PINS Are Really Good at Going to Festivals, And You Can Be Too

It’s absolutely, definitely and without a doubt summer festival season, and at The Levi’s® Tailor Shop (found in every Levi’s® store nationwide) you can customise, personalise & repair new or old Levi’s® products in an infinite number of ways in preparation for your extended weekend of misbehaviour and fun. Also, PINS are gonna tell you how to do this right.

Hi folks! Fun party squad/great band PINS have already played ten festivals this year. Have you even been outdoors ten times this year? Maybe yes, fine – you probably go outside on your commute or at least to get to the shop to buy Pot Noodles or Doctor Oetker or whatever it is you choose to subsist on, but the point is that you don’t know festivals like PINS know festivals.

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PINS are Wizard-level festival attendees – they’ve honed partying in a field into a fine craft that people will one day teach alongside other crafts like pottery in evening classes at 6th form colleges all over the country. However, until funding for these classes can be secured (thanks, Cameron’s Britain!), PINS are only going to be able to disseminate their knowledge of open-air revelry through articles like this, which allow them to individually explain to you, the reader, what their essential festival equipment includes, and why. Knowledge is power. Get to know. Without further ado:

Faith Vern, singer. Festival Essentials: Playing Cards & A Camera

I’m a photographer as much as I am a musician: I either have a guitar or a camera in my hands. I have a box of crap-but-great 80s point and shoots and they are my go-to’s for festivals because, first of all, unlike my iPhone they cost about 10p which means I can flaunt them around with very low risky of a mugging. Secondly, also unlike my iPhone, they don’t smash to smithereens on their first drop to the floor.

A deck of cards has become an essential for PINS as a band, not just at festivals. My band lives to tour; we are all cut out for it and milk it for all it’s worth. The flip side of having too much fun is it becomes impossible for us to make decisions – because we’re too sleep deprived, hungover and generally confused.”Let the cards decide, highest card wins, ace is high, 1-2-3 pick and slam it down.” That’s how most of our decisions are now made. For the most part the cards are used to decide who gets their own room or where we should eat but recently we used them to decide whether or not we should bother playing two festivals in Italy. We were being messed around by an Italian promoter who looked like Moby for weeks and the flights were becoming impossibly expensive, so we didn’t know whether to go or not.

We put our fate with the cards: high was go to Italy, low was stay at home. High won, so we packed our bags flew to Italy and had an incredible weekend. We met The Pastels, watched James Blake under the stars, ate gelato, drank Prosecco, swam in the sea, got treated like queens by the promoters and made a new friend named Giacomo.

Anna Donigan, bass. Festival Essentials: Sunglasses and Swimming Gear

I was born with ‘woggley’ eyes which medically means that my eyes work independently and do whatever the fuck they want. My lovely friends say that they don’t notice but after loads of booze and lack of sleep, which is ALL of the time when PINS are on tour, I have no control over them.

We have a lot of photos taken of us at gigs and festivals so to avoid the photographer keep having to say, “Everyone look at the camera… everyone… eyes this way… at the camera”, and me trying desperately to align my eyes… I hide behind my lenses. Being in PINS, sunglasses are perhaps the most important thing for looking mysterious, facing that live radio session first thing in the morning or rocking up to a festival after sleeping upright in a van for 6 hours.

Swimming gear… too many times we’ve been caught short of something to cover our dignity so that we can have a refreshing dip. Although I’m no stranger to skinny-dipping, mid-afternoon in front of thousands of other festival goers just isn’t my bag. There are many styles to choose from to suit your needs, I prefer a simple two piece – light to carry, quick to dry and minimal tan lines when catching some rays.

The opportunity for a dip comes often and should be pounced upon, as festival days can be long, hot, and tiring. Floating about in your beachwear can give you a real energy boost, and you can always have a cheeky Mojito poolside too.

