Musicians On The Spot

A dozen of Denmark’s best-known musicians have been split into three teams and assigned a venue to rehearse, put together a 30-minute set and then tour.

Each team (or band) will have three days to put together enough original material to fill a 30-minute set.

At the beginning of May the acts will set out on a three-band tour of the clubs they’ve used for rehearsals, which are Fermaten in Herning, Paletten in Viborg and Radar in Århus on the opening night of Denmark’s Spot Festival.

“It’s in the spirit of Spot because we always like to present new ideas,” said festival press spokesman Henrik Friis. “It will be an interesting experience for the musicians and should also be fun for the audiences.”

This year’s Spot is also trying to make the event more fun for the audience by moving all the showcases indoors, a sop for foreign visitors who are not used to the rigours of the local spring climate.

“Last year many of the international delegates kept telling us that they were freezing,” Friis explained.

Spot usually attracts a little more than 1,000 visitors, with about one-third coming from outside Denmark. Most of the delegates are from the other Scandinavian countries, Germany, the U.S. and the UK.

This year’s gathering will move from the end of May to the beginning of the month, largely because Northside Festival (June 15-17) – also in Århus – is proving so popular with local students.

There’s no edge to the competition as Northside supports Spot and is sponsoring one of the main panels, a discussion on the future of the festival format.

Claes Olsen, head of booking at Norway’s Oya Festival, and Stephan Thanscheidt from Hamburg-based promoter FKP Scorpio – the major partner in Northside – will be discussing the shutdown of some big outdoors and what others may need to do to survive.

At press time the panel programme, which takes place in two or three venues near the centre of the city, hadn’t been completed.

One hundred or so mostly Scandinavian bands have already been confirmed, with Alphabeat, The Megaphonic Thrift, Savage Rose and The Raveonettes among the better-known names.

The annual event, which started in 1994, was once described by former culture minister Brian Mikkelsen as “the most important musical event in Denmark.”

Spot Festival is in Århus, Denmark, May 4-5.