimes turned violent, with many attendees reporting horror stories of unwarranted brutality on Discord and Instagram.
Transportation outside the festival was near non-existent, with many left stranded for hours awaiting buses, taxis, trams, and shuttles that were tragically in short supply.
Post-Astroworld, where 10 festival attendees died as a result of crowd crush just seven months ago, these conditions amounted to logistical malfeasance.
It’s difficult to recover the festival spirit after witnessing such clear organizational oversights. While we were fortunate enough to emerge from Day 1 unharmed and only partially dehydrated, we seriously considered abandoning the festival and spending our time elsewhere in the city. While many improvements were implemented in the following days — namely additional free water stations and bar staff — the overcrowding remained a damper on what could have been a transcendentally positive festival experience.
The striking lows of the festival were indeed punctuated with transcendent highs. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, a band I’ve seen numerous times in the past, put on a deeply moving performance that even Nick Cave himself acknowledged was one of their best. The enormous and rowdy main stage audience became pin-silent as Cave, seated alone at the piano, dedicated his heart-wrenching ballad “Waiting For You” to his two surviving sons who were at the festival but were, in his words, “probably watching fucking Bauhaus.”
Other sets by Low, Cigarettes After Sex, Shellac, Einstürzende Neubaten, and Idles left me energized with the festival spirit I thought I had lost. They served as important reminders of Frank Zappa’s adage: “Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.”
Financial opportunism could not defeat that. Disorganization could not defeat that. Crypto commercialism could not defeat that. While this particular format of live music event might not be for me moving forward, it’s the music itself that carries meaning. In the end, it’s a person at a piano across from another person with an open heart, with the ocean glimmering behind.