Roskilde - The Finish Line

Ok so I spent the last week at the Roskilde Festival here in Denmark. It was my first experience at a multiple day music festival. I ended up working the festival which came with some nice benefits ie. free entry, restricted campground with free hot showers and nice toilets, also entry into the actual festival area before the music started and discounted beer at the volunteers section. It turned out to be quite the blessing even though the work was extremely boring. In the public camps there was tons of noise all night long, some robberies, random people having sex in random tents, trash littered everywhere, the constant smell of urine, tents being tagged/slashed/destroyed/pissed on and lots of other things.

Anyways the music was pretty great. Although there in previous years have been better lineups, this year was still good. I was finally able to see Radiohead, The Streets and Jay-Z. Those were the big 3. Radiohead headlined the first day and put on a very technical show. They were no frills but still played a great show. Friday The Streets headlined and put on the best show on the main stage. They worked the entire crowd and had people taking there shirts and spinning them over there heads by the end...I was instantly reminded of a rap song. Jay-Z closed the festival and kept the hits coming. There was a slight rain (only rain of the festival) that delayed the start of his performance. He took over the stage 30 mins late but brought a full band and a guest to finish the festival in style. I also watched some Danish bands/rapper/singer songwriter - Tina Dickow, L.O.C, Veto. I also saw Chemical Brothers, Neil Young, a bit of Slayer and Judas Priest among others. The surprise band of the festival for me was definitely a British band by the name of Enter Shikari. They mixed some punk rock/screamo with sampled dance music. The music was amazing and the stage show was pretty insane. I ve never seen a drummer leave the drums so many times to go to the front of the stage to show off his dance moves. It was quite amazing and I would definitely see them again.

Overall the weekend was quite exhausting and extremely dirty. There was trash everywhere after the first couple days of camping. There were many port-o-potties but that really didnt matter because people pissed everywhere imaginable. This was not reserved for men...I saw my fair share of females squatting it out. It was hilarious and disgusting at the same time. By midweek the whole place smelled of baked urine and beer. Speaking of beer, according to the roskildefestival website over 1,000,000 liters of Tuborg was sold. This is between 33cl cans and .5l cups so to put that into perspective around 505,050 six packs of beer. So considering roughly 90,000 people were there (23000 volunteers, 67,000 people who paid for tickets) that would mean that every single person drank a bit over 5 six packs throughout the week. Its more likely though that many people actually didnt drink and the amount consumed was 2-10 times more for those who did. Basically people would get drunk and pass out, wake up and drink more. I heard a guy talking to his buddy about the thursday night and didnt realize that it was saturday and that he had missed all the music on friday. Basically for most it was a week of drinking with some music mixed in. For me it was quite opposite. I drank one night...mainly I was too tired after walking and standing on my feet all day. By 1 or 2 in the morning after the last bands had played I was ready for bed.

All in all it was a pretty great festival and I would do it again....perhaps next year if there is a good lineup.