The Mud People Of Chiemsee

A near 25,000 sellout crowd was hoping to soak up some sun and music at Germany’s Chiemsee Reggae Summer August 22-24, but the weather had other plans.

Weather conditions were fine the two days before the last of FKP Scorpio’s five major German festivals, but rain started on the event’s opening evening and continued to pour down throughout the next day.

Parts of the site were a quagmire but Michael Buchholz from Bavaria-based promoter Amok, which is Scorpio’s partner at Chiemsee, said the fans didn’t seem to mind and just partied in the mud.

“Whatever the weather, there is always some mud at Chiemsee,” he told Pollstar. “Even when it’s dry, some people like to get some water and make some mud to play around in. There aren’t a lot of them but a few like to do it. It’s a normal thing at this festival.”

The last time the site at Ubersee turned into a mudbath was in 2005, when it took tractors nearly two days to pull all the cars off the soggy parks.

In 2002, the event came close to being canceled when constant rain caused flooding throughout Bavaria, leaving Munich’s central Hofbrauhaus Square under water and the nearby Isar and Donau rivers swollen to the bursting point.

The event was originally staged in July but was moved to August to take advantage of what’s usually better weather.

Chiemsee was FKP Scorpio’s fourth sellout festival of this season, with only M’Era Luna, a 25,000-Goth bash, coming a couple of thousand short of making it a clean sweep.

The acts helping to entertain the mud people on the Ubersee site at Chiemsee included Beenie Man, Shaggy, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Culcha Candela, Shantel & Bucovina Club Orkestar, and The Heptones & Basque Dub Foundation.