Wednesday blues

As I have previously mentioned, Wednesday is usually my favourite day of the week, due to there being a Roskilde announcement, but for the past two Wednesdays, there have only been announcements for the bands that are playing during the four days in the run up to the main event. So as you can imagine, I am not best pleased.

I have previously threatened to do a post on Roskilde, and I have decided that today will be the day.

Roskilde festival is held every year at the start of July in a town called Roskilde, about 30 minutes away from Copenhagen. The festival runs from Sunday to Sunday, but the first four days are mainly for unsigned bands, Roskilde cinema and for people to get in and set up camp. The final four days is the main part of the festival).

Each campsite, or Agora, has a specific theme. For example, there is the swimming Agora, which is the campsite right next to the lake. Here people can swim in the lake which is man made. The Agora next door to the swimming one is the fishing one. Bet you can't guess what goes on here!There is also a skating Agora, where there is a large skate park, as well as Agoras set aside for quiet, or reading, or dramatic arts. Last year they even had an ice skating rink (which wasn't really ice, but who's complaining?)

We stay in the camp which is called Get-a-Tent. There are two main reasons for this. Yes, the ticket is more expensive, but you don't have to take a tent with you, as there are brand new tents set up before hand, and you just get allocated one when you arrive. There are free hot showers, and nice, clean, flushing toilets. I know it makes me sound old when I say that those are selling points! And you get to keep the tents at the end of the festival. Which is great (although I now have a rather large collection of Roskilde tents gathering dust in my loft!) The other good reason for going Get-a-Tent is that it is generally quieter, and you don't wake up in the morning to find that someone has very kindly set up camp directly in front of where you need to get out of your tent!

So to the festival itself. As I have said, the main festival (or rather the bit I go!) starts on the Thursday afternoon. We usually head over to Denmark on the Wednesday, which gives us a chance to get acclimatised, and also catch up with people we have met over the previous pilgrimages! It also gives us a great chance to try and decide who are going to be seeing, and working out routes between stages to ensure we don’t miss much!

Over the past four years I have seen some amazing bands, but have also been subjected to some utter crap – Neil Young, Jay Zed to name a few.

But in all reality, Roskilde isn’t just about the music. It’s about the people. It is a brilliant festival because people are there for the experience. They aren’t there to get hammered. They aren’t there to cause a fight. They aren’t there to be an idiot. They are there because they genuinely love the festival. And once you have been to one, you will return again and again.

So that is just a nut shell of Roskilde. Closer to the time I will publish the entire list of those that I want to see, but if you can’t handle the wait, go to the website, and have a little look see! Maybe I will convince all two of you faithfuls to come!