Tomorrow is the first day of the Big Day Out, a huge music festival held in a bunch of cities in Australia and New Zealand. The fest started in Sydney in 1992, and this year’s version runs from Jan. 15-31 with stops in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Adelaide and Perth. Muse, Lily Allen, The Mars Volta, and Girl Talk (to name just a few) will be performing.
This has me thinking about other huge music festivals in other countries. While I have never actually been to a huge music festival in another country (only a couple medium-sized ones in the Czech Republic), I do like music, and I do like the outdoors, and I do like other countries, and I do like crowds of fun-loving people, and I think when you put all these things together, good things happen. Here are three European festivals where I imagine a lot of good things happen:
Glastonbury – Glastonbury (otherwise known as Glasto) is sort of the mother of all music festivals. In fact, Glastonbury is so huge I’ve even written about it before in this blog. I believe it’s the largest music festival in the world, taking place every June in a large field in Glastonbury, England. Last year some 137,500 people attended, and they heard the likes of Blur, Bruce Springsteen and Franz Ferdinand among many, many others. The 2010 festival will be from June 23-27. U2 is headlining the big Friday night.
Roskilde Festival – The Roskilde Festival is held every July outside the city of Roskilde, Denmark. It was created in 1971 and has since become the biggest music festival in Scandinavia. Last year’s performers included Nine Inch Nails, Gogol Bordello, and Kanye West. 2010 has Muse and Pavement confirmed.
Oxegen – Oxegen is Ireland’s biggest music festival, and is apparently the largest 100% carbon-neutral event in the world (good for them). 2009 was headlined by The Killers, Kings of Leon, and Snow Patrol. The 2010 event will be held July 9-11 at a racing course in Naas, Ireland (County Kildare, not far from Dublin). The Oxegen festival has a sister festival in Scotland called T in the Park. Apparently you can't go wrong with either one; many bands play both festivals, one after the other.
Photo: Michael Spencer via Flickr (CC license)
