WHAT IS THE BEST FESTIVAL YOU HAVE EVER PLAYED AT?
Danny Rampling
“The Phoenix Festival opening up for David Bowie and his Drum N’ Bass act with my techno set. Also sunset at Big Chill a couple years ago in the chill out field where I stood in for DJ Jose Padilla”
Jon Carter
“Doctor Music when it used to be up in the mountains in Spain. It was on this plateau below the mountain tops so the sound was never blown around by wind, they could have it as loud as they wanted as no-one lived nearby and the ground was just slightly dusty – no mud anywhere. So damn civilised!”
Rock Steady Crew (DJ JS-1)
Good Vibes in Australia, Dour Fest in Belgium andf Splash in Germany.”
Benji Canelario
“Movement at The Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2010.”
TV Rock
“In Australia, playing the first Sensation White party here last year was a highlight. 38,000 people in one room with amazing production beside Morillo, Fedde and Marco V – and we bought in the New Year. It was Sensational…pun intended! Internationally, Monster Massive in LA was just off the chain for us too!”
The Plump DJs
“Any Glastonbury weekend and Coachella in California.”
MJ Cole
“Glastonbury and Big Chill ’09 were top. Lovebox’s 2010 line up is looking good…”
Ralph Lawson
“Exit Festival Serbia 2006”
Bill Brewster
“Last year at the Electric Elephant in Croatia on board the Argonaut, cast adrift in the Adriatic Ocean with only 200 nutters, a load of alcohol and a sound system for company. Good times.”
Denis A (DAR, Moscow)
“The best was Kazantip Festival in Ukrain which is every August on the Black Sea.”
Thomas Gandey
“I loved touring with the Big Day out in Australia, The whole Festival gets up and moves 7 times, its quite fantastic. I was playing live with the Presets, LCD Soundsystem and Soulwax – three of my favourite acts and made a lot of new friends.”
Copyright
“Defected In The House’ at Global Gathering, we played at 5.00 am to 4000 people as the sunrise crept through the tent doors…”
Moguai
“It is not really a festival, but the most exciting experience in my career was my set at the end of the 2003 Love Parade in Berlin. After I had spent the day on Paul van Dyk´s Vandit float, I went to the Siegessäule and played to 800.000 people while the sun was going down on the Brandenburger Tor.”
Kids On Bridges
“Benicassim in Spain.”
Ocelot
“Glastonbury 2009, we played on the Sunday night right before it poured down with rain.”
Lauren Pope
” The MTV Spring Break Festival I played last week in Croatia. Really up for it crowd who were really open minded with all the new tunes I was throwing at them”
Moonbeam
The best festival we played was Technoschastie @ Khabarovsk in Russia. It’s one of the biggest festivals in Russia.”
Toca
“Some years ago I played at a German Festival called ‘Fusion’. Very underground. I even played there one time for free because I liked it so much…”
Graeme Park
“Probably Valtifest in Amsterdam. I love it over there and always have a superb time.”
Umek
“This is a tough question as it’s hard to pick out just one or two. There are so many good events and most of them have something unique to offer. I have enjoyed performing at this year’s Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Dance Valley in Netherlands or Monegros in Spain are always great. And I really enjoy performing in Slovenia at the events, such as Dan Elektronike (Day of Electronica) in the beginning of May or Žur z Razlogom (Party for the Cause) in the Ljubljana central park on the last Saturday in August. But the list continues as I haven’t never really had bad festival experience so far.”
Shy Child
“Damn that’s a tough one. In the UK, might have to go with Bestival? The Big Day Out festival in Australia is probably the best overall though.”
Martin Ten Velden
“The Belgrade Beer Festival and London’s SW4.”
Chris Lake
“I really like Ultra in Miami. It’s a lot of fun, it’s during the Winter Music Conference, so it’s rammed full of serious music lovers, the weather is great, and the music is on point. It gets the thumbs up from me.”
