Another Pied Piper Story

There are many contradictory theories about the Pied Piper. Some suggest he was a symbol of hope to the people of Hamelin, which had been attacked by plague

TLDR

At Another Love Story festival, armed with 2 Minirig speakers, 2 subwoofers, and a backpack, I disobey the authoritative and absurd command “turn off the music” thus saving people from a depressing walk back to the campsite in silence.

Friday Arrival

I left Ennis at 12:30 and arrived in Dublin for 3:45.

I sat near the front of the Another Love Story festival bus leaving Dublin at 5pm heading to Meath.

A very interesting man in his 50s sat beside me on the bus.

He said he had ADHD and was a programmer. 

He is very eccentric and intelligent. He felt like a character out of the movie Waking Life.

My neck was sore from turning to the left to keep engaged with him.

I enjoyed our conversation but it was a bit intense.

He was explaining why jokes are hard to remember and how he goes out of his way to remember them.

He was doing the lighting for “Gerry the Shaman” who was doing some stage organization.

I told him what I planned to do by showing him my Minirig speaker bag.

He told me he loves techno. I promised him I would show him some cool tracks at the “unofficial rave in the woods”. He understood and said he would talk to Jerry about me being able to do something like that. 

It was very warm on the bus, it took 50mins to get to the festival but it felt longer because of the intensity of our conversation and the heat.

I said to him, “I don’t have much of a big vocabulary but I always share two words with people, an “axiomatic fact” which means self-evident and the other word I share is….”

Noel the programmer jumps in without missing a beat “a tautology” I started laughing in disbelief at how quickly he nailed that. I shook his hand, a great moment.

After getting off the bus I got my 2 man tent set up quickly enough. I camped on my own. I didn’t talk much to the neighbours except for one volunteer who was camped right beside me, Cian, he was sound.

I sat for a while outside my tent, enjoying the sun, listening to my speaker at a low volume.

I wandered into the festival and was spotted by Aoife who has been volunteering at a bunch of festivals. I explained to her my conversation on the bus and she was able to point me at Gerry the Shaman who was standing with Noel.

I walked up to them and said hello. I only talked briefly to them. I noticed Noel had not mentioned the rave yet but he was trying to give me a chance to explain my plans to Jerry.

I read the situation and decided that it was best not to mention anything.

I later bumped into them again in the woods where Noel smiled at me and said “investigating?”. I nodded.

Friday Evening

The woods looked ideal for a “rave in the woods”. There was an old ruined tiny chapel at the end of the forest that looked ideal. It was far away from everything. In retrospect, the spot probably wouldn’t have worked because there wouldn’t have been enough traffic.

I walked around with Aoife for a little bit but then went off on my own. Bouncing around from place to place. There was one spot called the Shift Shack which is the equivalent of a small-medium smoking area with a DJ. This place generally had something decent playing.

I caught a fairly big named act called Session Victim who were over from Germany.

It was 1 DJ and 1 bass player, this was really cool and everyone was loving it but their laptop crashed twice! And completely killed the flow/buzz.

At around 1am Friday I started preparing for the rave in the woods. This involved pairing left and right speakers and connecting subwoofers and checking config levels in the Minirig speaker app. This always goes wrong because of “Gremlins” so extra time and intention is needed.

I walked over the bridge and into the wooded area where there is a lit-up floor panel where people were standing, but not too busy.

At the end of the forest was a small church lit up in red. When I was walking with Aoife earlier she said she found it creepy. However earlier there were a group of people inside the tiny chapel singing well-known songs and the craic was mighty. That’s why I thought it would be a decent spot, busy but not too busy, nice and out of the way.

Friday Night

As I was about to set up at around 1:45 am, security came over and started herding everyone out, He said you can go over the bridge and hang out there. Over the bridge, there was an ambient music area so that was no good for me.

Between this area and “The Lawn” (main stage), there was a small area surrounded by trees with a circle on the ground, kind of like a Japanese zen garden design. There were some seats here, but too few.

I sat here for about 20 minutes waiting for the main stage music to stop. As soon as it did I asked the people sitting around if it was okay if I put on some music.

