Rock Werchter 2018

[McCallion]

1 minute ago, Will-2609 said:

I think he'll probably end up subbing Pearl Jam. They've probably announced him now because they can't announce Pearl Jam until December so they want the next biggest act on that day announced before tickets go on sale.

I like the way you think!

[Gucci Piggy]

2 minutes ago, lighthouse said:

Yeah, Volbeat played after Cave to make a 'bridge' before Rammstein. 

And I think that EVERY day is going to have some kind of '2 big acts/headliners' structure. Which is great.  

Yeah that's what I remembered being the case. Worked out perfectly as it meant I could see James Blake and Frank Ocean between Nick Cave and Rammstein

[Gucci Piggy]

1 hour ago, lighthouse said:

That is a nice day. 

And honestly, Nick in 2013 doesn't even compare to Nick in 2017/18. That show is huge. Although I think he'll shake up the set a bit for the festivals (by adding Papa Won't Leave You Henry, Deanna, Do You Love Me, etc.). 

Yep, his Werchter set in 2013 was one of the best things I'd ever seen, then I saw him at the O2 Arena this year and it blew me away. The fact I hugged him and held him up on the barrier whilst he screamed Stagger Lee staring into my eyes probably helped

[Nicklord]

4 hours ago, Tremousse said:

If you take your tickets, you'll have a really good surprise !  (Cause ON STAGE Nick Cave is at least as good as Gorillaz and Depeche Mode, and Pearl Jam make them look like beginners x) I became a fan after the PJ show at RW2014, cause I had never seen something like that... And if you play the guitar, you'll be mesmerized, because PJ's guitarist plays like no one else, and if you like singalongs, it's 3hours of intense crowdsinging)

Your post got me thinking. Where the fuck guitar solos are in the modern rock bands? 

[Tremousse]

3 minutes ago, Nicklord said:

Your post got me thinking. Where the fuck guitar solos are in the modern rock bands? 

That's a great thought ! Btw I notice that RW always manage to have at least one great "guitar act" per year (Reignwolf, The War On Drugs, Gary Clark Jr, Blues Pills...). I notice that "guitar acts" have more success in USA than in Europe in general. My first thought goes to My Morning Jacket who well more famous on the other side of the ocean...

[e2p2]

Nick Cave is awesome and his presence on stage is undeniable and contagious. Allow me to quote Eddie Vedder on Nick Cave before playing his cover of The Ship Song at Taormina this summer :

"We're (he played this song with a string quartet) gonna do a song by a song writer I've been thinking about of non stop and if you immerse yourself in this guys'  music you'll thank me if you haven't already".  

Cave into Pearl Jam will be huge for me. On the other hand, the guy with the knowledge in 10c furom (dimi) might implied that the rumored date is wrong: 

http://community.pearljam.com/discussion/266775/2018-tour-rumour-thread/p61

[Finge]

I see a lot of discussion here about which acts could be qualified as (sub)headliners at Rock Werchter. Of course this is determined by various factors such as genre, relevance, live reputation, artistic value, but also of course how popular an act is. I decided to take a look at the popularity of the most mentioned acts in this thread by looking at the number of monthly listeners on Spotify. Here is the list:

 

The Killers 10,9m

Metallica 9,3m

Arctic Monkeys 8,5m

Gorillaz 7,1m

Florence & The Machine 6,2m

Pearl Jam 5,6m 

The xx 4,8m

Snow Patrol 4,8m

Thirty Seconds To Mars 4,3m

Queens Of The Stone Age 4m

The National 2,8m

Kasabian 2,5m

Volbeat 2,2m

Massive Attack 1,8m

LCD Soundsystem 1,8m

The Prodigy 1,5m

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 1,3m

Björk 1,1m

 

To start, there are some comments/shortcomings about this kind of measurement. The most important one is that these are worldwide statistics which are not represent for the Werchter public. The second one is that some of the numbers are inflated due to the fact that some artists have released an album this year (The Killers, Gorillaz) which attracts more curious listeners.