Kid Massive
“It’s definitely gotta be opening for the infamous Roskilde Festival in Denmark, with my band Geeza sharing the stage with the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Audio Bullys, Scracth Perverts and a whole lot more. Doing that in front of a crowd of 15,000 people was insane.”
Andy Blake (Dissident/World Unknown)
“I guess my best festival set to date is probably in the Rizla arena at Big Chill in 2008. I’d done a couple of gigs in London the night before and we drove straight down, hung out all day and then I played in the early evening as the sun was beginning to set. It was one of those gigs where it all clicks into place perfectly and all I could see was a sea of smiling faces and people dancing like maniacs and whistling and cheering the whole time. I met a bunch of really cool people and got loads of nice bookings all over the shop off the back of that one set and I still get people coming up to me now saying it was their favourite part of the whole weekend. That’s always a really nice thing to hear, it never gets boring.”
Alex Paterson & Dom Beken
Alex: “Trekkonner, a weekend of music on an island in Copenhagen Harbour.”
Dom: “Fuji Rock in Japan.”
Alex P
“I don’t remember much about it all, but the first Creamfields was a cracker.”
The Ratpack (Lipmaster Mark)
“Global Gathering has given us some very good times over the years.”
Barry Ashworth
“Jesus there are so many good ones it’s hard to single out one. Bestival, Rockness, Rise, Beautiful Days, Secret Garden, Beathereder, Glade and that’s just the UK. Then Snowbombing, Zeiget – this list goes on and they are all amazing.”
Infine
“I think it was at Sonar 2007: It was one of my first gigs abroad and it was a really small stage but within minutes it was crammed with people. I was really nervous because it was a live show, but in the end everything went fine.”
Danny Howells
“Glastonbury, end of.”
Marc Vedo
“Glastonbury 2008 – an amazing event.”
System 7/Mirror System
“Glastonbury 2000.”
Perc
“When I played in the Drumcode tent at Dance Valley, just outside of Amsterdam a few years ago. Huge tent, great sound and a quality line-up of Drumcode artists. Such a great day.”
Lisa Unique
“Always Glastonbury.”
Elite Force
“Burning Man – no contest.”
Mark Rae
“The Perth leg of Vibes on a summer day.”
Reverend
“The Secret Garden Party.”
Jody Wisternoff
“Has to be Glastonbury.”
Smokin Jo
“Exit Festival in Serbia, just totally nuts. The amazing location which is some kind of castle and the people are just so up for it.”
Mark WIlkinson
“I don’t really play that many to be honest but I think the best one ever was a few years back in Dublin for Creamfields, Rocky and I played after Mr C and the atmosphere was amazing.”
Martin Solveig
“Field Days in Sydney.”
Mason
“Hmm… maybe about 12 years ago somewhere in Northern Scandinavia on Mid Summer night. Wasn’t the greatest gig, but by a lake and the sun didn’t go under for days so we all played and partied for three days in a row. That was still in the pre Red Bull era too I think.”
Daniele Davoli
“Reading every time.”
Oliver Lang
“I think it would be the first ever SW4 about six years ago, we did a Bora Bora tent, it was totally insane.
Michael Morph
“Glastonbury on the old Glade stage on a very sunny afternoon.”
WORST EVER FESTIVAL MOMENT?
Mark Rae
“I was there when people died at Roskilde.”
Jody Wisternoff
“When they pumped the contents of the toilets into the dance tent at Glastonbury instead of extracting the mud, minutes before we were to perform in 1998.”
Kids on Bridges
“Girlfriend…PMT – say no more.”
Barry Ashworth
That Glastonbury moment when they sprayed shit all over the dance tent, that was the first year the Dub Pistols played, I fell over in the shit and the tent stunk when we played.”
Paul Woolford
“Many years ago me and my compadre at the time, Tony Senghore, had left the Homelands site and decided it was a good idea to turn up on our distributor’s doorstep in Cowes in the Isle Of Wight unnanounced. To be fair, he let us in and put us up for two more days of complete nonsense. Unsurprisingly his Mrs wasn’t best pleased. We ended up doing an absurd jam session in somebody’s front room which doubled as a makeshift studio. Hopefully the DATS were destroyed. When we’d remembered that we lived in Leeds, we set off back. Gradually the fear and loathing kicked in, exacerbated by a wrong-platform turnout which delivered us to the concrete of Luton… a grim moment indeed.”
