| Location(s) | Roskilde, Denmark |
|---|---|
| Years active | 1971–present |
| Founded by | Mogens Sandfær, Jesper Switzer Møller (at that time Magnussen), and promotor Carl Fischer[1] |
| Date(s) | Four days, starting from first Thursday in July, or last Thursday in June |
| Genre | Rock, Alternative rock, Psychedelic Rock, Punk rock, Heavy metal, Pop, Synthpop, Reggae, Hip hop, Indie, World music, Electronic music |
| Website | www.roskilde-festival.com |
Roskilde Festival is a festival held south of Roskilde in Denmark and is one of the six biggest annual music festivals in Europe (the other five being the Sziget Festival, the Glastonbury Festival, the Paléo Festival, Rock Werchter, and Exit Festival). It was created in 1971 by two high school students, Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller, and promoter Carl Fischer.[1] In 1972, the festival was taken over by the Roskilde Foundation, which has since run the festival as a non-profit organization for development and support of music, culture and humanism.
It is Denmark's first real music-oriented festival, originally for hippies but today it covers more of the mainstream youth from Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. Roskilde Festival 2007 had more than 180 performing bands and gathered around 80,000 people paying for the concerts, with more than 21,000 volunteers, 5,000 media people and 3,000 artists – which means almost 110,000 people participated in the festival.
For many years it was a tradition that the campsite opened the last Sunday of June, but in 2010 the festival opened Saturday instead. The festival management argued that this would prevent earlier years problems with the fence going down before time. The early opening of the campsite, gives the festival guests plenty of time to settle down and "warm up". The festival officially starts the following Thursday at the Animal Showgrounds (in recent years simply known as the "Festival Site") and lasts for 4 days.
Until the mid-1990s the festival attracted mostly Scandinavians, but in recent years it has become more and more international (with an especially large influx of Germans, Australians and British).
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The bands presented at Roskilde Festival are traditionally a balanced mix of large well known artists in the absolute live elite, cutting-edge artists from all contemporary genres, popular crowd-pleasing acts plus local Scandinavian headliners and up-and-coming names. The special Roskilde feeling is in particular ensured by stages located inside large tents, catering to an enthusiastic music-loving audience. As opposed to most other European festivals all bands play "real" concerts lasting for at least an hour.
The stages were until 2003 named after their colour, but as the names had not matched the actual colour of the tents for a period, it was decided to rename all stages except the Orange Stage, the central and main stage. The Orange Stage is open in front of a huge field, whereas the other tents cover the whole audience, the largest of which is the Arena stage (formerly known as Green Stage), the largest tent in Europe with an official capacity of 17,000 people. The 2007 edition saw two new tents, replacing Ballroom (1997–2006) which presented mainly World music, and Metropol (2003–2006) which presented mainly Electronica. In 2010 two stages, Astoria (from 2007) and Lounge, did not return, due to a slight shift in focus towards fewer, but bigger bands.
The music covers such styles as rock, Hip Hop, Metal, urban, electronica and 3rd world contemporary music. It has become a tradition to let an up-and-coming Scandinavian band open the Orange Stage on the first day of the festival. There are often surprising performances by classical acts, film-music, opera etc.
Apart from music there is always some theatre and 'lone acts' wandering around the festival site. Terrain and tents are always decorated in various ways. The current tents are:
| Stage name | Year introduced | Capacity | Main genres | Replaced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orange | 1978 | 60,000+ | All | Big Stage |
| Arena | 2003 | 17,000 | All | Green Stage |
| Cosmopol | 2007 | 6,000 | Hip Hop, Electronica, Urban world music | Metropol |
| Odeon | 2003 | 5,000 | Mixed, mostly rock-ish | Yellow Stage |
| Pavilion | 2003 | 2,000 | Mixed, mostly rock-ish | Blue Stage |
| Gloria | 2011 | 1,000 | Mixed | |
| Other | ||||
| Pavilion Junior | 2005 | 2,000 | Mixed – only up and coming Nordic acts | Camp Stage |
The festival campsite covers nearly 80 hectares and access to it is included in the ticket price. It usually opens on Sunday morning prior to the festival itself. Apart from the small and separate Camping South it is divided into two areas, East and West, each comprising a service center with establishments ranging from food stalls to a cinema. The campsite is further divided into 'agoras' that provide toilets, cell phone charging and luggage storage. They also host events according to each agora's theme: dance, skate, swim etc.
Over the most recent years, the opening of the campsite has turned into an event of its own, as getting an attractive place for your tent seems to be increasingly important to people. And this has only been increased by the fact that large areas of the campsite each year is turned into gravel pits.
