Filthy Weather And Dirty Luck

FKP Scorpio chief Folkert Koopmans was close to calling off his sold-out 50,000-capacity Southside Festival after a night of constant rain turned the Neuhausen Ob Eck into a German mudbath.

Engineers put down 4-square-metre panels and more than 500 cubic meters of bark chippings.

Koopmans was delighted Southside sold out but fears the cost of staging it and clearing up the site will eat into profits.
“I think this sort of rain follows me around,” he told Pollstar, pointing out that he was also at the sister Hurricane Festival when its site was flooded in 2006.

The weather wasn’t a problem at Hurricane in northern Germany, which also sold out its 70,000-capacity. But on Saturday night the new White Stage for electronic music proved so much in demand that it had to be shut down early for safety reasons.

“It’s a tent stage and there were so many people trying to get in that the security had to close it. By the following day we’d reconfigured the barriers and there no more problems,” Koopmans explained.

The acts helping FKP Scorpio through filthy weather and dirty luck June 12 included The Strokes, Beatsteaks, Jack Johnson, Mando Diao, The Prodigy, Massive Attack, The Gaslight Anthem, Faithless, Stone Temple Pilots and Deichkind.