Summerfest is an annual music festival held in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. First held in 1968, Summerfest is located at Henry Maier Festival Park, adjacent to Lake Michigan and Milwaukee's central business district. Summerfest attracts approximately 800,000 people each year, promoting itself as "The World's Largest Music Festival", a title certified by Guinness World Records in 1999, but has been surpassed in attendance by Donauinselfest with over 3 million in 2015.
Modest Mouse is an American rock band formed in 1992 in Issaquah, Washington, and currently based in Portland, Oregon. The founding members are lead singer/guitarist Isaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green, and bassist Eric Judy. Strongly influenced by Pavement, Pixies, XTC, and Talking Heads, they rehearsed, rearranged, and recorded demos for almost two years before finally signing with small-town indie label K Records and releasing numerous singles.
The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend. The Reading Festival is held at Little John's Farm on Richfield Avenue in central Reading, near Caversham Bridge. The Leeds event is held in Bramham Park, near Wetherby, the grounds of a historic house. Headliners and most supporting acts typically play at both sites, with Reading's Friday line up becoming Leeds' Saturday line-up, Reading's Saturday line-up playing at Leeds on Sunday, and Leeds' Friday line-up attending Reading on Sunday. Campsites are available at both sites and weekend tickets include camping. Day tickets are also sold.
Oxegen was a music festival in Ireland, first held from 2004–2011 as a rock and pop festival and again in 2013 with dance and chart acts only. The event was regularly cited as Ireland's biggest music festival, and, by 2009, it was being cited as the greenest festival, being a 100% carbon neutral event in Ireland. although this claim is highly disputed as green-washing. It was previously called Witnness, which ran from 2000 and was sponsored by Guinness. The event is promoted by MCD and is sponsored by Heineken. Oxegen was originally a three-day festival, but from 2008 onwards, it was expanded to four days.
Fuji Rock Festival is an annual rock festival held in Naeba Ski Resort, in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. The three-day event, organized by Smash Japan, features more than 200 Japanese and international musicians, making it the largest outdoor music event in Japan. In 2005, more than 100,000 people attended the festival.
Truck Festival is an annual independent music festival in Oxfordshire, England. It had a record number of tickets sold in 2019 with 25 thousand people attending. This is for the whole weekend of campers, with an additional 10 thousand people on the independent days. It was started in 1998 by the Bennett family, who decided that mainstream festivals such as Glastonbury had become too commercial and predictable. It is held in July at Hill Farm in Steventon, which lies between Abingdon, Didcot and Wantage. The festival also gave birth to the Truck Records label in 1999.
Pukkelpop is an annual music festival that takes place near the city of Hasselt, Belgium, in mid- to late August. It is held within a large enclosure of fields and woodland—between a dual carriageway called Kempische Steenweg—in the village of Kiewit, approximately 7 km north of Hasselt. It is one of the largest music festivals in Belgium, with an attendance of 180,000 over the course of the event in 2009.
Heineken Jammin' Festival is a large live rock festival in Milan, Italy featuring international and Italian rock acts.
Bestival was a four-day music festival held in the south of England. It had been held annually in the late summer since 2004 at Robin Hill on the Isle of Wight. In 2017 the festival relocated to the Lulworth Estate in Dorset. The event was organised by DJ and record producer Rob da Bank along with his wife Josie and was an offshoot of his Sunday Best record label and club nights. The initial Bestival attracted 10,000 people, growing to 50,000 in its final year, 2018. Bestival won 'Best Major Festival' at the 2015 UK Festival Awards, having won 'Best Medium-Sized Festival' in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009, 'Best Major Festival' in 2010, 2012 and in 2015, 'Fan's Favourite' in 2011 and 'Best Innovation' in 2005.
The Latitude Festival is an annual music festival that takes place in Henham Park, near Southwold, Suffolk, England. It was first held in July 2006 and has been held every year since, apart from 2020, when it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival includes a comprehensive bill of musicians, bands and artists across four stages - the Obelisk Arena, the BBC Sounds Arena, the Sunrise Arena and the Lake Stage. The festival also includes elements of theatre, art, comedy, cabaret, poetry, politics, dance and literature.
The Sunshine Underground were an English alternative dance band based in Leeds, England. Their style developed from indie, alternative to electronic music, and they released four full-length albums; Raise the Alarm (2006), Nobody's Coming to Save You (2010), The Sunshine Underground (2014) and their farewell album, Luminescent (2016). The group, named after a song from the 1999 album Surrender by The Chemical Brothers, were often associated with the British nu-rave scene of 2006 and built a respectable live following after years of touring.