The guy responds “do you charge?”. I appreciated this comment because it showed the gratitude he had for my gesture to put on music.

“I accept donations”.

I set up here for about an hour between 2am and 3am. People came and went, with a few moments of emptiness. This was humbling considering that there was decent foot traffic passing by.

I was amazed by the amount of people that didn’t even walk over for a moment out of curiosity. To be fair, there weren’t many seats, and the “Way Out There” stage was still pretty loud even here.

If you stepped into the Minirig speaker bubble you could hear music just fine. I had to rely on tunes with a strong funky bass to punch through the sound pollution. 

There was a nice moment where a group of 8-10 friends, all gathered around the circle mural. They were all dancing, playing, laughing. 

At one point a guy came up and said “I haven’t heard this song in two years! It is so “memorable”, my sister sang this all the time”. Beam Me Up - Jaques Renault remix

“why am I only hearing this music…now?…from you?”

Despite these moments, people still came and mostly left. So the place was fairly quiet throughout my stay at this spot.

Security herded everyone out of this area at 2:45 , I obliged and packed up quickly.

The Music Stops - Friday Night

I sat and listened near “The Lawn” for a while. There were two music areas other than the main stage. One near the manor house and the other down the lawn hill slightly called “Way Out There”.

This area is the last area to play music. I’m sitting down in my low ground chair near the manor, people are still gathered here in the marquis.

Music stops and I start playing at low volume, slowly rising to full The Ginning by Stavroz, a chill song with nice acoustic guitar playing.

Mean security man is on me straight away “Turn off that music right now!”. I nod and start zipping up my bag with the music still playing.

The guy next to me, who was doing sound engineering for the main stage, looked at me intensely and said “whatever you do, DO NOT TURN OFF THE MUSIC!”, I nod and say “I know”.

People are starting to gather around me and are appreciating that something…anything is playing at all.

Mean security man is all over me, getting in my personal space and telling me to keep on walking to the camping area, he was annoyed that I hadn’t obeyed his first command, “turn off the music”.

He is off my back now and I’m walking faster than I should be because of all the adrenaline. 

I’m literally the Pied Piper at this point as everyone starts following the music from the lawn to the camping area. This was the main problem that I had with the mean security man which was that I was doing him a favour by helping clear the area out.

Various people came up to me as we were walking, expressing grattitude “Thank you so much, this walk back to the tents would have been so depressing without you”.

At the halfway point What You Doing - Dennis Cruz came on. People started to dance and cheer a little.

Friday Night Rave With DJ Obnoxious

I got talking to a group and headed back to their 6-man tent. I continued to play tunes until 7am. Various people came and went throughout the night, it was great.

A female DJ came in who was apparently playing at the festival. She was incredibly rude and obnoxious. First, she says “You HAVE to check out Seinfeld, he is class”.

I nod and smile, thanking her for enlightening me.

She then comes over to me and starts showing me her Spotify playlist on her phone… “how do I connect?”

“It’s Bluetooth….”

“You have to hear this song”

“........ okay….. I’ll….disconnect”

I was just curious to see how much of a big meanie she could be.

I also wanted to know how bad her music taste was.

It was mediocre bordering on dreadful.

The people in the tent stopped dancing “what happened to the music?”. 

One girl understood the situation perfectly and empathized with how I was handling the situation.

On her 4th track, which was genuinely a terrible track. I turned off the speaker and tried to reconnect. Her phone reconnects before mine, so now I need to repeatedly ask her to disconnect from Bluetooth.

She was in a state of disbelief that she had to do me this favour. “THERE! I”M DEFINITELY disconnected now!”. What a truly unique individual she was.

There was 3-5 mins of silence while I had to reset my phone because of “Gremlins”. After I did this and got the speakers working again, my phone now needs to have the screen on all the time, or else the music will cut out.

So every 30 seconds I need to touch my phone. This was most uncool and made enjoying the moment difficult. The solution was to go into settings and change the timeout from 30 seconds, but I didn’t think of that so I just kept the tunes going, literally. 

One guy in the tent, I had met previously in the forest. I had shown him the 528hz tuning fork, so he remembered me. I was able to explain to them that most of the music they have heard tonight has been converted to 528hz love frequency.

