UNIVERSITY RADIO COPENHAGEN - ROSKILDE FESTIVAL UPDATE #3/2002
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Last weekend we gave you all the opportunity to send
questions to Rikke Øxner, main booker at Roskilde Festival.
We've received a lot of questions, and a summary of these
were send to Rikke.
Today we received her answers. The following is our
(University Radio Copenhagen) translation. We've tried our
best to make the translation
as precise as possible. Still, should you find the
translation poor don't blame Rikke - blame us :-)
Here is what Rikke Øxner send to us this afternoon
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The bookers
Putting together the line up is a mixture of many elements
which roughly may be divided into three areas: research,
programme planning and band booking
Research is a never-stopping process, as you not only has to
keep the upcoming festival in mind, but also future
festivals. Research are being made in different ways:
through music magazines, the media in general, live
concerts, music events, by talking to the audience and
people within the music industry, and of course by using the
knowledge that lies within the booking group itself.
Programme planning is where suggestions and ideas are being
discussed and examined. Based on ideas and wishes from
ourselves and from the audience and on offers being given,
our goal is to end up with an interesting line-up, a
diversity of musical inputs.
The planning begins just after the summer holidays, the main
themes are being decided during fall and then the work
intensifies during spring, where app. 140 of 150 bands are
'in the book'. During May and July the last bits and pieces
are taken care of, replacements are made if a band for some
reason should cancel. These adjustments make go on until the
very end of the festival.
The booking are the administrative part of the process,
where agents are being contacted, fees are being negotiated
and all contract related work is being taken care of.
Different people are involved in this work.
A group, at the moment consisting of 6 people, are working
close together through the entire year. Everybody so
involved in music that research is a natural part of their
life. Besides research they are also the main group when it
comes to putting together the actual line-up, and a few of
them also participates when booking the bands.
These 6 persons are our "main-experts", but each one of them
also have normal jobs: as doctor, personal
handicap-assistant, event consultant, nurse and finally one
works at a music venue. As you can see is their backgrounds
are different, but they all have music as a major area of
interest. Each one has their own musical focus area: Nordic
music, electronica, world etc.
Rikke Øxner, who is the only one within the booking group
employed by the festival, has the overall responsibility and
is the daily coordinator of the many booking activities.
To this core group of bookers are connected a large variety
of music lovers and/or genre experts, coming from all areas
within the music industry. Some of them we meet on a regular
basis, and some e-mail us, writes or call us giving
suggestions or comments. We also contact them when we are
dealing with areas that they know much better than us,
making them much better to decide what is hot and what is
not.
Finally, of course, all the feedback from the audience are
giving us a great tool to try to understand in what way our
audience are moving - because they are moving, constantly.
Roskilde Festival doesn't have a 'constitution' when it
comes to music, but we have always tried not to be
mainstream. We want to be where it happens right now as well
as looking ahead. We think that space should be available
for some old legends, but of course also space for the new
young legends, or 'already legends' as they were called last
year, as Beck and Nick Cave, to name some.
Together with the well-known brought by the legends we also
want to surprise - offering new experiences when being
'seduced' by the music, even though you were heading in
another direction.
Or when you just walk from stage to stage without any plan,
and you get those revelations of something new and
different. This is why we always try to focus a lot on
what's new.
It sure is a fine line to walk. As one of the questions put
it: how do you keep the balance between the focus on
upcoming bands and selling 65000 tickets, we think that
there has to be something well-known to attract people, just
as there has to be something unpredictable that surprices
and makes you curious, making you want to hear more, and
makes you wanna come back next year.
At the same time we have to be much more than just a music
festival for four days. Events of all sorts in the days
before and during the festival are arranged, and practical
arrangements too, no matter if its food or toilets and other
kind of 'invisible' care has to be present in order to make
people choose Roskilde Festival in stead of another event.
We've been asked if we are moving focus from rock towards
more mainstream 'pop'. Have no doubts: Roskilde Festival is
still a rock festival, but we don't think of rock as being
narrower in its expression than pop. A lot of rock music do
have appeal to a large group of people.
We don't try to please everybody, and we don't think of
genres as a way to divide people. It's very rare that a
person only listen to one genre. We try to attract those who
wants a new and exiting music experience of high quality.
