Cover Story: PINKPOP!
BY JESSICA
WHEN WE NOTICED THE BEST LINE UP WE COULD EVER WISH FOR, AND OUR BANKACCOUNTS WERE FULL ENOUGH TO GET TICKETS. WE WERE OFFICIALLY HAVING OUR“ VIRGIN FESTIVAL” EXPER IENCE, AND AFTER THE SILLY MISTAKES WE MADE, WE COULDN’ T DO ANYTHING LESS THAN SHARE WITH YOU. HERE’ S OUR STORY.
PinkPOP is the oldest and most known pop festival of The Netherlands. The very first edition took place in 1970on Whitsun Monday, 18th May in Geleen.“ PinkPOP” actually means“ Pop at Whitsun”, because‘ Whitsun’ is called‘ Pinksteren’ in Dutch. The festival was originally supposed to last one day only but it grew to be a big happening. After that the length / duration of the festival was extended to three days. From then on the full program consisted of at least thirty musical acts. In all those years since the first PinkPOP, all kinds of famous and not-so famous bands performed on stage; from Fleetwood Mac to Dire Straits, from Pearl Jam to Red Hot Chili Peppers, even Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band have come to play. For many beginning artists and bands PinkPOP marked the start of their career, sending them flying to success and making them famous around the world. With multiple camping sites, PinkPOP offers enough place to a maximum of 50.000 camping hosts, and the annual festivalmarket has been part of the festival for years also. PinkPOP was held for the 44th time this year, a unique record. Since 1990 PinkPOP has been officially registered in
Stories
the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest continuous / unceasing organised pop festival in Holland( according to many even in Europe). PinkPOP took place from the14th till the 16th of June this year. There were 3 different stages present as always; the Main Stage( biggest stage of all), the 3FM Stage and the Brand Beer Stage( covered by a large pink tent) would be used as the setting for 40( inter) national acts. PinkPOP was organised by Bureau PinkPOP( as usual), Giel Beelen and Eric Corton were the hosts of the festival this edition. In total, 60.000 people visited PinkPOP in 2013.
Road to PinkPOP-paradise Well, as every great adventure our first festival-experience started on the road. We went by train, hours of excitement and nonsense-talking and laughing helping to kill time. After a few hours we finally arrived in Landgraaf; in this‘ middle of nowhere’ PinkPOP would kick off later this day and turn this sleepy town upside down. It would become one great mass of music, food, camping sites and most of all; there would be thousands of‘ festival tourists’. Getting out of the train with a large group of people heading to PinkPOP like us we really had no idea where our camping actually was! So we decided to trust the instinct of others. We followed the stream of people, at least a few of them would be heading to the same camping we were looking for, right? The walk to the camping seemed pretty far as we were dragging all of our stuff( including sleeping bags, tent and accessories, and not to forget clothes and yada yada) in the blazing sun. Silly me, thinking it would be wise to wear a warm vest because it wasn’ t that warm at the