This is something I don’t cover much in this post. I went all around the festival sharing this 528 Hz love frequency tuning fork with anyone I met. The goal is that they would be resonating with 528hz which is love and gratitude basically. When people hear some (not all) of the music I’m playing on the speakers, they are getting a similar benefit as the tuning fork.

There were various people coming and going, throughout the night. Baha the dancer was coincidently camped right beside this tent, but he did not join us this night. Our party tent was green.

I got some sleep between 8-12 am.

Saturday Morning and Evening

I talked to my neighbours for a bit but they are not even worth writing about…

One guy who was a solicitor and just being unnecessarily passive-aggressive.

I went on a mission to recharge my speakers. There were no phone charging stations at the festival. I kept trying to get in contact with my friend on the bus, Noel, who said he could help me with that. The reception was poor and his phone was dying.

I got talking to the sound engineers because I heard a song they put on early in the day. I asked, “who is responsible for this tune?”

“It was me” he smiled. I left him with “well done” and a thumbs up.

His name is also Tom.

I listened for another while. I waited until Tom the sound guy was sitting down, I walked up and asked, “can I show you something cool?”.

I proceeded to show him the Minirig backpack, which consisted of 2 speakers and 2 sub-woofers. They were impressed. I asked them if I could charge them.

“of course you can, you just need a USB plug”. 

I didn’t so I went off on a mission to find one. I asked at the information desk but no help really. 

I wandered around aimlessly for a bit and asked one group who was with Aoife the volunteer. I was amazed that Aoife’s friend Annie had one. 

I told her “I may need to borrow this for an extended period of time”, just meaning it may not be tonight when she gets it back.

I hand in the two subwoofers to the sound engineers and head back to my tent happy. I sleep from 6-10 pm. 

Saturday Night

I go back to the sound engineers and swap out my 2 Minirig subwoofers for the 2 speakers to be recharged.

I caught one group of good DJs who were back to back at the “Tree Haus” wooded area. Where one DJ played the best track of the festival that I heard.

Shout To The Top (Hifi Sean Mix) I’ve always loved this melody but could never justify playing the original. Upon listening to the track, the DJ had mixed in something else, so this link is not what I heard in Tree Haus, but good enough.

They finished their set at 2 am so I headed back to the lawn to start prepping for when all music stops playing. 

I’m quite nervous and excited at this point, reassuring myself “it will go fine”.

I sat down in an area where security wouldn’t see me. I had my hood up so I wouldn’t be spotted as I would have heat on me from the previous night.

I’m sitting near the marquis by the manor. I’m hearing what is playing beforehand and what the crowd are enjoying.

The music is going on until 3:30-3:45. Which is much later than the previous night. There was a point where I started playing music, thinking music had stopped, but the DJ played one more track. I stopped my speakers immediately when I hear the music, no one noticed me anyway.

The music stops at the marquis by the manor house before the music down the hill at “Way Out There”. I considered starting in the marquis at this point but decided to wait until all music was stopped.

Music had been dead in the manor marquis for a few minutes now. I stand up slowly turning up the song Tivoli’s groove.

I’m now walking to the wall beside the manor under the marquis.

This helps bounce the sound off the wall to get an extra punch out of the speaker, which makes it sufficiently loud enough for the packed marqui of about 100-150 people. It also makes it more difficult to determine where the music is coming from. 

The sound security guy was laughing on Sunday, telling me that’s all people were saying “where is the music coming from!?”.

I see security move, so I move, I do a lap around the marquis, moving through the crowd, some people just slowly realising that I’m the music.

The adrenaline is quite something…

• the Minirig speakers are filling the packed marquis

• security is looking for me

• everyone has gone from depressing silence and rabble to…

• a whopper tune, Tivoli’s groove.

• “where is this music coming from!?”

• I have 2 Minirig sub woofers at max output on my back

I nestle in on the edge of a seat (the back support part) in the middle of the marquis. I have my hood up and head down just bopping. People are now turning to me “are you the music??”

I take off my hood at this point.

People are being very complementary here, they are in a state of pure gratitude. I’m getting offers of various drinks and rollies. I oblige everyone as I am enjoying the moment. I was here for what felt like 10 minutes but was probably 3-5.