Pohoda is an open-air summer music festival in Slovakia, first organized in 1997 in Trenčín. It is the biggest Slovak music event organized annually. The current venue is Trenčín Airport.
Primavera Sound is an annual music festival held in Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona, Spain that takes place between the end of May and beginning of June. The first edition took place in 2001 in Poble Espanyol and moved to the Parc del Fòrum, a much larger site on the seafront, in 2005. The nature of the festival and the wide range of bands represented have made Primavera Sound a meeting point for artists and spectators from all generations. Primavera Sound is one of the largest and most-attended music festivals in Europe and the biggest in the Mediterranean.
BayFest was an annual three-day music festival held in the heart of downtown Mobile, Alabama. Founded in 1995, the festival offered a variety of music including pop, jazz, classic rock, alternative, R&B, rap, gospel, and modern rock. It was based at Bienville Square. The Launching Pad stage during Bayfest focused on local and regional talent. The event encouraged "going green" by providing for recycling throughout the grounds.
The Y Not Festival is an annual music festival held in Pikehall, Derbyshire, United Kingdom. It first took place in 2005, at a disused quarry site as a party for around 120 people organised by Ralph Broadbent who was planning a party in the garden of his parents' house but had to relocate when his parents didn't go away as planned. For the first year it went under the name of the Big Gin Festival. The main stage at the festival has retained this name as The Big Gin Stage. The following year it was renamed Y Not Festival with the public being invited and with attendances increasing year on year and eventually relocating to its current site at Pikehall in Derbyshire. As a small independent festival the event has won many awards and accolades such as best small festival in 2012 and the prize for best grass roots event and best toilets at the 2011 UK Festival Awards. In 2016 it was sold to Global Radio's festival division, Broadwick Live, along with Truck Festival and the rest of Broadbent's company portfolio. 2017 was the first year under the new management.
The Sonisphere Festival was a touring rock music festival which took place across Europe between the months of June and August. The festival was owned by John Jackson and Kilimanjaro Live. It was jointly promoted by K2 and Kilimanjaro Live. It hosted heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden, Metallica, Mötley Crüe, Slayer, Judas Priest, Megadeth, Avenged Sevenfold and BABYMETAL.
Kendal Calling is a music & arts festival, held annually at Lowther Deer Park in the Lake District, Cumbria in the North West of England. It has grown from a two-day, 900 capacity event in 2006 to a 25,000 capacity 4-day music festival. Kendal Calling has 9 stages and has featured live performances from notable artists such as Blondie, Pendulum, Doves, Dizzee Rascal, James, Mumford & Sons, Calvin Harris and British Sea Power. In 2010 Kendal Calling was awarded the Best Small UK Festival Award at the UK Festival Awards, as voted by the public. Kendal Calling also won the industry award 'Best Small Festival' at the LIVE UK awards 2011. Superstruct Entertainment, the live entertainment platform backed by Providence Equity Partners, owns the festival after it entered definitive agreement for the acquisition of several live music and entertainment festivals from Global Media & Entertainment and Broadwick Live.
Hevy Music Festival was a rock festival established by Claire Baker and James that took place annually near Folkestone, Kent, in the UK. It was originally held on 1 August 2009 on Folkestone seafront as a one-day festival with Feeder, Gary Numan and Ash as headliners. In 2010 it moved to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park and grew to a weekend camping festival held from 6–8 August. The headline artists included Glassjaw, Gallows, Sepultura and the Subways, and the festival provided a variety of rock music genres including punk rock, alternative rock, hardcore punk and heavy metal along with extreme sports displays and state-of-the-art thrill rides.
Red Sky Music Festival was a yearly music festival held at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2011 and 2012. The format for the festival included a headlining act closing each night with local and national acts performing on stages around the stadium during the day. The festival aimed to include many different genres of music. In its short history, Red Sky attracted headlining acts from classic rockers Journey and Def Leppard to country artists Jason Aldean and Brad Paisley to local favorite 311. The festival also served as a showcase for many local artists. MECA's inspiration for the format of the festival was Milwaukee's Summerfest.
The Defiled were a four-piece British industrial metal band from London, England mixing groove-laden hardcore/metal with electronic music influences. They have been described by Kerrang! magazine as "The saviours of UK Metal" and championed by Metal Hammer as one of the leaders in a new wave of British metal along with bands such as While She Sleeps, Bury Tomorrow and Devil Sold His Soul. The band have built a fanbase following support slots with bands such as Murderdolls, Static-X, Godsmack, Deathstars and Motionless in White as well as playing Bloodstock, Download and Sonisphere festivals.
