Phoenix Festival

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The Phoenix Festival was set up by Vince Power of the Mean Fiddler Music Group in 1993 as an alternative to the established Glastonbury and Reading Festivals. It was held at Long Marston Airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon and was one of the first four day festivals in Britain.

Contents

[edit] History

Its first year in 1993 featured Sonic Youth, Hole, Faith No More and The Black Crowes as headliners with Julian Cope, The Young Gods and House of Pain. It was marred with controversy as festival goers were harassed by security demanding they put out campfires at midnight and put out sound systems, this was unusual compared to the 24 hour culture of Glastonbury Festival. This caused people to demand their money back and marred the festival's reputation from the start.

The festival never really recovered from this bad start. Although it had a consistently good line up, festival goers were less than happy with the site, which was an old airstrip, or the prices onsite.

These problems reached a climax in 1996 when many festival goers missed David Bowie on the Thursday night due to massive problems letting people on site. Having sold out for the first time due to Glastonbury being cancelled, the organisers struggled to cope with the crowds and extreme heat that saw temperatures on site topping thirty degrees celsius on all days. The weekend was further marred with problems with water being unavailable in parts of the site, though the Sex Pistols headlined their first major UK festival on this weekend. The festival limped on for one more year but could never compete with Glastonbury Festival which it was clearly trying to emulate. The 1998 festival was cancelled due to poor ticket sales but some acts were moved to that year's Reading Festival.

[edit] The Phoenix Year By Year

[edit] 1994

The 1994 Phoenix was held from the 14th to the 17 July at Long Marston, Statford-Upon-Avon. The acts were as follows, with headliners in bold type:

[edit] Phoenix Stage

[edit] Vox Stage

This stage in association with IPC Media's Vox Magazine:

[edit] Melody Maker Stage

This stage was in association with IPC Media's weekly rock "inky" music paper Melody Maker:

[edit] Jazzterania Stage

[edit] Loaded Comedy Stage

This stage was in association with IPC Media's "ladmag" monthly Loaded Magazine:

[edit] External links

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Major British music festivals
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