Birthday? How Bout Roskilde?

Oh boy, so last Thursday was my birthday if you didn't know and it just so happened that one of the biggest music festivals in Europe, and probably the world started, that day, Roskilde. The website says 67,000 paying guests and 25,000 volunteers who get free admission by working part of the festival. First of all, I'd never been to any sort of music festival where you camp and party all weekend and of course nothing ever this big. The festival music ran July 3-6 (Thursday-Sunday), but people can move into their campgrounds the Sunday before, and they even camp in line before that just to get good camping spots inside the festival grounds. The festival is about a 20 min train ride to the west of Copenhagen. We showed up that Sunday and found a nice spot in one of the more relaxed area, not to say that it wasn't crazy. Since we had our first week of class that week as well, we left our tent their and headed back to Copenhagen. After my last class on Thursday we headed out for the weekend. We managed to collect some friends to bring as well. Three girls Abby from Wisconsin, Kara from North Dakota, and Megan from Oregon. They were a little iffy, but they managed to get tickets. The festival had loads of music of all types, 180 acts on 6 stages with one being a large main stage. The music we saw goes like this:

Thursday - Lupe Fiasco, Radiohead
Friday - Kate Nash, Band of Horses, Gnarls Barkley, Kings of Leon, Sunburned Hand of the Man, The Streets
Saturday - Swollen Members, Neil Young, The Chemical Brothers
Sunday - Babylove & the Van Dangos, Static & Noise, Jay-Z

The three groups on Friday turned out to be my favorite ones of the festival. Swollen Members is a crazy hip-hop group who I wanted to see because they had actually opened for a Brother Ali show in Union South in Madison. They consisted of two MCs and one DJ. It turned out one of the MCs had a bad accident and could come, but they still managed to play. They put on an amazing show even though the DJ had to cover some of the lyrics.

Before the Neil Young show, I was a little worried it might be like the Bob Dylan show where he just stood there and played the guitar without moving. Even in his old age he still rocked the main stage, he was all over the place and on point with everything, hands down the best show of the festival. He played a moving 3 hour concert that ended in a Jimi Hendrix style destruction of his guitar, except without the fire. All the strings were ripped and he played his last notes by shaking the guitar.

We wandered around a bit after the Neil Young show in amazement and came back to check out the Chemical Brothers in the front "pit" area. The Chemical Brothers are an intense electronic music group consisting of two guys. This show wasn't so much good due to the music, but more the intensity of everyone in the crowd. Everyone was just going crazy and we were right in there dancing like crazy with everyone. The music was still good and they had some great visualizations.


Besides the music it was a party all the rest of the time. We would wake up in the morning like a Wisconsin football game day and start drinking. It wasn't so much planned as is was hard to lay in your tent while the sun was already baking you at like 9:00 AM. Then we would hit up the music and wander around the grounds. There was a lot of great food like Mexican, burgers the size of your head, Chinese, African, and other simple stuff. The festival also has a lot of random activities for people like the naked race, a place to pay for a hot shower while girls in bikinis wash you, some ponds to go swimming where they play music from speakers underwater, a graffiti teaching area (I graffitied our tent at one point), a huge maybe 40 foot tower that shoots out flames when people beat on he drums around it, random game areas with bizarre little games, an outdoor movie theater, an indoors lounge area covered in sand with a DJ, and a ton of other random stuff. After the last shows of the day we would come back around 2-3 am and just drink and party with all the people in the tents around us. We met a bunch of guys who had been doing this for years, so they gave us a lot of good advice. Each night could be described as the end of a great house party. People stumbling around crashing into tents, yelling and screaming, blasting music, breaking chairs and tent poles, and what not. We would be up to 5-6 each night, but there was always something going on. After I had gone to bed at one point I got woken up by a soccer ball to the head that was kicked at the tent. Cleanliness was lacking for the most part, but it didn't bother me or most people at the festival. Just a little splash of cold water and you're good to go. I heard that if the festival stopped now, in 1000 years they would be able to detect the layout of all the walls by the leftover urine in the soil.

We left after the last show Sunday night, Jay-Z, around 1-2ish in the morning and made it home at around 3-4am since the metro train stops running in Copenhagen around midnight. Thankfully we managed to eventually catch a bus. Tyler and I were both in pretty rough shape and passed out in our beds instantly. I managed to set my alarm for class at 8:55, but my phone battery died in the night and I slept right through it. It's probably better I didn't go because I had the best sleep ever.