I then start to move as I spot mean security man. 

He catches me and pulls me back as he tries to rip the speaker bag off me. 

I’m constantly slowing down while he is trying to speed me up out of the marquis. 

“Go on there you and be the pied piper and head back to the campsite”, he did not say this in a state of gratitude, he was being a big meanie.

I looked him in the eye and basically said “are we okay man? I’m going to do as you say”. He went from a 9/10 agro to a 6/10 because he had no choice. “Go on you there now”. I think he went away at this point.

Don’t Say Goodnight

During this part of the walk, the song Goodnight - Husko is playing. It is only in retrospect that I realise the song title was very appropriate, I just picked the track because I liked it.

“Dude there is an army of people behind you right now” someone says to me. I never looked back to see at any point.

“Go into the Shift Shack” someone says to me. I start heading in there but realise there is still music playing, I turn around and start heading towards the camping area. I try to stop in at an empty marquis.

I was about to set up when the sound security guy comes up to me and says “I’m sorry but you can’t set up here” I can tell that he is sound and I say “of course” and start moving along.

I realised from the previous night that the adrenaline was making me walk fast, so I start walking as if I’m in quick sand, taking an extra few seconds to move my feet. I think people behind me started joining in doing the same.

At this point a photographer is down low in front of me taking a shot.

The sound security man is now joining in with me walking side by side smiling and dancing. He appreciates what I’m doing for the security team and wants to have a good time.

Gazebo Rave

I’m about to go through the gazebo where security is usually checking for wristbands, but I was in luck because the Gazebo was empty. 

“Setup here!” one guy shouts.

The track is going into a remix of Goodnight - Husko song, which is called Edd’s feeling saucy remix

In particular, the drop at 2:20 is just about to play.

I unzip the bag somewhat which lets the Minirig speakers breathe a bit (louder). I then raise the bag over my head and start shaking it up and down as the drop is playing. The crowd all cheering.

I hold the bag for about one or two minutes and then proceed to sit down. I need to sit because I have to concentrate. 

A girl by the name of Lorraine is asking me my name. I say “Tom Flynn but you can find me on Spotify as Autopilotmix”, she tried to get an Autopilotmix chant going, god bless her (no chance). She got a “Tom” chant going which was a great moment. 

I ask Lorraine to record the moment because I can’t. She asks Baha the shuffle dancer to record it. This was recorded moments before a big flood of people came in. I end up causing a big traffic jam eventually.

Lorraine was constantly sharing my name around, she says to one guy standing beside me who looked a little out of it. “You know Tom here is playing the tunes” the guy says to me “You are literally keeping me alive right now”, Lorraine adds “You’re keeping us all alive right now”. 

This is the state of gratitude that everyone was in, which is what really made the atmosphere electric, more so than the music. i.e you could play almost anything and people would be happy at this point of the night.

Throughout the night random people are still offering me drink, one girl offered me mushroom honey, and I obliged.

There was one guy who helped protect the speakers on the ground by standing in front of them, shielding them, which I really appreciated. So many wonderful and lovely people.

I had about 3-5 songs requests from people who had not been engaged talking with me, just random people coming up. 

I initially do the smile and nod and wait for them to come back for round 2. 

Most of these people are probably on coke I would imagine.

For round 2 I say “I have no data sorry”, most people take it well.

The energy in the gazebo was great, it gave the speakers an extra boost acoustically.

The crowd were really impressed with Love (Neagles remix) - Blk

This track played after 15-20 minutes of being in the Gazebo. This is the 1st point at which I stand up to look at the crowd. It is an impressive site, nothing crazy but something like 60-90 people. The crowd cheer as they finally see me. I started pumping my fist for the drop to this track Love (Neagles remix) - Blk

This is actually an Irish artist but the remix is by someone else.

The Minirigs absolutely delivered on this track and the crowd loved it. I don’t listen to much techno, so this is the heaviest track I know. I have nothing else like it that could possibly follow.

“Why weren’t you playing at this festival?”