But we also have to relate to the current tendencies, and at
the moment new things arises from the American R'n'B scene
(even though we won't deny that poor things arises from the
scene as well)
We've had a lot of requests from audience missing this new
part of the scene, and it's not deliberate that its not
really present. Bands like Fugees or Lauryn Hill solo has
been highly wanted. But these names are also the 'shooting
starts' in the USA, which by far is the largest market,
especially during summer, so why come to Europe when touring
the States sells more tickets, mores records - and earns
more cash ...
This answer is part of another question asked: why this and
this band doesn't play at Roskilde. One reason is the fact
that live music is being more commercialised, rationalized
or whatever you want to call it. It's been going on for some
time, but it's only been an issue for festivals for the last
couple of years.
These days bands are being organized in order to honor the
record companies and promotion of records and this has made
it more difficult just to book the most wanted bands. It's
no longer enough to offer a band a special job or a lot of
money. If the band hasn't planned a tour, with all the
support that follows from the record company, tour
production etc, it's very hard to make them wanna play.
It's not our job to judge these ways of working. All we can
say is that some may be harder to get, and at the bottom
line it's the live audience that suffers from this
development.
As already mentioned, big cash in the States is a problem.
Take the OZZFEST, which again this year gathers a lot of the
most interesting metal bands, like Down, P.O.D., System of a
down and many many more. They start up in the States July
6th and tours until September. Two months touring in the USA
makes it impossible to make a booking for a European
festival one or two weeks before the US tour - they are
busy!
This affects our possibilities to present american metal and
new metal. Along with legends like Slayer and Manowar we've
tried to present some of the new stars from the metal sky,
but this is what we're up against: OZZFEST and the US summer
tours.
In stead we present some nordic metal bands like Satyricon
from Norway and Minus from Iceland. From the UK we present
Vex Red and from Germany 4Lyn.
Other reasons to mention when failing to book specific names
are: lack of tour plans, the band are recording, are having
a break or they want more than we think they're worth. We
line up 150 bands and some of these are used to be solo
headliners, which gives them other ideas of fee sizes than
us. So far no bands rejected Roskilde of security reasons,
which also is due to the fact, that people outside Roskilde
thinks that we are the most safe festival to play in the
world.
Other reasons to mention when failing to book specific names
are: lack of tour plans, the band are recording, are having
a break or they want more than we think they're worth. We
line up 150 bands and some of these are used to be solo
headliners, which gives them other ideas of fee sizes than
us. So far no bands rejected Roskilde of security reasons,
which also is due to the fact, that people outside Roskilde
thinks that we are the most safe festival to play in the
world.
This year four of the largest european festival takes place
in the same weekend: Werchter in Belgium, Glastonbury in
England, St. Gallen in Switzerland and the Roskilde. We are
geographically far from each other, so we are not competing
on audience. We work together very well, exchanging plans
and ideas, and of course cooperation between the festivals
sometime makes it easier to book a band, if more than one
festival wants the band during the same weekend. Roskilde
festival is also a member of the international festival
organisation Yourope, so the coopretaion with other
festivals work very well.
The last questions points towards the future. The way the
Roskilde line up is developing is dependent on where music
and the audience is moving - and we don't just try to guess.
We constantly try to stay upfront trying to sense what's
happening, and on this basis making the right decisions with
the help of the audience, the industry, the medias and our
selves.
Based on interests and of areas of knowledge replacements
are being made within the group of music experts and bookers
at Roskilde. The profile has never depended on one single
person, and therefore the resignment of Leif Skov hasn't
changed anything concerning the music profile. Our aim is
always to be focused and to go for the right suppleness when
booking bands.
As to Madonna: would she be booked by us should it be
possible. This would depend on whether she still has
something musical interesting to offer. She most definitely
is a big pop diva and is known for great shows. As long as
she is all this she's interesting to us.
We don't find the use of stand-up's as speakers between
concerts as matching our profile, and we much prefer that
people after a concert move on to new experiences in stead
of being entertained at the same place during intermission.
Rikke Øxner, Roskilde Festival
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Later tonight Rikkes answer will be published on our website
http://www.universitetsradioen.dk/roskilde/english/
We thank you all for your eager participation. We're looking
forward to follow your reactions on the forum page.
Regards
University Radio Copenhagens Roskilde crew
http://www.universitetsradioen.dk/
