Glade Festival 2007

"The Glade"

is an electronic dance music festival which originally started out as a stage at Glastonbury Festival. The annual festival takes place in England for three days in the summer and attracted around 13,000 people in 2005.

 

Interview with ANS

- How are you feeling now that the festival has finished?

 

A: Very very tired, but very happy. Originally, at 11:30am on Friday morning, I was at in my car and I thought that we were going to cancel the whole event. There was more rain that fell on this part of England than ever before in such a short amount of time. Stages were collapsing, tents were shifting, everything was going wrong and I was sat in my car, trying not to cry whilst trying to deal with a feeling of total devastation.

The actual reason why we didnft cancel was because the roads around this area were completely flooded, so the Local Council wouldnft let us shut the festival and instead, said that we had to look after everyone and make sure people were safe. Obviously we were worried because we had this big problem of the cold and wet with many people becoming sick from the constant rain. This, coupled with the infrastructure sliding out of control was such a stress but everyone pulled together and stepped up to the challenge. The people behind the scenes, all the different crews backstage are really the best people in the world. Because of their spirit, the show could continue.

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- Can you tell us a bit about the history of the Glade Festival and the concept behind it?

 

A: Well, there are four of us who do it; Nick Ladd, Luke Piper, Mark Parsons and myself. Luke Piper also runs a stage at Glastonbury called the Glade stage which has been running for quite a long time with breakbeats on Friday, techno on Saturday and psychedelic trance on Sunday. Nick Ladd and I had been running psy-trance parties in South Africa for about 5-6 years and we decided it would be good to come back to the UK and try and organize some big legal parties. Nick was also running the Glade stage at Glastonbury for Luke and Mark. So he told them of our idea to run a 3,000-4,000 people psy-trance party using our previous experience in South Africa.Luke then suggested we try to do a more varied type of party with breakbeats, drum n bass, techno, trance and more Warp records-style music and put it all together and call it the Glade Festival. So we asked Michael Eavis, the man who runs Glastonbury and he said that we should do it.

So the concept was to do a non-commercial event bringing all these different gtribesh of music together under one festival. There is no corporate sponsorship and there is nothing trying to be sold here and there is such a demand to put on these kinds of events for alternative culture. It was, in a sense, really easy for us to organize it as everyone is so supportive and they really get behind the concept. Itfs like having a piece of paper with the lines already drawn and everyone else fills it in with colour to make a beautiful picture.

 

- Who chooses the artists that will play? Is it the main organizers or do you leave it up to the individual tent organizers to sort it out?

 

A: The Origin stage is programmed by Nano records, which I also co-own and run.

Liquid records run the Liquid stage and the Main stage is run by all four of the main organizers. The Breaksday stage is run by Rennie Pilgrim, who started up TCR, Thursday Club Recordings label and the IDSpiral tent and Overkill tent are also selecting their own artists to play.

 

- So what were you doing before you started working on the Glade Festival?

 

A: I have always been a promoter and a DJ, ever since I left school so I have always been around the club scene. I started DJ-ing in London clubs, playing House music, as well as playing in Ibiza and then moved to South Africa where I really got into Psy-Trance. Through these experiences I met many valuable contacts which has helped me to be a better promoter. If anyone says that electronic music is dead, they are wrong, itsf fucking not.

The mainstream listeners may be bored, but for people who really understand the nature and concept of purely letting themselves go, electronic music is alive and kicking. That is what this festival is all about. Despite the fact that the police, the Local Council and the weather tried to stop this event, it still carried on and thatfs absolutely brilliant.

 

- Can you tell us a little bit more about your record label that you mentioned earlier?

 

A: Nano records is a great label focusing on electronic music, especially Trance and was set up in 2001. On our label we have Allaby, AMD, Tristan, The Commercial Hippies, Laughing Buddha and many more. The great thing is we are all very tight bunch of friends all working on the same record label.

We are struggling to sell records at the moment, due to the digital side of things but thatfs the nature of the beast. Ifm not spending as much time as I would like to dealing with Nano due to the Glade Festival organizing.

 

- This was the first year in Glade Festivalfs history where it has rained. All the other years have been baking hot, from a logistical point of view, how have you fared?

 

A: As I said at the beginning, it was an absolute nightmare, it was almost too much to describe. All the backstage crews pulled massive shifts, some people only had a couple hours of sleep and then were woken up to deal with another tent flooding or something equally as bad.

We were worried that there was going to be 10,000 people with hypothermia, the tents were going to collapse and hurt people, and that the electricity wouldnft work under the pressure; but a big thanks to all the crews for keeping their spirits up despite all the chaos and managing to get everything to work.

 

- So how much time do you spend trying to organize the Glade Festival?

