Festivals, Friends & Fun

Lovely weekend..........thats about it..Bye.

No seriously what a wonderful weekend I've just had. Everything was just right. The car journey, the festival, the music, the weather and of course the company.

The festival (Cocoon in the Park) was even better than I thought it would be. Of course I expected great music and to a certain extent I also expected good weather as this was predicted by my own personal weather station Mr Winfield but what I didn't quite expect is the utter Germaness of it.

Firstly tickets via SMS or Email as a barcode which is scanned at the gate ensuring prompt entry and very little queues. OK the barcode scanner wasn't too clever at picking up the image off my phone and probably was the same for many others but still potentially very efficient......very German.

Secondly whenever I got to these things I sometimes think that the DJ's just don't get enough time to create a vibe for their sets so therefore it's all very crammed up and probably not as good as they could be. Here it's 11 hours, 4 DJ's & 1 Stage. Good long sets which the DJ could use to his full advantage...........very thoughtful, very selfless......very German.

Thirdly the sound system.......WOW....Full Funktion One throughout, clear rumbling bass, crisp and sharp high frequency and a perfectly balanced mid-range mean't that wherever you stood you could hear it perfectly. Such a fantastic achievement at an outdoor event.....very high-tech...........very German.

Fourthly what is it that you need other than music and people at a festival? Bar, Food, Loos, Security and First Aid I reckon. What did they have? 4 Bars (one bottles only and one just for WKD's) Girls Loo's, Boys Loo's, Van selling Pork Rolls, St Johns Ambulance and some pleasant Security presence. No merchandising to be seen, no hippies selling herbal highs, no dodgy looking fairground being run by dodgy looking people and no bloody Bungey rope......Very Simple, Very Minimal............Very German.

Fifthly, and I suspect most importantly were the people that went. Of course all of my friends who attended and their associates are wonderful anyway but as a collective mass I think the whole crowd were amazing. I'm guessing it has to do with the second point I made. Each and every person who went to this event went because they knew what to expect and they weren't let down.

Because there wasn't 8 tents and an outdoor arena playing 9 different genres of music with 150 DJ's clambering for some space on the bill it made the whole thing less confusing. There was no "When's so-and-so on and in what arena?" or "If we go here first and catch Doodah we can then swing by tent 6 for 15 minutes and catch a bit of Wingwang before popping over to the outdoor stage for a touch of Pingpong".

Nope there was none of that it was just "Grab some beers, Stay right here, enjoy the day and get right on it".......very regimented, very well-ordered..........very German.

I won't go into the DJ's and their sets too much at all because words really cannot describe the different energies that individually they brought to the day, plus if you haven't seen them yourselves they I'm not sure you'd understand so probably best that you get involved next year and join us for what I'm certain will now be an annual pilgrimage.

Adam Sheldon - Great warm up, set the day up perfectly.
Loco Dice - Why weren't you at Amnesia last Monday instead of Carl Craig ?!?!
Ricardo Villalobos - Crazy, Wierd and I've still not worked out what the hell he was doing but brilliant and the perfect foil for Sven.
Sven Vath - GOD !!

To say that there are people in the world who either don't like Sven Vath or people who do like Sven Vath is completely wrong.

It should be there are people who haven't seen Sven Vath and people that have because once you seen him performing once he'll have you hooked.

Footnote for quote of the day

"Some people just cannot seem to pace themselves" - James Winfield (10th July 2010......about 4pm)