Kyoko Swan, keys. Festival Essentials: Fags & Booze

I approach the idea of being at a festival in the same way I would being washed up on a desert island. Ignoring all the obvious stuff – fresh water, working toilets, imminent rescue – I’d pick cigarettes and alcohol. I can cope with mud, rain, sleep deprivation, but not having beer or cigarettes would make it all a bit shit.

The combination of beer, cigarettes and festivals can create a near simulacrum of heaven. I love to drink, I love to smoke, and I love to watch bands, but you’d be hard pushed to find a place in everyday life where all three things can be accomplished simultaneously: you must stand in “this” place to watch the band; you must go outside and stand in “this” cold place to have a cig; you can’t take beer to “this” place, but “that” place is fine. At festivals all three of my favourite things can be done, and until dawn if you wish – like one festival in Slovakia where I had to have my wine prised out of my cold fingers at 6am in the streaming morning sunshine. “BED TIME, KYOKO, BED TIME.”

If, like me, you smoke roll ups, I will for the first and only time in my life quote Alex Ferguson: “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”. You do not want to be stuck in the middle of god-knows-where attempting to make a roach in pitch darkness because you ran out of filters. You don’t want to embarrass yourself by approaching 20 strangers until you find one who has Rizla only to find it’s that awful nearly see-through kind that no sane person should ever use.

Sophie Galpin, drummer. Festival Essentials – Boots and Glitter

Now, I’m aware that these two choices might make me sound like a wanker but hear me out. We are lucky enough to be able to play some amazing festivals all around the world. Just this weekend, we were on the sunny East Coast of Italy and the weekend before that were just outside Bratislava. But more often than not, we find ourselves in a field in the British countryside. As much as we love whizzing about in sunnier climes, there is something charming, fabulous, and uniquely British about going to a festival on our fair isle.

I think it’s because there’s a sense of chance about it, and all the choices you make can greatly affect the outcome of your weekend. Sneaking in warm cans under your coat or strapping a bag of wine to your body? Wellies (cumbersome) or flip-flops (trip to the medical tent waiting to happen)? Sunstroke or trench foot?

In order to avoid either of the latter issues but still embrace the unpredictability of the festival weather, there’s one item that can always be relied upon: the humble boot. A boot is guaranteed to keep your feet dry in the mile high mud of Glasto, but still be bearable when you’re stomping about in the concrete heat of Primavera. Also, you will look like a badass 100% of the time and no-one will try and steal your booze, give you a ‘free hug’ or go anywhere near you with their fire-poi/diabolo.

As for the glitter, that’s one of our personal favourites. Glitter can hide a multitude of sins! When we arrive to play at a festival feeling tired, jetlagged, hungover or any combination of the three, we get changed, put on some slap, sling some glitter on our faces and we are ready to go again. It just gives you a bit of sparkle (literally), and immediately adds a bit of pizzaz to whatever you’re wearing on stage so you feel a bit more special than when you were asleep in the van five minutes ago.

Lois Macdonald, guitar. Essentials : Water/Sunblock and The ol’ gang

The sun. The centre of our solar system; the giver of life; the bringer of sunburn and her evil twin Sun Stroke. I’m fair-skinned; I’m allergic to things. A day walker, if you will. I spend my time in even the British summer darting from one shaded area to another. I have a whole host of pills and thrills designed to protect me from a range of new and unfamiliar environments, and key items in this kit are water and sun cream. My sun block is factor 50, it contains insect repellent, and I refuse to feel shame for this. I’ll share it with you, and you’ll thank me.

Sure, festivals are about the music, atmosphere and short-term memory loss, but what use is the ticket to the party without your nearest and dearest?

The hours of trekking between stages, and late nights around instant BBQ fires that you will share with them will be unforgettable bonding time. Whether it be arms around each others necks singing along to your favourite band, dancing like a dick at 3am, or helping you the following day to remember whose email address you have written on your arm in permanent marker, those friends – whether you came with them or met them in a queue – are for life. And life is brief, so love each other.