Still, I think it’s interesting to look at these numbers because there are some trends visible. Arctic Monkeys and Pearl Jam both haven’t released a studio album since 2013, still they are among the most popular acts in this list. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds is at the bottom of this list while Rock Werchter presented them as one of the top acts. This correspondents with the opinions in this thread which makes them more appreciated for their artistic value and live reputation.

 

[Finge]

Well, that escalated quickly.

I just wanted to show that there are different ways to look at headline positions as I mentioned popularity, genre, relevance, live reputation, artistic value and many others. 

I want to apologize for all the downvoters and lighthouse in particular. I never wanted to 'rank' acts, I thought I was very careful by only including potential Werchter headliners and not acts like Miley Cyrus or Dua Lipa as lighthouse mentioned. I just wanted to bring a different view. Again, I'm sorry if this makes it look like just a popularity contest.

[Boykaar]

Am I the only one trying to take any sense out of the pre sale? We need to register for the newsletter until Monday in order to be able to buy tickets from thursday to friday, which is only one day from the official anyways and they normally don't sell out that fast. Only reason I can imagine is that there will be a headliner (or more) revealed between monday and thursday which is able to sell out its day very fast. But who could it be; Rolling Stones? Maybe Pearl Jam?

[arcuse]

11 minutes ago, Boykaar said:

Am I the only one trying to take any sense out of the pre sale? We need to register for the newsletter until Monday in order to be able to buy tickets from thursday to friday, which is only one day from the official anyways and they normally don't sell out that fast. Only reason I can imagine is that there will be a headliner (or more) revealed between monday and thursday which is able to sell out its day very fast. But who could it be; Rolling Stones? Maybe Pearl Jam?

The presale just takes place for the people who reaaallyyy wanna have their tickets secured. The festival normally doesn't sell out till march/april. If you wanna get your tickets from saturday the 25th or even later, that's fine. I think they're gonna announce either an act every day (bigger names combined w smaller acts, like Mad Cool is doing) or they're gonna announce a few more headliners but not every day (monday, wednesday, friday).

Rumor has it that PJ will be announced in December before the winter-break.. So I don't think they're gonna be announced next week already  

[visdave34]

Massive Attack headliner at Les Ardentes, which very sadly rules them out for Rock Werchter... 

[Tremousse]

Any news of Mumford and Sons and Snow Patrol ? Both were supposed to release a new album at the end of the year or the beginning of 2018 but I don't know at all if they tour next year. 

[lightsnowpatrol]

41 minutes ago, Tremousse said:

Any news of Mumford and Sons and Snow Patrol ? Both were supposed to release a new album at the end of the year or the beginning of 2018 but I don't know at all if they tour next year. 

I'm also waiting for snow patrol

[Gossard]

I think it's save to assume we'll get another name tomorrow. Anyone care to take a guess?  I'll start and say Queens of the Stone Age

[McCallion]

11 hours ago, Gossard said:

I think it's save to assume we'll get another name tomorrow. Anyone care to take a guess?  I'll start and say Queens of the Stone Age

I sure hope so! The Killers perhaps?

[zbo]

NIN just announced for Mad Cool..that lineup is getting stronger everyday

[McCallion]

2 minutes ago, zbo said:

NIN just announced for Mad Cool..that lineup is getting stronger everyday

Ahhh, strong chance for RW then! Had a pretty miserable time at Mad Cool last year so heres hoping we get some of their gems at RW too!

[thetime]

1 minute ago, McCallion said:

 Had a pretty miserable time at Mad Cool last year 

How come?

[zbo]

2 minutes ago, McCallion said:

Ahhh, strong chance for RW then! Had a pretty miserable time at Mad Cool last year so heres hoping we get some of their gems at RW too!

what was wrong? location/organisation?

