Rock am Ring

Festival season hits and Rock am Ring’s lineup appears. Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Linkin Park, The Offspring, Fall Out Boy, Kings of Leon, Haim—no coherence, just whatever acts the promoters could afford that year, all thrown at a racetrack in Germany’s Eifel region.

There’s something honest about festivals that don’t pretend to have taste. Most of the ones that try collapse under the weight of their own curation. Rock am Ring just books whoever and lets the crowds sort themselves out. You get thousands of people with nothing in common—metalheads next to Linkin Park nostalgists next to whoever—all camping, all broke, all there because they want to hear it loud and don’t care who else is listening.

I’ve never actually been, but I know the type of person who does this every year. The real experience happens in the planning. Weeks of checking schedules, mapping which sets you’ll catch, building the whole weekend in your head. By the time you actually show up it’s already been better—the fantasy’s cleaner and easier than the muddy, exhausting reality.

But that’s fine. The point was never the experience matching the plan. The point was wanting something badly enough to drive cross-country and sleep in a tent for it, knowing the whole time that reality will disappoint the idea. Even now. Even when you know better.