Christmas 2009 was the Christmas of people power and the power of the internet. Rage Against The Machine became the christmas number one in direct competition with the X factor. Ok the week after people had given up and X factor was number one but the week after Christmas isnt the Christmas Number One!

As a thank you Rage Against The Machine will be holding a free. On the 6th June Rage Against The Machine will perform in Finsbury Park as a thank you to everyone who put them number one which also raised a lot of money for homeless charities.

Festival News From Music Festival News

Free Rage Gig

The organisers of the Glastonbury festival have secured a 6 year license for the event keeping them till 2016 which will incorporate 5 festivals. In a strange turn of events, the license was given behind closed doors and without a public hearing from the locals which is the first time it has ever happened, the local council commented that it is the close working relationship over the years to make things go smoothly which has in turn resulted in almost no objections to the festivals license.

The license holds the festival to 177,500 people which im sure is enough!! it also holds them into the same regulations for the next 6 years, this has probably been a good move as the more time goes on the more regulations are put in place in terms of noise levels etc.

2012 will see a rest for the festival, this is a regular thing as they let the land recover for a full year and as 2012 is the year the Olympics is in this country, the resources needed will not be available.

Festival News From Music Festival News

Glastonbury 6 Year License

The official end of the summer is imminent, all the festivals have had their go this year to impress and attract us back next year, Glastonbury has already won this little battle being the first festival of 2010 to completely sell out.

Its time however to vote, The UK Festival Awards are exactly what they sound like, they award festivals depending on what we say!

The categories are things such as ‘Best Major Festival’ and ‘best Medium Sized Festival’ I’m not to sure what the criteria are for being part of a category as some of the festivals are missing from categories id expect them to be in, there are also some festivals I’ve never heard of which obviously means i must try harder considering i write on a blog about music festivals!

If you want to take part in this years voting get onto the website now Uk Festival Awards.

Festival News From Music Festival News

UK Festival Awards 2009

Our roaming eye has recently been to Glastonbury and amongst the many bands they happened to come across a band called Vest Shirt. Vest Shirt are a trio from Dagenham, they wasn’t on the lineup for Glastonbury but they were distributing a few sample CD’s round the tents close to were they were pitched, the ultimate aim was to try and get somebody to listen to them that was in a position of authority or someone that knew someone in authority,

Vest Shirt promote them selfs as a new age, indie, electro metro pop fusion male harmony choir. The CD’s never got listened to in the campsite, everyone had a competition to see how far they could throw them!

The point of this blog? funny things happen at Glastonbury!

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Vest Shirt

Setting up a festival is a very time consuming, hard work and cost a lot of money. However everyone can have a fantasy festival. Mine would only start off small! First you would probably need to get some finance, not much point in planning anything without and money, There are some companies were you can buy buiness email lists from who you could email, it may be frowned upon at the start but im sure you can get some response from it. Then you need to book some acts, if i was doing it myself then i would have to aim for one big act and then try and fill the gap with more unknown talent. I recon id go for 3 arenas, we dont want to go to big to start up!!

Next we need the arenas, Basically just some massive tents, i dont even know what they are called, there not really bigtops but there not marquee’s either, You would need some security as well, Home security systems would be no good as we need something more, We need brute strength! we need some circus strong men to look over all the people to make sure they are being good!

Finally i plan to have my festival in the middle of a heat wave! People hate the rain and the wet when they are at a festival but if the festival was in the sun then people would love it!! I would have one of my arenas as an outdoor stage, i would also have a ‘Dancing in the rain’ section to it. A bit like when you can run through a mist shower doing the Manchester 10k run i would set up something similar, I would have  fire sprinkler systems set up to fire a fine mist over part of the cowd, if it rained it would be a disaster and it would never work but it wont rain at my festival so we are all ok and it will be loved by everyone! anyway Global managed to have Jacuzzis at last years festival!!

Also it would last for 24 hours, i wouldn’t have a restrictive licence it would start early in the morning and it would finish early in the morning, a little like space used to be in Ibiza but lasting a little longer!!

Festival News From Music Festival News

How To Set up a Fantasy Festival

Festivals have been around the UK for years, the likes of Glastonbury was started up long before i was alive and it will continue to grow every year but were do festivals like this start out? Well a lot of them start out small with what i would expect to be extremely different direction, Im sure Glastonbury didn’t set out to be what it is today. Last year a group of us were looking at Peru Holidays (which we cant wait to go on by the way) and it got us thinking about what festivals we could go to when we are over there. When we looked into it the festivals reminded me of what i always expected Glastonbury to be like when it first started up, Many of them celebrate their country and their culture. The likes Of creamfields im sure have partied in Peru, and if i remember correctly it went down well, however for the people of Peru its the festivals that celebrate their country that will attract the tourists which in turn spend their money.

