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Latest: Find the
latest from this year's
Rock Werchter, including live links,
here.
The
Rock Werchter Festival is a Belgian
annual music festival held in the
village of Werchter, near Leuven,
since 1974. It is one of the five
biggest annual rock music festivals
in Europe (the other four being
Oxegen, Sziget Festival, the
Glastonbury Festival and Roskilde
Festival). The 2003, 2005, 2006 and
2007 festivals received the Arthur
award for best festival in the world
at the International Live Music
Conference (ILMC). It can host
80,000 guests, of which 69,000
combine all four days, to add up to
a total maximum of 113,000 different
attendees.
The
festival started in 1974 as a
one-day event with performances from
Banzai and Kandahar, but over the
years it has evolved to become
Belgium's largest music festival.
Originally it was a double-festival,
called "Torhout-Werchter", with two
festival areas at different sites in
Belgium: one in Werchter and one in
Torhout. In 1999, the festival
dropped the Torhout site and since
then has taken place only in
Werchter. Since 2003 Werchter has
been a 4-day festival, as it was
sold by owner Herman Schueremans to
American organizers Live Nation.
Schueremans however remains the main
organiser of the event. The festival
is organised every first weekend of
the summer vacation in Belgium (last
weekend of June or the first of
July). Roskilde festival and the
Arras Main Square Festival are
almost always organised in the same
weekend, so they can 'share' bands.
Sometimes, the Glastonbury Festival
is organised at the same weekend,
but most years it's organised a
weekend earlier.Before 1995, when
the festival was still a
double-festival, it had one stage
with 8 or 9 bands performing twice,
once in Torhout and once in Werchter.
Since 1995 the Main stage was
accompanied by a second stage. This
stage was an open air stage until
1999 when it was made a tent named
'Pyramid Marquee', with a capacity
of 6,000 people. The performers in
Pyramid Marquee are usually
lesser-known or aimed at a specific
audience. Sometimes groups that do
well in Pyramid Marquee are expected
to have a hard time taking the step
to the Main stage, especially when
they are seen as an act needing
intimate, smaller venues. Sigur Rós
is the most famous example of this,
when they were programmed on Main
Stage in 2008 after their 2006
performance in Pyramid Marquee, but
they managed the transition and were
hailed as one the best performances
of the festival.
The bands presented at Rock Werchter
are traditionally a balanced mix of
large well known artists, popular
crowd-pleasing acts and local
Belgian coming acts. Belgian band
dEUS in 2008 was the first local
band to close the Main Stage on the
last day since several years. The
days usually start around noon,
except for the first day, which
starts around 4pm. Most performances
last from 30 minutes to an hour and
a half. The days end around 1am, but
when the last act is a dance act
they sometimes last until 3am or
later. At the end of the last day
there is a big fireworks show.
Lineup:
Thursday
The Cure
Elbow
Blink-182
The All American Rejects
Within Temptation
Justice
Kraantje Pappie
Amon Tobin
Cypress Hill
Netsky Live
Skream ft. Sgt Pokes
Skrillex
Metric
Bombay Bicycle Club
The Maccabees
Garbage
Selah Sue
The Kooks
Friday
Pearl Jam
Deadmau5
Wiz Khalifa
X
Mastodon
Gossip
Jack White
dEUS
Eastern Conference Champions
Perfum Genius
Kreayshawn
Azari & 111
Dj Fresh
Katy B
Birdy Nam Nam
School is cool
Miles Kane
Katzenjammer
The Temper Trap
Lana Del Rey
Bat for Lashes
Beruit
Saturday
Kasabian
Mumford and Sons
Chase and Status
‘f Hof Van Commerce
Black Box Revelation
Wolfmother
The xx
Editors
James Vincent McMorrow
Alabama Shakes
Nneka
Ben Howard
M83
Regina Spektor
Paul Kalkbrenner
Michael Kiwanuka
Noah and the Whale
Simple Minds
My Morning Jacket
Agnes Obel
Incubus
Sunday
The Vaccines
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Snow Patrol
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Florence and the Machine
The Hickey Underworld
Dropkick Murphys
Other Lives
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis
Die Antwoord
Mac Miller
Knife Party
Steve Aoki
Isbells
Anna Calvi
M. Ward
Ed Sheeran
James Morrison
Milow
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