100 Interesting Facts about Music Festivals

• The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. Monterey was the first widely promoted and heavily attended rock festival, attracting an estimated 55,000 total attendees with up to 90,000 people present at the event's peak at midnight on Sunday. (Wikipedia).
• The first Glastonbury Music Festival was held in 1970 on the day after Jimi Hendrix died, over a two day period and before long “word had got around”. It was the Blues festival at the Bath & West Showground that had inspired Michael Eavis to begin a festival of his own although on a smaller scale. Acts included: Marc Bolan, Keith Christmas, Stackridge, Al Stewart, Quintessence
  Attendance: 1,500.
  Price: £1 including free milk from the farm.
  
  
  
  
  
  • The Above Photo is taken from Glastonbury in 1978 when there hadn't been one for 7 years.  This became known as the “impromptu” Festival. This happened with the arrival of travellers washed out from Stonehenge who were led to believe that a festival was taking place. After persuasive discussion, a free mini Festival did take place. There was little organisation and few facilities layed on but somehow it did not matter - the stage was powered by an electric meter in a caravan with the cable running to the stage.  Attendance was 500 people.  (Glastonbury Website).
  • At Glastonbury 2002, the welfare tent gave away 40,000 bottles of sunbblock. (Mirror).
  • On the way to Glastonbury Festival in 2005 The Killers left their guitarist Dave Keuning at a motor service station and he almost missed their set on the Pyramid Stage. (Mirror).
  • Xfm looks back at what went on in the fields of the UK this summer
    
    As the 2010 festival season draws to a close, with Bestival widely agreed to be the sign of the end of the season ' Xfm has taken a look back over this festival season and just what happened in fields up and down the country.
    
    To celebrate 2010's music festival season Xfm have provided some stats from a few of the key festivals below to show what it takes to put on everyone's favourite festivals!
    
    Examining the data from Key dates of Glastonbury, Isle of Wight Festival, Download V Festival, Big Chill, T In The Park, Camp Bestival, Secret Garden Party, Global Gathering, Creamfields, Reading & Leeds as well as hundreds more independent and private music festivals along the way, XFM has discovered that:
    
    Of these there were over 8.2 million metres of Loo roll used in just four of the major festivals with an estimated 15million used overall by festival goers and festival staff. That's about 5,000 miles, or the distance from London to Rome, on festival loo paper. Nice.But enough about the loos, what about the food? Festival food is always an issue but it seems that if we took all the burgers consumed at the Reading festival this year (50,000 say the organisers) then it would take 167 cows to produce all the meat. By doing some cunning mathematics then if 1.2million people visited a festival this year then roughly 690,000 burgers were made and consumed. That's 2,300 cows!!!!
    
    But the season's not over for one lucky person, and best of all, they won't have to pay a penny, or worry about loo roll as Xfm have announced BestNonFest. This exciting competition offers one winner the definitive non-festival package an ultimate collection of the great gig tickets to see some of the greatest bands around including Kings of Leon, LCD Soundsystem, Mumford & Sons, Arcade Fire, Klaxons, Hot Chip and more.  http://www.music-news.com/shownews.asp?nItemID=36787

Pronunciation: /ˈfɛstɪv(ə)l/

noun

• 1a day or period of celebration, typically for religious reasons: traditional Jewish festivals

• 2an organized series of concerts, plays, or films, typically one held annually in the same place: a major international festival of song (Oxford Dictionary Definition).