When we are there we will be taking in a couple of festivals hopefully but when we do it should make a nice change, UK festivals are hectic and non stop, Im rather looking forward to something more relaxed and hopefully take in the local atmosphere and local food and drink!

Festival News From Music Festival News

Far Flung Festivals

Every year there are countless amounts of festivals spread out all over the country, there are many different ways to get to festivals but boil it all down and a lot of people still just drive their in the car, Unfortunately, Cars at festivals can be great targets for criminals wanting to grab a few car stereos for the car boot sale the following Sunday! Take Global Gathering for example, You Pay your VIP ticket price and that will include access to park in their VIP car park which on the nice little map they produce is opposite the VIP camping area! Ok im sure i recognised some Multi Camera Security Systems covering the car park, their the same system that look over the entrance and other parts of the festival, but this doesn’t stop people. Due to an oversold VIP area there were people camping next to their cars when we got back to ours after the festival, Their was also a windscreen smashed in and talk of a car being taken. Now this could just have been a one off incident, isolated, after all there were thousands of cars there, maybe we were unlucky enough to be close to a victim, however there were some very nice cars parked in the VIP car park, Now im not talking Bentley’s or ferrari’s, but i am talking Focus ST, Golf GTI’s etc, still looking at 20k+ cars. Basically my advice would be not to take nice cars like this, if you have access to a cheaper car take it! If you do need to go in your nice car it may attract attention, the car we saw with its window through certainly wasn’t a cheap car! Has your car got GPS Vehicle Tracking If it is does it have a sticker on the window saying it has, very small details like this could mean the difference between your car getting stolen and your car not getting stolen.

Festivals are a great time of the year, I love them! however you need to be careful and have your whits about you. Going in the car is extremely convenient but just be careful you’re not to flashy as when your in the festival having a good time you have no idea who is eyeing up your car!

Festival News From Music Festival News

Festival Car Security

It seems that after a good start to 2009 the credit crunch has taken another festival casualty and this one is a little larger. A few weeks ago we mentioned a new festival that went free and then got cancelled. That festival was new and just didn’t get of the ground.

This festival is one that a lot of people will have already heard of, The Homecoming Festival. This festival was to take place on saturday2nd and Sunday 3rd of May in Irvine Scotland, This festival has now been cancelled.

The festival organisers have released the following statement.

“It is with great regret that organisers of the Homecoming festival have announced that this year’s event has been cancelled.

This is due to new demands from the council requesting 50% of the profits and a £60,000 bond on the land.

All ticket holders will be entitled to a full refund, and arrangements are currently being made to organise new venues and dates for some of the artists that were scheduled to perform at Homecoming 09.”

Festival News From Music Festival News

Homecoming Festival 2009 – CANCELLED

Every festival or party has a party that follows! In the relevant circles these are known as after parties!! It may surprise you that a festival needs an after party but they do, Creamfields used to have their after party in Garlands in Liverpool, This i an after party on a massive organised scale!

Global Gathering last year had a little after party taking place in a shack with some old sofas outside, The point of this is that after parties are everywhere and no matter how long you have been out you can almost guarantee that there is somewhere else to go. 

The best after party i ever went to was in a ver large house on the outskirts of the town i live in. We had all been at Creamfields and the next morning the party continued, The house we were in was like a mansion. They had a Dj that was at Creamfields playing for them and there must have been 200 people there, The house was kitted out with a Sonos sound system which is a wireless digital multi room sound system. In simple mans terms the Dj played and the music was perfect quality in every room, It was fully controllable so they had a room to chill out in but with so many people in one house it worked perfect.

That’s probably one of the best after parties i have ever been too! Weather it is a house party; a dodgy shack in a field or a full club night if you have the stamina and the guts then after parties with the right people they can become the perfect end to a perfect festival (Sunshine an added bonus!!)

Festival News From Music Festival News

After Parties

Ive blogged about it a few times here as it seemed to be something different but just as last year started so has this one, Heavenly Planet festival has pulled the plug, The festival was meant to be on the same site as the Reading festival and it had some of the same people involved. Originally the festival was a ticket event but due to slow ticket sales the event was turned into a free event, At a council meeting it was decided last night that offering the festival as free event was not an option, because of this and the fact the ticket sales were so slow then it was decided to cancel the event.

Its a shame to see any festival have to cancel but in the current financial climate there is not much room for yet another festival so unless you are going to blow the socks of all the others which would cost a lot of money then i cant see i working in the next couple of years.

Festival News From Music Festival News

Heavenly Planet festival – CANCELLED