[johnybegood]

12 minutes ago, zbo said:

what was wrong? location/organisation?

The problems with Mad Cool last year were severals

• Weather was shit. Heavy rain in july in Madrid is something so strange. The Main Stage screens didn't work in foo Fighters show due to the rain.
• One acrobat died during its performance and Green Day played just 20 minutes after the accident. Lot of people thought that it had to be cancelled after this tragic event.
• The food stalls were overcrowded and was so difficult to get food (long queues)
• Queues to get a taxi after Main Stage headliner show. Maybe you should wait for 45 minutes to get one.
• No camping, so you have to find a hotel or hostel or apartment

This year the festival is moving to a bigger space much better connected with public trasnport. Mad Cool is a young festival (this year it was its 2nd edition), so they make some mistakes that never will be done by veteran festvals as Werchter or Roskide.

I've been both year to the festival (I'm from Madrid) and I had a great time and no problems, but I agree that there is much to improve yet. I'm sure that en the next edition some of this problems will be solved. 

Edited November 20, 2017 by johnybegood

[McCallion]

1 minute ago, thetime said:

How come?

I felt it was a bit of an organisational shit show from the get go tbh. No real security (I watched a group of guys jump the fence with guards watching/ignoring them. when I asked why the guy said "cause then you'd jump the queue"), huge queues to get in everyday, poor transport away from the fest, no food in the main arenas (you had to walk back to the entrance if you wanted to buy anything). Day 1 most of the card readers weren't working and a couple of the bars were closed for the first half of the day. The screens weren't working for Foo Fighters so was very difficult to see and Lumineers had their set cut waaaay short due to tech issues (which might be a good thing depending on your perspective!). Lots of sound bleed & HUGE clashes between stages, didn't see nearly as many acts per day as I do at Werchter. Also, they have this stupid system when they don't open up the front of the stage until 15 mins into a bands set so VIP ticket holders can get in first. Meant Foals were playing to a huge gap when I saw them!

To be fair to Livenation, the batshit unpredictable weather didn't help but the whole thing just felt unsafe and messy. I was also pretty unimpressed in the way they handled the situation with the acrobat who died performing. The lineup was stellar but I think i'm sticking to more established fests this year

[McCallion]

2 minutes ago, johnybegood said:

The problems with Mad Cool last year were severals

• Weather was shit. Heavy rain in july in Madrid is something so strange. The Main Stage screens didn't work in foo Fighters show due to the rain.
• One acrobat died during its performance and Green Day played just 20 minutes after the accident. Lot of people thought that they had to be cancelled after this tragic event.
• The food stalls were overcrowded and was so difficult to get food (long queues)
• Queues to get a taxi after Main Stage headliner show. Maybe you should wait for 45 minutes to get one.
• No camping, so you have to find a hotel or hostel or apartment

This year the festival is moving to a bigger space much better connected with public trasnport. Mad Cool is a young festival (this year it was its 2nd edition), so they make soe mistakes that never will be done by veteran festvals as Werchter or Roskide.

I've been both year to the festival (I'm from Madrid) and I had a great time and no problems, but I agree that there is much to improve yet. I'm sure that en the next edition some of this problems will be solved. 

I'm glad to hear it's in a new location. It just wasn't equipped for a lineup of that size.

[thetime]

7 minutes ago, McCallion said:

The lineup was stellar but I think i'm sticking to more established fests this year

Keeping to established fests ocerseas is what I tend to do, not as easy to come home when you’re waiting for flights home.

been to Roskilde, sziget, werchter and pukkelpop so all established. 

[gregory]

38 minutes ago, McCallion said:

I'm glad to hear it's in a new location. It just wasn't equipped for a lineup of that size.

The new site has a capacity of 80,000 people ....

[e2p2]

23 hours ago, McCallion said:

I sure hope so! The Killers perhaps?

The Killers are playing at the end of June in Rock In Rio Lisbon, so they're definitely an option.