Sziget A La Carte

Festival chief Karoly Gerendai’s decision to spend more than £120,000 on Sziget’s backstage catering area was a big hit with the bands and business execs who enjoyed their stay at this year’s Hungarian bash.

Apart from bringing in enough huge potted plants to stock a garden centre, the regular hot and cold self-serve buffet was supplemented with an a la carte menu and waiter service.

"It’s one of the few catering areas where I’ve seen bands sit and eat, rather than going off to a hotel or restaurant," said Paul Bolton from London-based Helter Skelter agency, who represents Faithless and flew in to check its headline appearance on the sixth of the festival’s eight days.

"It was wonderful," said Thomas Zsifkovits of Austrian promoter Nova Music, enjoying the first chance he had to enjoy a meal with his girlfriend since she’d accepted his marriage proposal a couple of days earlier. "If you didn’t like anything on the buffet, and that has a huge choice, then you could choose from the menu. It was delicious."

It was Zsifkovits’ first time at the festival and his visit was part neighbourly – the company he works for promotes all of Austria’s top festivals – and part fact-finding mission.

"It sets the pace for the rest of Europe. It’s an example for other festivals. It’s the love of the details," he explained, particularly impressed by the hard-floor and seated open area with huge sunshades that double as umbrellas when the weather turns.

"We have always been complimented about the way we treat the bands and make them feel relaxed at our Austrian festivals [which include Nova Rock, Frequency and Nuke] and we are very proud of that. But I have to say this shows that we can all still learn about even better ways of doing it."

Tobbe Lorentz from The Agency Group’s Scandinavian office in Malmo, Sweden, who had Gogol Bordello, The Hives, Mando Diao, Kaizers Orchestra and Satyricon on the bill, was another to give a big thumbs-up to the backstage hospitality.

A few of the 10 members of French world music act Babylon Circus were so impressed with the roasted goose liver and potato soufflé with truffles that they got through three portions each in one sitting. The other half-dozen or so main course options included monkfish with ginger baton vegetables and parma ham, and beef tenderloin with steak potatoes and spice butter.

If they felt a little bloated, they could have relaxed in the free massage parlour a few steps from the food hall.

Dan Panaitescu, who books the international acts, laughed off suggestions that it was all just a hugely expensive stab at winning ILMC’s Arthur Award For Liggers’ Favourite Festival. He said the upgrade came about because Gerendai said he felt the event should invest more money to make the bands and crews feel even more welcome at Sziget.

Panaitescu turned down the chance of an air-conditioned production suite because he feels more at home working from the two small caravans that pass as Sziget’s main site office.

Bolton also said the only backstage catering area he knows of that matches it for quality is at Belgium’s Rock Werchter, the current holder of the ILMC Liggers’ Award, which serves up food that wouldn’t be out of place in a Michelin-starred restaurant.

Sziget certainly found an impressive way to celebrate its 15th anniversary, which makes it the oldest – and also the largest with a 70,000 capacity and 24 stages – of the festivals staged in old Eastern bloc countries. And it’s the first where international agents granted the same level of respect they afford the major western European outdoors.

Zsifkovits said it should be proud of what it’s created and because it’s given the newer festivals in the region something to look up to.

If Gerendai believes that looking after the acts will induce some top performances from them, he may well have thought the point was proven when Ukrainian-born Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello urged the crowd to party by telling them, "Don’t say you can’t do it. I know better because I was born on the other fucking side of the street."

The weather was changeable and a couple of storms took out the backstage Internet connections and the telephones, but they were fixed before it became a problem.

Panaitecu said he’s still waiting for the final ticket count but expects it to be 60,000-plus per day, with more one-day tickets sold on the days when the forecast was good.

The other acts being very well looked after on Obudai Island August 8-14 included The Killers, Gentleman & Far East Band, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, top Hungaian act Kispál és a Borz, Razorlight, Sportfreunde Stiller, Eagles Of Death Metal and Tool.