James & Heather Travelogues

Well, we have just finished a week in Denmark, where most of it was spent at the Roskilde Rock Festival.

The fesitval had about 160 bands playing (not all at once) including some famous old ones (Guns & Roses), famous current ones (Franz Ferdinand, the Streets) and some not quite so well known outside Scandanavia (Kashmir). One of the highlights for me were the Bellowheads, which are a group playing English folk music updated to a more modern style - lots of crazy dancing for that.

The other was a band known as Kaizers Orchestra, who are a Norwegian band that cross modern rock with that staple of Northern Europe: oompa music. If that is not surreal enough, half the percussion is made up of steel oil drums being belted repeated by steel crowbars - and these guys are wearing gas masks. It was all very surreal, and only attracted a crowd of around 80,000. Again more silly dancing for that, was the order of the day.

After Roskilde, we spent a couple more days just hanging out in Denmark, catching up with good friends. Then it was on to a train, then ferry through to Finland...