onefestival.org

If you’re heading to Benicassim this summer then you’ve got a little over a month to get familiar with the acts on offer. There’s a number of fairly obscure bands playing this year, so it is wise to get on Spotify or Last FM and listen to as much as you can before heading out.

My advice is to make a festival playlist with all the music you can find that relates to this year’s line-up, play it on shuffle and just delete things from the list you aren’t keen on when they play. That way you are left with a reasonable list of the more obscure acts to add to the ones you were always planning on going to see. Simple.

Benicassim festival is one of the best European music festivals around and this year it promises plenty more fun. However, we can offer a word or two of advice for people heading to the festival this year.

Make sure you get your return travel in order in good time because it can be a real chore getting out of Beni on the morning after the festival.

Coaches are a good idea because they go directly from the main campsite and although trains are a little confusing, they are a comfortable and quick alternative.

The most important thing is to make sure you’re going from Benicassim itself rather than from a nearby town because getting to that town on the day could prove trickier than you imagined.

There are bound to be a few people who are little bit disappointed with this year’s Glastonbury line-up, but if you’re one of them, you shouldn’t let it get you down. Instead, it makes sense to use this year to discover all the things about the festival you previously haven’t made the most of because there’s been too much great music.

For starters, you can check out the Healing Field and join in with certain forms of therapy. Then there’s Shangri La which demands a bit of attention. The Crafty Field, Green Futures and the Circus Field are always available and you can also sample the food and drink of various parts of the site.

Remember, Glastonbury is all about discovering new music as well as the things you’re already into, so take a gamble on some names you don’t recognise. When all’s said and done, there’s far more to Glastonbury than the big names on the big stages, which this year leave a lot to be desired.

The Hull Freedom Festival has been awarded funding from the Arts Council England (ACE), despite the fact that the body had its budget cut by £100 million following the Spending Review.

The music and performance arts festival has received £100,000 from the ACE, which will enable it to continue adding more than £5 million to Hull’s economy.

Last year’s Freedom festival featured performances from The Wanted, McFly and Alesha Dixon, as well as an aerial acrobatics performance from Transe Express, the Monster Madness parade and an astounding fireworks display.

Details for the 2011 festival have not yet been revealed, but an announcement is expected soon.

The line-up for the Latitude 2011 festival has been announced, with Suede, Paulo Nutini and The National confirmed as headline acts so far.

The latest announcement sees Eels, Bombay Bicycle Club and Foals joining the headliners at the festival, which is held at Henham Park Estate in Suffolk from Thursday 14th July to Sunday 17th July 2011.

Other acts set to perform are Bellowhead, British Sea Power, Deerhunter, Bright Eyes, KT Tunstall, Hurts, I Am Kloot, Paloma Faith, The Vaccines, My Morning Jacket, Rumer and Villagers.

There are plenty more acts still to be announced for Latitude 2011 though, so watch this space!

A reggae festival aiming to mark the 30th anniversary of Bob Marley’s death will be held at Wembley Arena this coming July.

The One Love Peace Festival is to be named after the iconic Bob Marley gig in Jamaica in 1978 when the I Shot the Sheriff singer encouraged rival political leaders to shake hands on stage. It will have a message of peace – “Throw away your guns, throw away your knives” – and all the proceeds from the landmark event will go to charity.

In honour of their hero, who died of cancer aged just 36, and his great contribution to music, artists such as Busta Ryhmes, Shaggy, Aswad, Sean Paul and John Holt will perform at the peace festival. Marley’s son Ky-mani will also perform some of his father’s best-loved songs.

The Seattle-based band Fleet Foxes have been confirmed as a headline act for the Green Man festival 2011, along with Texas four-piece Explosions in the Sky.

The organisers of the Green Man festival, traditionally held in the Brecon Beacons every year, have started to tease festival-goers and folk fans with a few line-up announcements in the last couple of weeks. Of all the twenty or so bands and artists confirmed for the August 2011 festival, notable acts include:

• Bellowhead
• The Travelling Band
• Villagers
• Holy F*ck
• The Burns Unit
• Polar Bear
• Robyn Hitchcock
• The Low Anthem
• Mancub Babywoman
• The Ramshackle Union Band

As you know festivals are all about music and having a dance and a good time with your friends whist listening to your best bands.

The best way to get the most out of a festival is to be prepared so know what times your bands are on and get there early so that you can get a good place to stand where you have enough space to dance and can also have a good view of the bands.

Festival spirit is very important – if you have ever been to a festival you will know that the vast majority of people at festivals are very happy and everyone is nearly always friendly and eager to help.

Festival goers often take flags with them to show that they are proud of their roots. Flags are also a brilliant idea to put up near your test – especially if you can put it into the ground and have it on a large pole so that the flag is high up in the air and this makes it MUCH easier to view where your test is (especially when they all look so similar!)

When I went to my last festival, we made the major mistake of buying far too much alcohol. Dont get me wrong we did end up drinking the majority of it all, however the problem came when we were moving all the alcohol and the supplies and camping apparatus to the fields from the car park which was unfortunately MILES away from where we decided to actually pitch our tents.

There were about 10 of us and we all had to do two trips and my arms were killing me carrying all the alcohol.

There were some people there that had the right idea – some people had shopping trollies (no idea where they got them from), other people were using babies trollies and one person even had a wheel barrow to transport their alcohol supplies.

Before you go to the festival be sure to check the line up of the bands which are playing. The best course of action would then be to confirm with your friends who are attending the festival – which bands they would like to see. You can then confer and compromise so that you all get to see your most favourite bands.

When I went to Leeds festival a couple of years ago, we all got a program to find out when the bands were playing and I wanted to watch the Killers, where as the majority of my friends wanted to watch Kasabian.

We arranged a meeting point that we would all go to at a certain time after the bands had finished and met there afterwards. This is the best way to ensure that everyone gets to see their favourite bands and avoids any arguments.