The Spade - well on my contract it says "artist escort", but I call it an artist guide - basically, I have to pick them up from the airport, hang out with them, take them around town to see it or if they want to go out I have to take them to a club. Basically you get assigned an artist/band and hang out with them 24/7 during their stay here. It sounds super fun. There are all kinds of "volunteer" jobs on the festival - from checking tickets to looking over the tent camp to backstage crew. You don't get paid but you get in the festival for free (though on some of the jobs, I imagine you'll hardly see anything) and in my case if I get assigned an artist who wants to party, drinking and anything I do while with them is free, so that's also cool. I'm super stoked about hanging out with talented people, and I really hope I won't get assigned an artist with a superstar syndrome. They had the job positions announced earlier in the summer and you go to an interview, but apart from the artist escort and the backstage crew all the other positions involved sitting in the sun all day long or any other shit activity. Unfortunately, the other vacancies were like 150 whereas the escort/backstage people are only 15. Most of the people that were interviewed before for the same job knew a real shit English, and they still got hired, so some artists might have a real shit stay here, cause you're also supposed to be interpreting.
Anyway, yeah, the line-up's always pretty obscure. This year it's Prodigy, UNKLE, Gorillaz, Apollo 440, Everlast (???? with the rest of the bands??), Serj from System of a Down (again,????), DJ Shadow & Grandmaster Flash, apart from the shitload of Bulgarian or foreign obscure bands I've never heard before. I think they try to attract audience from all kinds of genres because there's a reggae stage, a rock stage, a hardcore & punk stage, a house stage, etc, but the result ends-up just being a "wtf?" on the side of most people. This year some artists will do charity stuff, but apart from that and the camp and the merch tents, as you said I don't think there'll be anything else, though I've heard at least the food situation will be improved. My people never manage to do anything right anything, most Bulgarians are just excited some bands are coming, since up until a couple of years ago we had one big concert in the entire country a year. I don't know anyone in the town, so I don't know anything about meeting the Mr. Speedy Gonzales =((( Spade, did you get your hands on anything? Any tips?
) it's an English guy who runs the festival or was at least in the first year.