Colonel Trautman
Invader
I attended the Wacken festival over five years from 2004-2008, spanning my late teens to early 20s. I've recently been getting very nostalgic about my trips there- they represent a period of youthful freedom that I'll likely never experience again. I made some friends for life there, and have literally hundreds of funny little memories from that village in North Germany.
My first visit aged 18 in 2004 in particular blew my mind (although, to paraphrase the great Lemmy, a day at the beach will blow your mind at that age ). Metal music had largely been a fairly solitary interest for me up until that point, so standing in a field in the baking heat amongst 40,000 of 'my people' for the first time was quite an experience. There was also a huge sense of the exotic, with a German festival feeling quite different from anything we'd get in the UK (particularly in the years before Bloodstock et al).
Of course, as with everything in life, future trips met with the law of diminishing returns, and I spent a lot of time and money at similar European festival around the same time too. I decided that watching Maiden there in 2008 was about as good as it would ever get, and that year would prove to be my last.
I noticed quite a few changes in the years that I attended the festival, and feel that there were two landmark moments that changed the tone and feel of the event. Firstly, booking Machine Head in 2005 seemed to bring a very different audience (no offence to fans of that band, but it seems like a lot of the more 'unique' European bands started to fall off the bill in favour of more mainstream acts from that year on). Secondly, I found that doubling the audience capacity in 2007 made the festival grounds almost impossible to navigate.
It seems that these days, you need to organise your ticket purchase about 18 months in advance- again, this was not a consideration when I was going, and I even remember a friend buying a ticket on the day after losing his on the way there! I also feel that the audience energy seems far lower on any live streams I've watched over the past decade.
Anyway, this is a bit of a ramble, but I'm interested in hearing thoughts from those who have been long term attendees of Wacken. Have you noticed big changes since the early 2000s?
My first visit aged 18 in 2004 in particular blew my mind (although, to paraphrase the great Lemmy, a day at the beach will blow your mind at that age ). Metal music had largely been a fairly solitary interest for me up until that point, so standing in a field in the baking heat amongst 40,000 of 'my people' for the first time was quite an experience. There was also a huge sense of the exotic, with a German festival feeling quite different from anything we'd get in the UK (particularly in the years before Bloodstock et al).
Of course, as with everything in life, future trips met with the law of diminishing returns, and I spent a lot of time and money at similar European festival around the same time too. I decided that watching Maiden there in 2008 was about as good as it would ever get, and that year would prove to be my last.
I noticed quite a few changes in the years that I attended the festival, and feel that there were two landmark moments that changed the tone and feel of the event. Firstly, booking Machine Head in 2005 seemed to bring a very different audience (no offence to fans of that band, but it seems like a lot of the more 'unique' European bands started to fall off the bill in favour of more mainstream acts from that year on). Secondly, I found that doubling the audience capacity in 2007 made the festival grounds almost impossible to navigate.
It seems that these days, you need to organise your ticket purchase about 18 months in advance- again, this was not a consideration when I was going, and I even remember a friend buying a ticket on the day after losing his on the way there! I also feel that the audience energy seems far lower on any live streams I've watched over the past decade.
Anyway, this is a bit of a ramble, but I'm interested in hearing thoughts from those who have been long term attendees of Wacken. Have you noticed big changes since the early 2000s?