RockNess 2009 – Dores, Scotland

Rockness is situated at Dores, near Inverness, and it is one of the most beautiful settings for festival. After strolling through the festival you come to the top of a hill and look down into the valley below to see the main stage at the bottom. The view behind it is stunning. Loch Ness in all its glory, beautiful blues skies, totally awesome for the 35,000 revellers, most of which were just chilling and enjoying the sun and music.

 

On arrival walking through the festival you could see past food and market stalls to the Rizla arena where people danced the day away. There were lots of people getting into the spirit dressing up in fancy dress including cows and horses. At the festival you can even get married (unofficially) in an inflatable church where you can put on wedding clothes and get a wedding photo too!

As well as the music stages there were other things going on to keep people entertained in the gorgeous weather. Someone had laid out a plastic sheet with water running down it which proved to be a big hit. People were taking turns to run and slide down it, much to the amusement of the onlookers.

There was also a metal ball where a motorbike drove around and around inside, even going upside down!


The Main Stage

The Main Stage had band after band keeping the crowd keen including Tommy Reilly, the winner of the Orange Unsigned Act Competition. The Cuban Brothers were totally unique singing and dancing their way through soulful tunes at the same time being very funny and getting the crowd laughing and dancing too, a great addition to any festival.

Also playing were the Wombats and Glasgow’s Biffy Clyro, who gave punters a taster of their fifth album which is being recorded at the moment. Headliners Prodigy (whose management would not let all the photographers take photos so no photos of them unfortunately) came on and had the whole crowd bouncing all the way up the hill. It was an awesome sight when “Firestarter” came on.


Clash Arena

This tent was host to various DJs and bands including The Whip, Scratch Perverts, and Soulwax. Soulwax are an alternative rock/electro band from Belgium who had the crowd dancing waving their glow sticks in the air. Placebo played the Clash Arena after having done a signing for their fans earlier in the day.

They played a couple of songs before testing out new song “Battle for the Sun”, the title of their new album. After that apparently something (allegedly a pair of scissors) was thrown at the band from the crowd leading to singer Brian Molko to walk off stage with rest of the band complaining that their safety couldn’t be guaranteed. After short delay they came back on, but warned the crowd that if there was any more trouble they would stop playing. To the relief of their fans nothing else happened and they finished their show.


www.rockness.co.uk

 

-Dod M.-
Big Wheel Overseas Correspondent

 

More photos of the event can be seen HERE

 
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