Hundreds of people have been evacuated from a hip-hop festival on the Croatian island of Pag after a forest fire broke out nearby. Flames were seen billowing behind the site as attendees left the Fresh Island festival on Zrće beach on Monday night. The organisers said emergency services were working to contain the blaze and it was unclear whether the event would continue as planned on Tuesday
Continue reading...Category Archives: Music festivals
Revelry and rebellion: is this the greenest Glastonbury yet?
David Attenborough and the climate crisis take centre stage, while single-use plastic is banned for the first time. But have the festival’s environmental efforts gone far enough?
Twelve years ago, Sheryl Crow was laughed at for suggesting that green-minded people should use only a single square of toilet paper every time they go to the loo (or two to three sheets for “pesky situations”). Well, we’re not laughing now, are we?
On the day before the hottest day of the year so far (temperatures at Glastonbury hit 30C, elsewhere in the UK 35C), Crow knocks out hit after hit on the Pyramid stage under a giant globe, Glastonbury’s reminder that we’ve only got one planet, and dedicates Soak Up the Sun to Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist and school striker. Thunberg’s spirit is embedded in Worthy Farm this year. There are murals of her face with the slogan: “What would Greta do?”
Continue reading...Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig: ‘Rock music is dead, so it’s more joyful to me’
As his band gear up for Glastonbury, the singer talks about his Jewish politics and how there are musicians far more privileged than him
If you have never been to Glastonbury, you will always get people telling you that “it’s just got a different vibe to other festivals, man”. Even platinum-selling musicians. “It’s like being in some weird medieval village,” says Ezra Koenig, frontman of Vampire Weekend, who had played Glastonbury three times with the band before going as a punter in 2014, when it finally clicked. “I stayed up all night and understood: this is very special. I can’t think of many festivals where there are old hippies who do their thing and keep to themselves, and keep that spirit of the 60s alive with arts and crafts. And there’s all the secret stuff you find in the woods, the various raves, little mini pubs everywhere ... Everybody’s walking through the mud and there’s a real communal energy to it. Probably a lot of them are on drugs, too.”
His band are playing their biggest-ever slot at this year’s festival, Sunday night on the Pyramid stage just before the Cure’s headline performance. They released their fourth – and best – album Father of the Bride in May, and like the previous two, it went to No 1 in the US and Top 3 in the UK. It came six years after the last one, Modern Vampires of the City, with Koenig having taken creative control after fellow songwriter Rostam Batmanglij left the band.
Continue reading...Glastonbury organiser says some men refuse to deal with her
Emily Eavis says there are male execs in music industry who insist on speaking to her father
The Glastonbury festival organiser, Emily Eavis, has said some men in the music industry still refuse to deal with her despite her taking over responsibility from her father for overseeing the lineup.
Speaking days before the start of this year’s event, Eavis, 40, who has been booking acts at Glastonbury for half her life, said she was often the only woman in meetings with music moguls.
Continue reading...Solange pulls out of Coachella 2019 due to ‘production delays’
R&B star was due to do two Saturday performances at the Californian music festival
Solange has cancelled her Coachella performance a week out from the Californian festival due to “major production delays”, organisers say.
The R&B star was slated for two Saturday performances at the festival – on 13 and 20 April – but on Sunday night it was confirmed both would be cancelled.
Continue reading...Musician jailed over girlfriend’s drug death at Bestival
Ceon Broughton imprisoned for eight and a half years for manslaughter of Louella Fletcher-Michie
A musician who supplied his girlfriend with a lethal dose of drugs and filmed her as she lay dying at a music festival has been jailed for eight and a half years.
Ceon Broughton, 30, gave Louella Fletcher-Michie, 24, the party drug 2C-P at Bestival in Dorset in September 2017. Jurors at Winchester crown court were shown footage in which Fletcher-Michie repeatedly shouts at Broughton to phone her mother but he dismisses her, telling her to “put your phone away”.
Continue reading...Glastonbury festival bans plastic bottles
Music festival will no longer sell single-use plastic water bottles in bid to cut waste
With its sea of discarded tents and litter-strewn fields, Glastonbury has become almost as infamous for the mountain of rubbish left in its wake as it is renowned for its music.
But this year, organisers are hitting back – by banning plastic bottles in a bid to stem the tide of waste.
Continue reading...‘War on festivals’: second New South Wales music event cancelled in a week
Mountain Sounds festival called off by organisers a week before event was due to take place on central coast
A New South Wales music festival has been cancelled just a week out from the event, and the organisers say it’s “another example of the government’s war on festivals”.
Mountain Sounds festival was due to be held on the central coast next weekend, but on Saturday the organisers announced it would not be going ahead.
Continue reading...Music festivals will have to be licensed in NSW following drug deaths
Organisers will have to apply for a specific liquor licence, similar to those for pubs and clubs, in bid to keep young people safe
Music festivals will have to be licensed in New South Wales under new regulations following a string of tragedies.
Five people have now died after attending music festivals, including 23-year-old Joseph Pham and 21-year-old Diana Nguyen, who both died of suspected drug overdoses after attending the Defqon.1 festival in September.
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