Sunday 03/07/05 Roskilde Festival, Denmark

Stepping off the rickety festival train on to Roskilde’s makeshift station platform, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into another universe. Whether Scandinavians are truly insane or just so during festival season remains a mystery, but these eight crazy days make Glastonbury look like a day trip to your local village carnival.  An all-day, all-night international line-up of classic and fledgling bands combines with Mexican-style cocktail bars, local produce stalls, naked races and general spontaneous silliness to make this a week that you truly never want to end.

The party begins at a chilled pace. As five stages are erected by the dedicated local volunteers, the pavilion tent hosts a variety of up and coming artists. Two that grab the senses are the prog-punk Norweigan band Datarock and popular garage rock duo Johnossi from Sweden. The experimental Icelandic seven-piece Brudarbandid in full bride costumes gives a hint of the giddy creative bedlam that makes Roskilde such an outstanding event.

Athlete open the main events on the Odeon stage on Thursday faced with an excitable and restless crowd. The safe indie chancers dutifully plod through their acclaimed album tracks, clean-shaven and confident. Their dreams clearly revolve around Coldplay-style success but none of the wistful melodies carries the hitlist weight of 'Yellow' and the likes. Life gains momentum early Thursday evening as Danish ‘Dadaist’ hip hop act Ikscheltaschel wake things up over on the Orange stage. Their countless members jiggle and shimmy to an eclectic recipe of reggae, funk and rap in synchrony with an audience mixed from as many cultural ingredients as the music.

Swedish-raised political rapper Timbuktu keeps the Nordic flag flying before giving way to the laughably derivative American rockers Velvet Revolver. Saved only by the high-voltage energy of their performance the greasy-haired boys shamelessly rip off riff after riff from every great rock band from Led Zep through Guns ‘n Roses to Nirvana and gain senseless applause from the duped listeners.

West African Mory Kante added a flavour of delicious rumba-style soul spanning all continents and appealing to as many, all congregated in the Ballroom. The festival fever dances its way back over to the Orange stage where Kent, wildly popular with the Swedes, brings the night to a dramatic close with melodious guitar-pop and bold Latino overtones. Romanian gypsy music is on the gourmet menu for Friday, and this folky funk beat has the Ballroom crowd leaping about once more before heading to the Pavilion for the impressive one-man mayhem that is Mugison. Next, late from their flight from Canada, The Be Good Tanyas strum delicately through a gothic set of gorgeous roots music haunted by religious guilt. 

Snoop Dogg amuses and delights old fans and strangers alike with old school charm and classic hip hop. Sleazy, suave and cheesy, the grandfather of modern rap is back with a vengeance. Super-group Audioslave hide moments of soft song-craft behind a satisfying repertoire of hard-edged rock, preparing the Orange stage for its true stars of the night, the beloved Black Sabbath. Slightly off-key and more than slightly off his head, Ozzy rasps and raves like he has never left the podium, wrapping a spiky quilt of content around Roskilde’s diehard rock addicts.

Over at the crammed Arena stage, Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler exceed all expectation in their reunion as The Tears. Soaring exquisitely from one beautifully penned epic to the next, the pseudo-camp masters of Britpop have lost not one ounce of their appeal throughout their bickering years.

Saturday brings a music buff’s paradise to Roskilde. Devendra Banhart fills the intimate Pavilion with his childlike bohemian brilliance, singing ironic fairytales of painting cigarettes blue and the nonsensical experience of being human. The Dresden Dolls leap into life next, faces painted and costumes intact. The sexy duo make rock music into an art form with wild pantomime gestures and an unforgettable combination of angry, honey-voiced lyrics with fine piano playing and ferocious drums. 

Dave Grohl gets ready to Fight the Foo on the Orange stage by referring to the free love he hopes is still rife at "these crazy hippy festivals", before hammering into his set of ever more commercial rock anthems. Upping the grunge factor of Roskilde, Green Day serves a full-on feast of classics from every era of their career. Random audience members are invited up on stage to make a public disaster of themselves wielding the band’s instruments, making for a lively show. The band close with the stadium-friendly Queen cover ‘We Are The Champions’ and a mood-enhancing finale of 'Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)' with a dazzling array of firecrackers and neon lights to keep the tired Roskilders awake.   

For those still up and raring to go in the early hours, unlikely Roskilde performers Duran Duran put on a surprisingly energetic trip down eighties lane. Simon Le Bon swaggers and skips around the vast stage, still in this game for the fun of being Le Bon as much as for the fame. Kitsch classics 'Girls On Film', 'Rio' and 'Wild Boys' play on the lips and hips of every attendee and echo into the sleeping Agoras nearby.

Winding down on Sunday, Joanna Newsom startles many into submission with her shrill, shivering tones embraced by the plucking of her harp. In the afternoon, as traditionally attired Thai girls dance mid-field to the beat of a national steel-type band, The Futureheads and Bloc Party nervously inject a dose of shouty young Britishness into the anticipating ears surrounding the Odeon stage.

Unenthusiastic but still mighty in presence, Brian Wilson brings a West Coast sparkle to European shores with his nostalgic Beach Boys sound. An older crowd gather to shake their shoes to the good vibrations as the younger generation nod along with dream memories of a time regrettably not their own. Appealing to a more adolescent crowd at the Pavilion, Bright Eyes half sings, half aches with a cynical love for life. His melancholy and melody entwine in sad ironic harmony, perfect for a festival trying to eke out lost time and mourning its disbelieving end.

Too cool for school, Interpol bore the last few standing to sleep on Sunday night. A compact disc in the background would have had an equally exciting effect to this wet lettuce attempt at a live performance, but it's possible their misfortune lies in playing just as moods are beginning to flatten. Still darting amongst tireless Danes, Swedes and Norweigans as the train leaves for Copenhagen, it is hard to imagine a festival less un-selfconscious or more hysterically good fun. It's just a shame that Roskilde festival is not there to escape to all year round - what a perfect world that would be.