Just had this direct from the organisers:






Press Release

Laughing and dancing in the face of adversity, The Glade site crew and its loyal community pull off one of the most memorable festivals in recent years.

The Glade Festival went ahead amidst scenes of unbelievable adversity during the worst weather conditions the UK has experienced since 1946. While school children were being rowed out of their classrooms by the local fire brigade and police were evacuating surrounding villages, The Glade site crew made a Herculean effort to receive 12,000 festival goers, having waited in miles of traffic, often knee deep in water and with many of the access routes to the festival closed off. By Saturday a full license capacity of 16, 500 people were in attendance and in full flow.

A journey that normally takes only 40 minutes from Heathrow took up to 9 hours to the site, but all the artists, many of whom are used to first class travel and 5 star accommodation, were happy to muck in and show the Dunkirk spirit just to play at The Glade Festival, now surely regarded as the leading electronic dance music festival in the UK.

Nick Ladd, festival organizer - 'It was an incredible effort by everybody to keep the show going - if it had rained for another 2 hours we would have had to cancel, but everybody, crew and glade goers alike came together and pulled off a massive exercise in positive thinking ............ what was really amazing was the vibe of the festival itself........... English people are hardcore and everybody was determined to have it, despite the rain and the endless mud - the Glade community showed its true spirit , all the stages were rocking, with nobody moaning and everybody looking out for each other and when the sun came out on Sunday it went bananas….we just want to say a massive thankyou to everyone that came and stayed positive and kept the vibe alive"

Sander Kleinberg - 'I thought I had arrived in armageddon, but the quality of the production and organisation was incredible and the vibe of the crowd amazing"

Hybrid - "I don’t know how the hell they pulled it off"

Fact: Twelve of the Thirteen stages opened almost on time, ninety per cent of all the published artists played including every headliner and the last stage was up by the evening

Fact: The unique noise limitation strategy using Function 1’s revolutionary new Ambersonic sound system was a huge success resulting in minimal noise nuisance, made all the incredible because of the conditions.

Fact ; reported complaints about security were down 80%

Fact: The Glade Festival will be back next year!

I also have a response re the profiteering in the car park, will put it in the other threads too:


Me: # blatant profiteering by some of the tractor drivers, there are reports of up to £40 being asked for towing people out.

Organisers: yes we were made aware of this and we acted up on it immediately - I was very upset that the drivers were exploiting peoples misfortune and the offending ones were thrown off site as soon we knew, but unfortunately it probably took a couple of hours for it to get back to us.

The majority of tractor drivers worked through the night charging people £10 per tow, which is what we sanctioned as we felt this was reasonable - we were also paying them to be there.

We also had 20 labourers employed on Monday to help push people out, plus 6 tractors - we did everything we could to make the best of a bad situation - it's worth bearing in mind that only 10 miles away over 5,000 people were being evacuated from their homes.

As mentioned in the Overkill thread, here are their responses to the Venetian Snares walk-out and the Overkill sound issues:

Me: sound levels in the Overkill Tent (presumably because of all the difficulties in getting it up and running in the first place?).

Organisers: At one stage on Friday night after midnight it was a bit quiet for 2 hours due to the event noise team getting some high readings off site, but this didn't last long and they levels and the vibe in the tent was mostly excellent.

Me: Venetian Snares' walk-out, apparently because of a dispute with the monitors technician?

Organisers: Yeah, well, unfortunately we weren't too happy bout that either - neither congo natty that preceded him nor the 3 acts that followed him had a problem - its a shame he reacted the way he did - the overkill crew worked incredibly hard to put on the show and what was needed in this case was a bit of patience and understanding - what we got instead was a dj's ego and his childish behaviour - c'est la vie, as they say. Most of the feedback we got from Overkill has been fantastic.

I'll try to get all the responses organised into a single thread eventually. In the meantime, if you see someone asking something that's already been responded to in this thread, please direct them here.

Responses to the organisers' responses have been moved to http://www.gladtalk.co.uk/forum/respons ... t4231.html

Watch this space for any more organisers' statements and responses to any more issues that are raised.

We now have a very full response from Mr Overkill himself, N>E>D, here

Here's a short snippet:

N>E>D wrote:as you all well know it was a hell of a rollacoaster that the core crew, myself & Ed & bang face posse are just recovering from.
there really is no way to describe the feeling when you hear the rain starting to come down in the middle of the night at a festival and it just doesnt stop.
Its like all those dellusions you gave yourself about "maybe we'll miss the rain", or "maybe we'll just get a shower" are cancelled out and you just have this impending feeling.... THE MUD IS COMING.

Now read on...