Ralph Lawson
“At Glade 2008, trying to drive the car out of the car park (quagmire) using ropes and a 4 x 4 that sprayed us from head to toe in cow shit.”
Rock Steady Crew (DJ JS-1)
“I had a crate of records stolen along with a brand new Vestax 05 limited edition mixer, needles, camera etc. stolen from my dressing room. And recently, I also had some loser throw a snowball that hit my laptop at a snowboard festival for burton.”
Shy Child
“Getting mistaken for Frodo.”
Ocelot
“Floating around a flooded campsite in Belgium fishing for my friends records.”
Kid Massive
“I played at the H20 Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa last month which is the biggest outdoor event in Africa. It poured down with rain during the day and unfortunately the covering over my stage was a makeshift one so it finally gave way right in the middle of my set – it was like having a bathtub of water dumped on me, the equipment, CDs, camera, everything!! And of course everyone was staring at me in my state of shock. It was forever after dubbed the “Shower Hour” of the day.”
Martin Solveig
“Zouk Out Singapore, I went down to thank the crowd, the crash barrer fell and I got rugby tsunamied by the people. It was a funny experience though. Check it on youtube, it’s quite dramatic!”
TV Rock
“When someone pulled the power from the mainstage at a festival in Germany half way through the set and they could not get the sound going again – we had to make a hasty exit as the crowd ransacked the stage!!”
Mason
“Fell face down in the mud. Luckily just after my gig as I was (yes) indeed wearing white.”
MJ Cole
” I once started a live set with full band and the vocalist got lost on the way to the stage. Had to backtrack and start again. Hairy moment.”
Chris Lake
“I went to a Dutch festival a few years ago, and there was this Irish guy there, dressed in a superman outfit, stood with his hands on his hips like superman does, whilst at the same time chewing his face off due to substance abuse. The funny thing was, I’d taken my parents out to this festival and had to explain to them what was wrong with him. Dad was fascinated!”
Lewis Pennington
“Losing my girlfriend for two days.”
Infine
“It was the moment when I realized that my laptop had been stolen from stage right before my performance. I was so lucky to get everything back from the festival´s insurance.”
Perc
“Getting separated from my mates and thinking that the quickest way back to the tent was cutting across the front of the crowd watching REM on the main stage at Glastonbury. Pushing past those people seemed to go on for years and I’m sure Stipey was giving me the evil eye!”
Steve Proctor
“I can’t tell you the worst as it would get me into trouble. So, realising I had locked the keys to my car in the boot and having to smash a window and pull the back seat out to get the keys and my records.”
Marc Vedo
“Having to change a tyre at 4am in the dark at Global Gatherings, feeling very rough. All we had was a phone light…”
Andy Blake (Dissident/World Unknown)
“The filthy weather at Bestival 08. I really got what I wished for that year. I was really up for playing but didn’t have a slot until about a week before when a last minute one came up with the Rizla chaps. So after frantically running around to sort cover for the gigs I was already booked for in London, off I went on my merry way to the Isle of Wight. I used to go to Robin Hill when I was a kid and I should have remembered that the site is great in the dry but utterly dreadful and useless in a downpour, especially when there are about 4 million merry pranksters milling about dressed as prawns and sailors and god knows what. For me at least getting anywhere other than where i was playing became totally impossible. I stopped drinking a few years back but the foul weather and distinct lack of gear onsite due to some rather heavy handed rural coppering got me in the mood for one last alcohol fuelled blow out. Cue a fairly epic 30-odd hour bender that finally ended back in London at Horse Meat Disco with me falling flat on my arse and near enough headbutting the naked dude bang on the cock after one too many vodka and limes.”
