JaikusThe title of this article is a sentence, most Danish bands dream of shouting out at the Roskilde Festival some day. It means, “What’s up, Roskilde!”, and is usually followed by loud screaming in response from the audience at the Roskilde Festival; North Europe’s largest festival, located in Denmark near Copenhagen.
This year was my 14th year at Roskilde. While memories from the many years are hard to keep apart, each year is something special. This year will, without a doubt, first and foremost be remembered as the rainiest Roskilde Festival ever. Roskilde usually has rain; this year it had a flood. Roskilde usually has mud; this year it had liquid dirt. Roskilde usually has puddles (of rainwater, that is), this year it had ponds. But I won’t be one to complain - I had water in my tent at one point, but I was lucky to be camping in a relatively dry area.
In fact, I took pleasure in defying the rain. The festival opened Thursday at 5 PM, and at 1 PM, I was invited to a 10-year anniversary reception far away in the West camp. Thursday was the most rainy day of the festival, and probably will be the most rainy day of this entire year. It poured down for almost 24 hours non-stop, and I had to cross several ponds of mud deeper than the top of my wellies, but I made through to the reception party, and spent the next few hours eating canapés and drinking Champaign, a very odd thing to do indeed at Roskilde.
I also had great music experiences at the festival. Two bands, whose albums I immediately need to buy, are Goose and Loney, Dear, but I also enjoyed a number of Danish acts, as well as the band ending the festival; Basement Jaxx. That last concert, especially, reminded my of a thing that is so unique to Roskilde: People are always so damn nice to each other! I was up in front of the main stage, Orange, and of course it takes a lot of cheering, jumping, dancing, pushing, shoving and shouting to be part of the spearhead of 50.000 people, but it never gets uncomfortable or nasty.
Alas, 7 people died in front of Orange Stage in 2000, but the festival and the audience really learned from that. If I accidentally hit someone in my wild cheering (and that happens a lot), I apologize with a smile, and get a smile back. If I find me and my 189 centimetres towering in front a group of girls trying to see just a bit of the stage, I offer them to get in front of me. If things get wild and some of the more intoxicated people in the audience can’t behave them selves, I use my size to protect those who are smaller around me. The great thing is, most people tend are just as considerate as me, and that’s what’s makes the whole thing work.
I wouldn’t call this The Orange Feeling, but there has been an interesting discussion about that at Jaiku. Speaking of Jaiku; I attempted to microblog from the festival, and also wrote 16 entries during those 5 days, but I wasn’t really able to check on comments from the mobile phone, and didn’t really get that many anyway. It was an experiment, and I don’t know what to make of it yet. See you next year!