 

A: Well, it will take approximately 6 weeks to tidy this place up after Sunday, both literally (rubbish etc.) and financially. Then we have a month off to try and relax and then go back to organizing the 2008 event in November of 2007. The licensing is one of the biggest hassles as last year we had a lot of noise complaints and also the police felt that there were a lot of drugs being used and sold on the premises which is completely untrue.

People who come here to party donft take drugs. So actually, the licensing documents are about 500 pages long and it takes a lot of hard work to try and get permissions from different councils/government bodies like the Health & Safety. Sometimes, one can lose sight of the creativity side of things because of this.

 

- Do you have any future plans for the next Glade Festivals?

 

A: We want to keep it at this current size of 16,000 tickets. Altogether, there probably 18,000 people on site including all the artists, staff, market stalls and crews. Itfs big enough to feel epic but small enough to be able to find everything without spending hours walking around. We also want to keep that magic alive and be aware of the fact that it could all fall apart through greed and instead try to keep that core spirit running throughout.

The festival is all about the music and nothing else. The mainstream listeners may be bored, but for people who really understand the nature and concept of purely letting themselves go, electronic music is alive and kicking. That is what this festival is all about. Despite the fact that the police, the Local Council and the weather tried to stop this event, it still carried on and thatfs absolutely brilliant.

Interview with Rob

- Can you describe what it has been like to work backstage of the Overkill tent at the Glade festival?

 

R: We started on Thursday and did about 6 hours. On Friday we did about 12 hours. Originally, after all that rain on Friday, we thought that that was the end of the festival for us. But, by all miracles, we managed to open the stage by 8:30pm, which was incredible, because at one point, we had about 6 feet of water inside the tent! After setting up the P.A. system on Thursday, we then had to pack it down for safety reasons on Friday and set it up all over again by 8:30pm. The line-up was all over the place as some of the artists couldnft make it to the Glade Festival and others took 8 hours just to get here.

We had actually contacted our whole Friday artist roster and told them not to come because we were convinced that we wouldnft open. But many of the artists were already on their way so we decided to try and get the tent up by the evening. Saturday was crazy; I started my shift at 7am and went on through until 4am! I have managed to get 4 hours sleep and get some breakfast with you guys.

 

- Whatfs your actual job title and do you do any other jobs?

 

R: gStage Crewh. I do everything from crowd control to helping to move equipment on and off the stage. We used to be known as gRoadiesh but I found out this weekend that this is actually a rather disparaging term. We are now formally known as gBackline Techniciansh.

I also DJ back in Bristol under the name DJ Chimpski, playing Breakcore & Ragga-Jungle. I woudnft put myself in the echelons of the guys that we have playing at the Overkill tent but I am more than happy to work for them instead. I love Breakcore and I if I canft play it, then I will do my best to support and help it along.

 

- Itfs been so wet, how have you managed to deal with it?

 

R: As the Overkill tent is at the lowest point in the festival, all the water has been draining into our tent. Luckily, all the electrical cabling used is of outdoor grade and, even though it is not recommended, it is possible to fully submerge this cabling underwater. The generators are pretty specialized pieces of kit and can detect even the smallest problem which will then cause an emergency shutdown.

So for preparation for Sunday, we have laid down 15 tonnes of straw to soak it all up. We had a bunch of festival-goers helping to spread it all out which was great, to see everyone pitching in and helping to make the event happen. A lot of people have come to the festival for the Overkill stage and even though it isnft the main stage, it feels like it should be! This makes it a real privilege for us to work on it despite all the weather problems wefve had.

 

- How many people are on your team and what do they do?

 

R: On the Overkill production team, we have about 8 people, then there are 2 sound technicians and 3 lighting guys. We also have support from the site crew, but I donft know how many people they have working backstage.

- When your team are setting up a tent, what are the step by step processes you must take to do it as efficiently as possible?

 

R: Actually, there are individual crews who do each specialized part. Firstly, the marquee guys come in and set up the tent structure and then the staging crew will make the stage. Then the lighting gantries and sound goes up. Both the lighting and sound crews can work around each other and ultimately assist each other. After that point, the stage is then handed over to the Overkill crew and we then commission it and make sure everything is working fine, have an artist sound-check and then we are pretty much done. The whole process takes about 4 hours which is incredible as there is so much heavy equipment to be lugged around.

R: The local council issue a license stating how loud we are allowed to play and until what time. In this case we have a 2 stage sound limit which meant that we could play a lot louder during the day and then have to lower the levels at night. Usually the crowd donft like this and neither do the top-billed artists who have to play late at night and at half the volume. This is imposed on us by the council and I have to say that festival-goers should please contact their MPfs, local councils and government representatives and ask them to get rid of sound limits at festivals. Each area in England only has one festival per year so if you want to stop encouraging illegal parties with no sound restrictions then the government must act accordingly.

 

Glade : http://www.gladefestival.com

 

Written by Selph
     

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