Thousands of people arrive during Saturday (some even arrive several days before), to wait (and party) in the queue until Sunday morning at 8 a.m. when the gates to the campsite officially open. Due to this, the festival has introduced temporary transit areas (in both East and West), making it possible to let all these thousands of people get in at the same time. The last couple of years the fences around the transit areas has been knocked down several hours ahead of official opening by festival guests eager to get the spot for their tent that they have in advance thoroughly planned to get.
In recent years the fences into the camping site have been overrun earlier than the official opening. This is called "Væltning af hegnet" (The overturning of the fence). The festival has improved security at the fences up until the festival, but without success. Thus the camping side was overrun at around 4:30 in 2008 and, even though new steps were taken to prevent this, at Saturday around 21:00 in 2009.[2]
To prevent another "Væltning af hegnet", the Festival decided to open the camp site already at 18:00 Saturday, but the fence was already overrun before noon. The festival sees it as a problem when the fence is overrun, as it shortens the time used to set up toilets, water posts etc.
Every year, on the Saturday of the Festival, since 1998, Roskilde Festival Radio organizes a nude run around the camp site. One male and female winner will receive a ticket for the next year's festival.
Apart from the coverage in everyday media an event of this size gets, Roskilde Festival also has its own media: A newspaper with 1 daily issue and a radio station broadcasting 24/7 throughout the entire festival, including the initial "warm up" days. Besides playing music and reporting from the concerts and campsite, the festival radio also hosts the annual Naked Run, with a ticket for next years festival at stake. The rules are simple: You have to be the first to cross the finishing line, and you have to be naked. Through the last couple of years, as an attempt to attract other than male contestants, the rules have been changed, so that the first female to cross the line also gets a ticket.
During Pearl Jam's concert at the Orange Stage in 2000, a violent incident occurred. Nine victims—three Danes, three Swedes, a German, an Australian and a Dutch man—died when they were crushed as the crowd rushed toward the stage.[3] The reasons for their deaths were examined by police, public prosecutors, and subsequent civil trials, all of which determined that the causes were accidental. Many people fell down at one place; when they did not immediately get up, crowdsurfers fell into this "hole," and people at the bottom died of suffocation. By the time security guards in front of the stage got to the area of the accident after the music had been stopped, it was too late. As crowd surfing seems to have been among the precipitating factors, it was subsequently forbidden across most of Europe..
In the following year, the accident led to massive changes with regards to safety to avoid similar situations – not just at Roskilde Festival, the security conditions for festivals everywhere in Europe changed. Before the accident in 2000, Roskilde Festival was considered one of the safest festivals. Many other festivals have smaller safety systems than Roskilde Festival and revised their procedures even further. Glastonbury Festival in England chose to cancel its festival in 2001, in part to consider lessons from Roskilde, although mainly due to an influx of 150,000 non-ticketed visitors at its own 2000 event. Each year Roskilde Festival makes an extensive health and safety assessment on the basis of which the festival is executed. The accident at the Orange Stage led to the construction of a memorial grove containing a stone with the inscription "How fragile we are" (a quote from the Sting song "Fragile") surrounded by nine trees.
Pearl Jam's song "Love Boat Captain" references the tragedy with the line "Lost nine friends we'll never know... two years ago today." When performed in concert, lead singer Eddie Vedder modifies the lyric to reflect the passage of time since the tragedy.
The 2010 festival (40th edition) officially opened with a memorial to the nine young men who were crushed to death at the event in 2000. American punk legend Patti Smith was given the honour of holding the short pre-concert ceremony, and she chose to open the tribute with accompanying music from Mozart. Her lead guitarist, Lenny Kaye, then read out the nine men’s names while Smith threw nine roses into the crowd.[3] You-tube video 6-30-2010 [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9UiXOB48IU&feature=related]
Sunny. Shows by bands such as Metallica, Blur, Electric Eel Shock, Coldplay, Björk, Massive Attack, The Streets, Iron Maiden, Queens of the Stone Age, Urlaub in Polen, Interpol and 150 more.
Rain. The 2004 festival featured artists such as Muse, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Santana, Korn, Pixies, Fatboy Slim, Wu-Tang Clan and Morrissey. David Bowie was scheduled to play at Roskilde 2004 but cancelled due to heart problems, with a notice on his website. Instead, Slipknot, who were on tour in Europe, filled the spot.