“I am playing at this festival :)”

Campsite Tree Rave

We were in the Gazebo until 4:30, the mean security guy comes in and tells me “There is a massive queue behind you and people are about to get crushed”, I respond “I will pack up and move immediately”

“Do it quick!”.

I move as fast as I can to get the Minirig speakers back in my bag. As soon as the bag is on my back, he is now pushing me violently through the packed crowd “I told you to go straight back to the camping area and you didn’t do it!”.

I was so happy to have denied this man his power trip. 

Despite his best efforts, people had an amazing time.

Mean security man turned out to be contracted in and was not part of the main or usual security team, who were all really sound. I thought that was very interesting.

Was he planted there to deny the craic (i.e obey authority enforcer) or is he just a big meanie? Who knows…

I start walking through the campsite towards a tree that looks good and set up. People are slowly trickling in, a definite drop in numbers from the gazebo to where we are now. 

Miguel, a guy with light orbs around him joins in, I thank him for providing some light “we are a team”. 

About 30-60 people around this spot near the tree between 4:30 to 6:30am.

The light orb guy would do a whistle every now and then on a particular tune. At one point he looks at me and says “Dude! you are a NIIIINJA!”. This was probably the nicest compliment I got because he seemed to have a good ear, recognizing if a tune was good pretty quickly.

There was another group of girls that would do a great big “oooaaauuh” cheer whenever they liked a point in a tune. They were the ultimate barometer gauge of the crowd. If I wasn’t consistently getting those cheers, then I have missed the ball. They kept spirits high throughout the night with some others joining in on the cheers.

It was a pleasure to watch Baha shuffle dance to all these tunes, quite often people are just sitting down when I’ve played these tracks (camping chairs or whatever).

There were various other lovely people that I talked to throughout the night but can only vaguely remember the interactions.

The speakers eventually died around 6:45 with about 10-15 odd people left. The crowd stayed strong until the very end.

Baha said to me “I was waiting all night for you to play a mediocre tune but you didn’t, every single track was amazing”.

Other comments throughout the night…

“Where are you pulling these tunes out of?”

“My legs are going to give out, can you slow it down a bit or you are going to tire us out”

“The tunes kept getting more intense, it was surreal”

“Did you create any of this music?” -> “no I just I find it”

“I’m just after realising that you are using Minirigs, I own one myself, wow”

“You’re doing a great job”

“I would be back in my tent if it weren’t for you, thank you”

“Most DJs played a 1-hour set and got paid hundreds… You played a 4-hour set for free”

“That Pied piper walk was so memorable”

“Do you have any Jamiroquai?”

Sunday Morning

I continued to stay up with Baha who offered me some essential oil, I was amazed because I usually bring it with me for festivals. I realised that’s where he gets his energy from, meaning a high-vibrational individual.

The two girls that stayed up talking with us are not really worth writing about. One girl kept asking me “are you okay!?” in a panicked tone.

I was almost triggered to say “If I was okay, I wouldn’t be after being asked that question” but I didn’t use passive aggression, I remained nice to both of them despite not liking them much at all. 

I got coffee and some food at 11am. I bump into “Mary Poppins” from the first night back at the 6-man tent rave. She was sad that she missed Saturday night’s rave but had heard all about it, I looked confused, “huh?”

“Everyone is talking about it…”. 

Noel, Donal Dineen, and All Together Now 2019 Pond Rave

I bumped into Noel the programmer. He apologises for not being able to help me charge the speakers.

Noel was camped next to Donal Dineen a famous Irish DJ. I first heard of Donal Dineen when he was sitting beside me at the pond the day after the “pond rave” in 2019 All Together Now. I was watching people come up and shake his hand at the pond, giving him much praise. Somehow I remember a “Barry” sitting beside me on the bench at this pond in 2019.

The below image would have been the night before this encounter with Donal Dineen that is happening on a Sunday night.

Anyways… On a Sunday night in 2019 at All Together Now I’m sitting with this dude Barry who is explaining to me who Donal Dineen is.

I can clearly see that he is a big deal because of the number of people recognising him at this pond.

Barry makes introductions to Donal “Tom had everyone dancing around this pond last night”.

Security is patrolling nearby so the area is too hot from the night before. So we played music at a reasonably low volume.