Kim Booth (Rebel Butterfly)
“When one side of my face swelled up and I didn’t know until I left – thought I had a weird disease.”
System 7/Mirror System
“Being forced to curtail our Steve Hillage Band headlining set at Glastonbury 1979 because the acts before us had overrun. Most unfair it was.”
Smokin Jo
Thinking I lost the keys to the van at Glastonbury, my boyfriend at the time decided I had to find them so made me spend the whole night looking for them around the site in the dark, when we got back to the van in the morning the keys where in the door. We went back to find our friends but they had gone, so when we finally got back to the van we found the window had been smashed in by our friends who were alseep inside thinking the keys were lost, DOH!”
Michael Morph
“Probably losing my phone on the way to Bestival a couple of years ago. It was a cess-pit of a Saturday, and it took me hours to find any of my mates. Luckily I was doing a spot on Bestival Radio so I just hung out there (once I’d found it!) and went on Facebook to get my mates numbers.”
Alex Paterson & Dom Beken
Alex: “Waking up after being spiked and having to play in front of 40,000 people at Glastonbury.”
Dom: “On The Dance Stage at Glastonbury as a session keyboard player. I new everybody in the audience could here me playing but I could only hear my sound bouncing back at me from the other side of the hill with about a second delay, I must have sounded terrible! The engineer controlling the bands’ sound onstage was too busy eating a sandwich to notice my frantic waving so in the end I took my shoe off and threw it at him…”
Joey Negro
“Bestival when the mud was out of control.”
Paul Woolford
“Exit in 2007 plus Glastonbury and Benicassim both of last year were both amazing for me.”
Alex P
“Getting back to a burnt out car.”
Umek
“This actually wasn’t as a bad experience as it was an interesting moment in my career that I will never forget. It was in the early years of my career, we were doing a small rave somewhere in the Slovenian countryside. Everything went quite well until the heavy rain started and a wind started to blow so heavily that a bunch of people had to hold the small plastic pagoda that was placed over the decks and mixer, or the wind would have torn it apart. Suddenly, the wind blew, took the record that was playing off the deck and blew it away some 50 meters. I just ran after it, caught it, wiped the mud of it, showed it to all the people that were hiding under the rooves of nearby buildings, sheltered from the heavy rain, put the needle back on and the party continued. This is a moment that reminds me how dedicated we were, and some of us still are, to music and partying. We were soaking wet and frozen through our bones but the spirit of people at that party was amazin
g.”
Denis A (DAR, Moscow)
Really bad toothache at Kazantip last year that lasted for two days. Not good.”
Lisa Unique
“Getting stuck in a field with my car, I was trying to get to the tent I was playing in. I got totally trapped and started to get flashbacks to the rave days…”
Thomas Gandey
“Not having the right passes to be let on stage even though you are playing at that exact moment.”
Reverend
“Scouting For Girls at T In The Park.”
Elite Force
“Usually when the heavens open up somewhere – Glastonbury has been biblically shite a few times on that score.”
The Ratpack (Lipmaster Mark)
“Well there was this one time when we had one of those old skool steering locks on the car and lost the keys, so the fire brigade had to cut part of the steering wheel off so we could get home. It took ages to come and we were probably the last to leave the site.”
Mogwai
“Anytime you run out of beer.”
WHERE IS THE BEST FESTIVAL YOU HAVE EVER PARTIED AT?
Shy Child
“I have some messy memories of the first Tales of the Jackalope festival.”
Bill Brewster
“Before I had kids, I used to love the Fat Tuesday tent at the Big Chill when they had it, great music and loads of friends hanging out. Bestival is also good but the weather always puts me off. I never knew there was a monsoon season in the Isle of Wight. These days, the nearest I get to a party at a festival is the children’s fancy dress parade at the Green Man on Sunday lunchtime.”
Mason
“A few years back when we were bored we decided to try and break into the Dutch Lowlands festival. The trail to get there was the best: climbing over fences, sneaking behind guards, crawling under cars, jumping rivers and dealing with barbed wire. Once we succeeded, we were in the right mood for a long night.”