The 2005 edition featured artists such as Audioslave, Autechre, Snoop Dogg, Black Sabbath, D-A-D, Duran Duran, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Brian Wilson, Fantômas, Kent, Sonic Youth, Interpol and more than 160 other bands and DJs. This year was also a huge contrast to the previous year on the weather front. Hot and sunny all week.
With more than 79,000 paying visitors (as well as approximately 20 000 volunteer day workers), the 2006 festival was the biggest in Europe[5] for the year. With only one day of rain and the rest of the week being sunny, this festival also ranks as one with lucky weather conditions. Changes from the previous year included a new swimming lake – which proved to be very successful due to the warm and sunny weather – and a lounge stage called Bar'n. Some of the performing artists were Bob Dylan, Immortal Technique, Roger Waters, Guns N' Roses, Tool, The Strokes, Deftones, Morrissey, Franz Ferdinand, Kanye West, Placebo, Bullet For My Valentine, Arctic Monkeys, Sigur Rós and The Streets. Danish band Magtens Korridorer opened Orange Stage.
Roskilde Festival 2007 turned out to be the wettest one yet, by a rather large margin. Approximately 95 mm of rain fell during the course of the festival, as opposed to 44 mm in 1997, which was the wettest before 2007. Thursday was a day consisting only of rain, ending up with a lot of guests returning from the concerts to find their tents flooded. The organisers stated that it seemed that most of the people who left returned later on enjoyed a somewhat mixed weather experience Friday, and mostly dry, but a bit windy and chilly days on Saturday and Sunday.
The full programme was released on 19 April 2007 and included bands such as Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, Björk, Beastie Boys, My Chemical Romance, Arctic Monkeys, The Who, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Killers and Tiësto. Danish band Volbeat opened Orange Stage.
Also Danish rock band Nephew played at Orange Stage on 7 July. This concert was later released as a live CD/DVD named 07.07.07 – this referring to the date of the concert. Danish rapper L.O.C featured in the concert, where they also mixed their songs with other songs, e.g. singing a line from Rammstein's Amerika in the song USA DSB, and singing Black's Wonderful Life in the beginning of Movie Klip.
Roskilde Festival 2008 was dry with the exception of a 10 minute shower on Saturday 5 July and rain that started around 22:00 on Sunday 6 July. The sun shone for the rest of the festival.
The full programme was released on 16 April 2008 and included The Chemical Brothers, Band of Horses, Duffy, Kings of Leon, Neil Young, Radiohead, Grinderman, My Bloody Valentine, Gnarls Barkley, Girl Talk, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Streets, Judas Priest, Slayer, Tina Dickow, and The Hellacopters.
Roskilde Festival 2009 was the hottest in 33 years according to the festival newspaper Orange Press. The festival was hit by a major cancellation, when rapper Lil Wayne had to cancel due to sickness. He was replaced by Gogol Bordello who played the only 6 starred concert at the festival. Orange stage was opened by Swedish rapper Petter, who had prominent visitors on stage such as Dee Pee from Rockers by Choise and L.O.C, who was on Orange stage for the third year running (featuring on Nephew's Hospital in 2007, and his own concert in 2008). Petter has been called a failure for this concert, because he wasn't able to get a full crowd, and the opening of Orange has to be big.[6] Nine Inch Nails played at Orange Stage Friday night at 01.00am – 03.00am and gave what several Danish newspapers called "the best concert of Roskilde '09". Nine Inch Nails were on "Wave Goodbye"-tour and will most likely never visit Denmark again. Roskilde '09 also meant the anticipated return of the Danish hip-hop group Malk de Koijn, who played a 2 hour concert the night between Saturday and Sunday at Arena, and a big party-atmosphere at Orange Stage Thursday night, when Trentemøller and prominent guests made all of the crowd dance as if they were clubbing. Danish rapper Jooks played as an up and coming act at Pavilion Junior Wednesday in the warm up days, and due to him having a major hit after he was booked (Hun vil ha' en rapper), the tent was packed to the limit in a concert, who could easily have filled one of the bigger stages.
Other big names were: Kanye West, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Oasis, Coldplay, Faith No More, The Mars Volta, Volbeat, Slipknot, Lily Allen and Pet Shop Boys.
The weather at 2010 festival was sunny all days of the event.
The 2011 had nice weather the first few days, but on Thursday-Friday there was massive rain.[7] Roskilde Festival faced a sad incident when a young woman fell from the Tuborg tower to her death.[8] The tickets were sold out, with a projected profit of around 10 million Kr.[9] The opening of Orange Stage was done by Danish Veto, and was closed by Kings of Leon.
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