On the previous night, I got away with playing until 3:45 am (when all music was stopped at 3:00 sharp).

I pleaded with a reasonable security man “please, just buy me as much time as you can, and I will shut this down, I promise”

He nods and walks away reaching for his walkie talkie “we may have a situation here”, this would have been around 2am. Anyways this is not the story to tell…

Donal makes a song request, at this moment in time my ego is swelling from the night before so I wasn’t as respectful as I could have been. I played his track.

Only recently I had been trying to remember this song he requested in 2019. I can’t recall exactly how I found it but I got it a day before the ALS 22 festival. It’s a good track, and at that time in 2019 it had not blown up to its now 50+ million plays on Spotify.

The track was Disclosure - Tondo

I explained to Noel that I made sure to catch Donal Dineen out of respect for the man. 

On Saturday night at 11 pm when Donal was playing his set, I walked into the tent. I could hear Latin-type music that would be typical of Donal Dineen (or similar to the above song). As in, I wasn’t surprised by what I was hearing.

I could see that the crowd were really enjoying themselves and that he was doing a great job.

Then all of a sudden the guy to the right of me leans in…

“This music is pretty shit isn’t it?”

I burst into laughter because that’s exactly what I was thinking.

I particularly don’t like this kind of music, or put more softly “it does absolutely nothing for me”. I shook the guy’s hand and smiled, I left shortly after that.

Noel enjoyed this story very much because he was camped next to Donal Dineen and was constantly hearing people praise him. Noel prefers techno so wouldn’t like Donal’s music anyway.

Death Experience Marquis

Noel recommended I go check out the “death experience” marquis. He leads me to it as I missed it during my earlier ganders. 

The man in the funny red top hat beckons you over with a whisper. This is a nice touch because it already sets the scene for reflection.

When you sit down you write your first name on a small tag.

The guy in the red top hat then writes RIP 20XX under your name.

He then turns the sand timer. You have the headphones on listening to spoken word on the topic of death for 5 minutes.

Then you go into the next room and put on a VR headset where it gets you to try and think about what you would do if you had a second chance at life. 

I am then instructed to write an intention on the other side of my tag with my Name. I write “I will create beautiful music to share with everyone”. I hang my tag on the tree among others.

Sunny Sunday Afternoon

Sunday was very sunny but the music was somber. Me and Baha walked around quite a bit, having great conversations. We must have been the two most recognizable people at the festival, Baha was even more so as everyone just loved him. He is very social and a great dancer. He loves the colour green which resonates with 528Hz, I thought that was very interesting.

Throughout the day various people would say “thank you for the music” and “great job on the tunes last night, I was just telling another group over there about it”. 

I met Annie at one point and had to explain to her that I lost her USB plug. (it turned out I hadn’t) I felt very bad about this.

I tried to explain how her kind gesture made so many people very happy. She took it a bit sour but there wasn’t much else I could do or say. I’m just so grateful for what she did.

After Sing-along Social, I helped Baha pack up his tent as he grabbed the bus for 7 pm. I got a lift back to Ennis with the girl who owned the 6 man tent where we had the Friday night rave.

I couldn’t be happier with how that weekend went. 

Festival review

Overall the festival was excellent. Time and effort went into creating an ambient chill-out area which consisted of a forest, skinny dipping, sauna, acoustic stage, and holistic healing tents.

The forest area was lit up nicely and the Tree Hause stage (on the opposite side of the festival) looked cool.

The atmosphere was excellent, with no hint of violence, except for the mean security man.

The music was definitely something different, with the exception of a marquis playing classics, which is understandable.

There were probably many other very good acts that I missed throughout the festival. I should have spent more time at Tree Haus as this generally had stuff that I liked and had a good overall atmosphere.

I missed all of the holistic healing stuff which was a shame because there was a sound therapy thing on that I wanted to check out.

It would have been nice if the ballroom dancefloor was going. This is my first time at ALS but if I had attended previous years, I think I would have missed the ballroom as it seems iconic to the festival.

Probably the best festival I’ve been to in terms of people and vibe.

ALS 22 Pied Piper Set

ALS 22 Pied Piper Set - Youtube