Danny Rampling
“Glastonbury in the late 90s where I played for Mixmag/The Big Issue sound area at sunrise. We partied all day in glorious sunshine.”
Oliver Lang
“Global Gathering around 2001.”
Andy Blake (Dissident/World Unknown)
“Glastonbury 1990. The year the Happy Mondays forged a load of tickets and backstage passes for literally hundreds of their mates. It was the year that it all finally changed at the bigger, previously more rock orientated festivals and you could physically feel the change of atmosphere in the air like electricity. It was pretty much the last year of that kind of free state vibe at Glastonbury too which was a shame. The end of that kind of relatively benign lawlessness that I for one sorely miss at today’s events.”
Martin Solveig
“Pukkelpop in Belgium.”
Moguai
“I can´t remember the name unfortunately, maybe it was too good! It was in Gent in Belgium in 1991 with bands like The Meteors, Guana Beatz and Demented Are Go.”
The Plump DJs
“Glasto and Glade.”
Graeme Park
“That would have to be a Creamfields. Great for partying at because it’s less than half an hour from home so I don’t have to worry about checking out of a hotel feeling like crap the next day.”
Ocelot
“Probably SXSW just because we usually stretch it over two weeks and take a lot of friends.”
Michael Morph
Hmm. Tricky one! I like to party. And I’ve been to many festivals For unashamed nuttiness, probably Sonar or Bestival. But then again, Glastonbury has brough forth more than it’s fair share of 3-dayers…”
Perc
“Some of the old Tribal Gathering all-nighters around Luton. The one with Daft Punk and Kraftwerk was just amazing.”
Alex Paterson & Dom Beken
Alex: “Woodstock 2004 – the 25th Anniversary in upstate New York.”
Dom: “The Big Chill.”
System 7/Mirror System
“The Glade events of 2004 and 2005.”
Smokin Jo
“Glastonbury about 20 years ago, I spent the whole weekend with loads of mates, just hanging in the travelers’ field and in the dance tents, probably one of the best times of my life. I really want to go to Burning Man but think I may be too old for it now!”
Infine
“One of the best party moments was at Monegros 2008 . I was there with a good friend from Barcelona and we arrived there totally unprepared. We got searched by the police and then realised it was going to be extremely cold at night as it was in a desert and we just had summer clothes with us. So we got really wasted and stayed up until the next day (it suddenly became really hot), slept a little and went back to Barcelona. Maybe it was not the best festival nor the best party but I will always remember that night.”
Mark Wilkinson
“As above in Dublin, me and Rocky got er, involved that day and night for a good twelve hours plus.”
Lisa Unique
“Lovebox in London in 2002, brilliant.”
Rock Steady Crew (DJ JS-1)
“Sonar in Spain and Coachella in America 1999.”
Chris Lake
“Homelands Scotland 2000 I think. I have a very vivid memory of going ape shit to Leftfield – Phat Planet, while at the same time being blown away by the sound system, then going and trying to learn quickly how to dance to drum and bass, whilst listening to Ronnie Size…all whilst holding a hotdog.”
Reverend
“Glastonbury!”
Moonbeam
“Without doubt, the Russian edition of Sensation White, which was held in St. Petersburg.”
Kim Booth (Rebel Butterfly)
“My favourite festival was the first ever Bestival. It was when mushrooms were still legal and I had a beautiful mélange of every kind known to man. Walked around for hours on my own thinking I was an elf.”
Mark Rae
“Quartz over in Norway.”
Lauren Pope
” Love Box and SW4 always have awesome line up’s and I always have fun there. V is always a riot too, a good level of mud and showbiz.”
Marc Vedo
“Again, Glastonbury 2008 – the people, the set-up, the music, the whole experience, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world.”
Copyright
“Tribal Gathering.”
Thomas Gandey
“It has to be Snowbombing, it’s a week long festival where you can snowboard all day then party with the kings of party all night. No rules apply. Keep goi
