Electric Picnic survival guide: tips and tricks from our experts

Jim Carroll  

What’s the best gig you’ve ever seen at Electric Picnic? And is anyone likely to hit those heights this year?

Four stand out from the festival’s golden years: Arcade Fire and Kraftwerk in 2005, Grace Jones in 2008 and Chic in 2009. I think Róisín Murphy and Shamir are the ones to watch with fireworks in mind this year.

What’s the most scurrilous EP 2015 rumour you’ve heard?

That Prince was due to play Body & Soul but said no because the slot clashed with the All-Ireland hurling final. The purple dude’s a big fan of the Cats.

What’s the best non-music event or installation you are hoping to catch?

I like the cut of Trailer Park’s jib and would definitely recommend a visit to their ’hood. That said, the festival definitely needs a shake-up: music bookings are on point, but the event needs more anarchy and chaos and less corporate tie-ins.

Describe your festival diet.

Three square meals a day, Golden Hill ice-cream and Berocca.

What’s your ultimate festival survival tip?

Wear proper boots and your feet will thank you for it

Have you ever reviewed a show at EP while off your bin?

How else do you think I ended up reviewing Ocean Colour Scene in 2013?

What’s your recovery cocktail of choice when you’re peeling yourself out of a tent on Saturday or Sunday morning?

A banana, a sausage sandwich with marmalade and a pot of strong tea.

Una Mullally  

What’s the best gig you’ve ever seen at EP?

The Knife blew apart the very idea of a gig in 2013. That’s one of the greatest performances of any kind I’ve ever seen. This year, I’m excited to see FKA twigs and Shamir. On the main stage, I reckon Grace Jones and Florence will do well.

What’s the most scurrilous EP 2015 rumour you’ve heard?

That the festival is breaking from tradition and showing the hurling final at the Irish tent in Mindfield.

What’s the best non-music event you are hoping to catch?

The Theatre Stage in Mindfield is always excellently programmed. Dublin Old School and Boys and Girls are definitely worth catching, and I’m excited about Natural Bitches.

Describe your festival diet.

A sausage sandwich for breakfast, corn dogs and curry chips for snacks, sugar free Red Bull for energy, and some late-night chai to warm the bones.

What’s your ultimate festival survival tip?

It’s such a cliché, but pacing yourself is the only way. No one wants to be – or hang out with – someone crying into a bottle of Club Orange on Saturday morning, unable to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Have you ever reviewed an EP show while off your bin?

Remarkably, no. At the Picnic, I work all day and take early nights. I might have a glass of red wine with The Ticket crew back at the hotel. That’s about the height of it.

What’s the one thing you’re hoping you remembered to pack?

North Face rain jacket.

Lauren Murphy  

What’s the best gig you’ve ever seen at EP? And is anyone likely to hit those heights this year?

Chic, 2009. Late on Saturday night, thousands packed into the Electric Arena at just the right level of merriment and giddiness. The crowd created an atmosphere I’ve never experienced before or since, and the songs were one disco-dancing suckerpunch after another.  Even thinking about it now, the hairs on my arm are standing on end. Unforgettable.

What’s the most scurrilous EP 2015 rumour you’ve heard?

I laughed heartily when I read somewhere that Zayn Malik could be making his live debut at EP 2015. Not quite his crowd.

What’s the best non-music event or installation you are hoping to catch?

The Literary Stage line-up looks brilliant: John Banville, Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Colin Barrett and more.

Describe your festival diet.

Whatever’s veggie-friendly: burritos, chips, curry, bread products, shame. Plus beer. You can feck off if you think I’m queuing for Pie Minister.

What’s your ultimate festival survival tip?

Bring strong painkillers and Dioralyte for the hangovers.

Have you ever reviewed a show at EP while off your bin?

File under: scurrilous rumours (unfounded). I wish I had been for some of the shows I’ve seen – it might have made them more tolerable. I mean you, Crystal Castles.

What’s the one thing you’re hoping you remembered to pack?

My sanity. Phone charger.

What is your recovery cocktail of choice?

A few cups of overpriced strong coffee mixed with the dulcet tones of Dublin Gospel Choir and you’ll be graaaand.

Patrick Freyne  

What’s the best gig you’ve ever seen at EP?

2013 – David Byrne like an art-rock scarecrow and Annie Clark like a clockwork marionette singing some of the best pop music ever written along to a choreographed brass band. It made all the other acts look like they weren’t trying. I danced a lot.

And is anyone likely to hit those heights this year?

Performance wise, FKA twigs might get close, but her songs aren’t as good. For that I’ll have to watch four middle-aged men I didn’t appreciate enough the first time around (Blur).

What’s the best non-music event or installation you are hoping to catch?

One year I spent about an hour watching a man carving a wooden bowl with a pole lathe in the Green Craft Village section. I felt very zen.

Describe your festival diet.

Largely pies from Pie Minister. I favour a pie-based diet. I think our Health and Family supplement recently did a piece about the benefits of the pie-based diet. Though I may have hallucinated that due to vitamin deficiencies I have as a result of my pie-based diet.

What’s your ultimate festival survival tip?

Every man and woman for him/herself. Leave the injured and elderly behind (sorry Jim Carroll). Only the fit survive at the modern music festival. You’ll have time for your conscience when you’re safely in the helicopter on the way back to the “safe zone” (Dublin).

What’s the one thing you’re hoping you remembered to pack?

A towel. To quote Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “You can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat . . . you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

Have you ever reviewed a show at EP while off your bin?

As a child I idolised Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch, a man/muppet who was always in, on or adjacent to his bin. This is how I review shows. I am, at my worst, very close to my bin.

What’s the most scurrilous EP 2015 rumour you’ve heard?

That it’s actually purgatory and those who washed up there were dead all along. Wait, that might be the finale of Lost.

What is your recovery cocktail of choice?

Last year I heard a man extolling the virtues of Carlsberg as a good breakfast beer. However, I prefer to tuck into a restorative pie and then watch a man carving a wooden bowl using Iron Age technology.

Peter Crawley  

What’s the best gig you’ve ever seen at EP?

Arcade Fire’s performance in 2005, not long after the release of their debut, Funeral, in a tent that only took about 500 people to fill. The band hadn’t quite gone stratospheric and neither had EP, so everything felt like a revelation: a frenetic performance with a crowd ready to match it, a life-affirming collection of songs disguised as an emotionally purging wake, lyrics with the intimacy of a whispered conversation. My hope is that Shamir comes close.

What’s the most scurrilous EP 2015 rumour you’ve heard?

That Grace Jones’s rider now stipulates the bubbles in her Cristal should “not be touching each other”.

What’s the best non-music event or installation you are hoping to catch?

Things are really looking up for aerial performance this year: Guerrilla Aerial will be craning necks at the main stage area and the Theatre Stage at Mindfield has commissioned a new show from aerialists Dying Breed: Natural Bitches promises motorbikes and angle grinders and Amazonians. It’s like the 1980s never went away.

Describe your festival diet.

Daring.

What’s your ultimate festival survival tip?

Turn off your cellular data on arrival and leave it off. Nothing needs to be Instagrammed that badly. And when you’re lost, very late, somewhere in a forest, with your judgment on the blink, you will be grateful for that last sliver of battery.

Have you ever reviewed a show at EP while off your bin?

No, officer.

What’s the one thing you’re hoping you remembered to pack?

P20. The sheer unlikelihood of its necessity has landed me in a heap of puce-hued trouble before.

What is your recovery cocktail of choice?

One part warm-tent-fermented orange juice to two parts Dioralyte. You develop a taste for it.