"Festival" music C/D

I've been meaning to start a thread like this for some time. It seems there's a plethora of artists whom I rarely see outside of the indie Summer festival roster - hippie bands, neo-dub guff, "performance"-outfits, white rappers with a full band etc... Soom T, Gentlemen's Dub Club, Ed Cox blahblah...

Have you been to these kinds of festivals? Is this kind of music completely indefensible? Is it "good if you're there at the time"? Or is there anything of value here? I find it hard to imagine that people would listen to a lot of these acts outside of a live outdoor/tent setting but obviously somebody does...

Anyway, knowing the ILX sphere this will probably sink pretty quickly...

http://www.jukeboxalive.com/image.php?image_id=326436&view=albumArt

these acts routinely sell out theaters here too, to college (high school?) crowds i assume. i never would have heard of them if they weren't touring here all the time, i'm thinking like beats antique, lotus (not flying lotus, but the 'electronic jam band'), shpongle, some terrible 'world/gypsy dub' band whose name i can't remember, and the whole pretty lights/bassnectar axis of electronic producers whose records no one listens to.

yes this is what i'm talking about. UK festivals basically full of 'em. And there are TROOPS of dreadlocked middle-class kids who pour out from Bristol and Brighton to see them. I was privy to this last year when I went to Boomtown Fair where I witnessed a lot of it first hand (being a cool-dude, I was there for the reggae artists ;-))... But it's an interesting, prevalent subculture as distinct as any other. I'm guessing this is just a continued strain of the Ozrics/Megadog/Eat Static/Dreadzone/Zion Train continuum which I thought died out some time in the early 2000s.

I feel, being on ILX, that this thread is lacking in snark - but I generally don't do snark. It's kids having fun I guess, and I have to admit I've happened to bump into a Gentlemen's Dub Club set on more than one occasion and that they ARE fun to watch live on a big soundsystem, but I'd never dream of listening to them at home.

Someone was playing me Dub Colossus recently and they are actually pretty good! Even if the main guy used to be in Transglobal Underground, which I guess puts them into the Festival Music genre automatically.

People will, and do, listen to any old shit if they're in a field and on drugs. That might be Squirrel Nut Dubbers, or or it might be Shed Squirrel.

I don't take drugs, and I don't listen to music in fields. Except through headphones.

Always fun leafing through the Glastonbury schedule looking for the most punchably named crusty dub techno jam outfit.