A Perfect Festival

Nuno Vieira believes this year’s Optimus Alive!08 was "the perfect festival" for his company as it pulled 100,000 across three days, more than 40 percent more than the Portuguese event’s inaugural edition last year.

"The first year is always complicated and we wanted to establish that we could provide the shows and the services that make people enjoy a festival, and then build on that for the second year," he explained.

He says the staff at Everything Is New was delighted with the result because they’d rather ambitiously targeted a three-figure crowd. Alvaro Covoes set up Everything Is New in 2006, when he left Musica No Coracao and took Vieira and Artur Peixoto with him.

Vieira said they all believed it could be done because of the platform they’d built, the strength of the bill and because they knocked down the three-day ticket price from euro 90 to euro 80.

Rage Against The Machine sold out 40,000 tickets on the first day, while Bob Dylan and Neil Young – who headlined the following days – each drew a 30,000-strong crowd.

The 45 acts enjoying the July 10-12 sunshine in Lisbon’s Alges Park, a vast expanse of grassland next to the now-scenic old docklands, also included Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Gogol Bordello, Boys Noize and The Hives.