God Shave The Queen
Saturday, 3 a.m. We’re in a shuttle to Munich, all half-dead, each of us holding four beers because at that hour the logic was that we couldn’t let them go to waste. My stuff is still in the hotel room. Not getting that back.
That’s how the week at Volvo Snowbombing in Mayrhofen ended. The festival’s premise is absurd—ski in the morning, live music at night, repeat until you can’t stand up. Somehow it works.
The British crowd that shows up is genuinely happy about it. Thousands of them, wasted, and yet polite. No brawls. The people running it—the PR guys, the journalists—are actually cool, not the usual dead-eyed festival machinery. That matters.
I was supposed to interview Mark Ronson, Ms. Dynamite, Fatboy Slim at some point. I did. I have no memory of what I asked them. It doesn’t matter.
The performances blur. The Prodigy played, 2manydjs got the crowd moving, Magnetic Man was there. Pendulum is the one I remember. I was awake when they played, more or less, and it was the only set I could watch straight through. Everything else is strobes and bass and Black Bull stealing the rest. There was a guy in the hotel bar playing keys to maybe thirty people, and he was probably better than half the headliners. Just him and a keyboard, no production, no mystique.
A week where half of it I don’t actually remember, and it’s still one of the better weeks I’ve had.