Roskilde 2008: Sunshine, Dust & Squalling Feedback

Well it’s over for another year. The greatest festival on the face of the earth, bar none.

After the disgusting mud and oomphscah of last years festival, it was nothing short of a delight to arrive in Copenhagen last Wednesday morning in blistering sunshine, knowing that the only rain forecast this year was a possible bit of a shower on Sunday afternoon.

After a night spent boozing in the cheap, smelly, graffitied and impossibly hard to find Moose Bar on Wednesday night, it was time to flee the hostel and jump on the train. Twenty minutes later, we were staggering down the steps of Roskilde train station looking for the bus to the festival site. 12pm. Plenty of time to find a decent spot to camp.

However, the ten minute bus ride took us about 2 hours. First we got on the wrong bus.

‘Roskilde Festival?’ we asked the driver.

‘Yes. 10 kroner.’

25 minutes later we jumped of the bus after realising that she wasn’t going anywhere near the festival at all. So we waited for a bus back. Which duly arrived 10 minutes later, and proceeded to get a puncture. So we waited for another one. Which duly arrived and brought us back to the train station.

We jumped in a taxi this time, asking the driver to bring us to the main entrance. Which he did. The main artists entrance, the fucking eejit. So we bought a couple of six packs and headed off on foot for the main entrance at Camping East.

3 hours of walking around in the blazing sunshine later, we happened across a smashing little spot right beside some Finnish dudes who seemed to spend the whole weekend drinking Vodka, making balloon animals, and untangling their dreadlocks. Mikka, the main Finn, told me on Sunday night when I was staggering around the campsite lost in clouds of dust, smoke from burnt tents and half blind due to drinking 3 litres of wine in the previous 5 hours, that he believed himself to be a immune to vampire attacks because of the garlic that he wore around his neck.

He also told me that his sister was a catwalk model until one unfortunate incident which left her standing on a catwalk, roaring at the audience ‘I HAVE LOST MY SHOOOES!!! I HAVE JUST TAKEN SOME MAJIC MUSHROOMS!!!”.

He was that type of guy.

Anyway, i’m not going to bore you with a day by day account of what I did and with who.

However, if anyone knows an Australian girl called Clare who lives in Kilkenny, or possibly LImerick, do tell her to drop me a line…our paths crossed a few times over the weekend you see..

Of the bands, some were amazing, others were as shit as I thought they would be. Radiohead should not headline a festival. Ever. Radio head are the Bovril of music. You either love them or hate them passionately. Festival headliners need big choruses, not avant garde electronic noodlings.

Neil Young was pretty impressive for the 20 minutes that I saw, because I was busy fulfilling a lifelong dream and watching My Bloody Valentine absolutely OWN the festival, with a thunderous, feedback drenched blast of pure white noise. I literally couldn’t hear for about 30 minutes after the gig. It made ordering beer quite fun, seeing as the bar staff were also deafened.

Mogwai were pretty awesome, as were Slayer. Danish death metal outfit Pilgrimz weren’t too bad either. I bought their CD and lsitened to it in the campsite that night.

Grinderman rocked the house, and Nick Cave made me laugh with his mustache, karate kicks and red leather jacket that he said he ‘borrowed off Michael Jackson’ before flinging it to the crowd.

I missed Danish instrumentalists Efterklang because the venue was too full to get into. And Irish/Danish Hip-Hop ’superstar’ L.O.C (Liam O’Connor to his friends) didn’t looks out of place in front of 20,000 people on the Orange stage on Saturday afternoon.

Chemical Brothers were a bit of a dud, although maybe because my ears were still ringing from MBV.

Norwegian band The Grand – check ‘em out – came across like a mix between Led Zeppelin and Queens of the Stone Age. I shall invest in some of their stuff.

Jay Z was pretty good, although I was arseholed on wine at that stage on Sunday night and I had a Danish girl dancing under my poncho so I wasn’t really concentrating that much to be honest.

Kings Of Leon, despite the fact that I think their third album was rubbish, were pretty good on the main stage. Although they mostly played songs off the first two albums, which is probably why I liked it so much.

Gnarls Barkley was avoided like the plague.

Band Of Horses played one of the finest sets I’ve ever seen anyone play anywhere, and seemed generally emotionally overwhelmed to be there on what was repeatedly called ‘the happiest day of their lives’. Pretty much perfect.

Battles were brilliant, and were on just after midnight, when I had my dancing shoes on. I totally forgot about Hot Chip even playing the festival, which says a lot about Hot Chip.

French housey types Digitalism closed the festival after Jay-Z but I was a bit staggery by then, and couldn’t get my groove on as much as I’d like to. Thats when I went back to the tent, got lost, and struck up a conversation with my Finnish friend. Who was playing frisbee in the dark when I ran in to him.

I missed Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, missed Seasick Steve, missed Cat Power, missed The Gossip, walked out on MGMT because they were shit, caught a bit of the Hellacopters set, missed Holy Fuck, thought the Streets were totally fucking shit…

The food is fantastic (on Saturday night I dined on Reindeer Stew and mashed potatoes) and the bar queues are non existent. The people are ridiculously friendly, and even when rolling around in the dust with their trousers falling down, lying on their back playing air guitar and doing a bicycle thing with their legs, before getting up and putting a load of coins in their mouths and shouting at a bloke with a skull on a stick, you never feel like there’s going to be so much as a punch thrown.

The festival is entirely self sufficient and not for profit. Its’ run seamlessly with a staff entirely made up of volunteers, and it’s on again next year, as it has been for the last 35 or so. It’s as big as Glastonbury, and isn’t populated by cunts.

Get your skates on. The plane was nearly full this year..

ROSKIIIIILDE!!!!!!

~ by oftroad on July 9, 2008.