Big fun at Big Mountain

It’s the cool season and that for music fans means that Big Mountain, Thailand’s biggest music event, is just around the corner.
Sponsored by Pepsi, the two-day music festival, called “Man Yai Mak” in Thai, is taking place on December 10 and 11 at Bonanza Khao Yai, Nakhon Ratchasima, but anyone heading up there can expect quite a few changes.
“The last two years were experiments in making our music festival,” says Yuthana “Ted” Boon-orm, the managing director of festival promoter Gayray. “Now, I think we’ve found the right path. We’ve listened to complaints about the long walks from stage to stage and we are happy to announce that we’ve found a solution.”
One of the major changes is to the site itself to cope with the heavy traffic. The entrance route has been shortened from 12 kilometres to 7km, there is parking for 8,500 vehicles and the camping zones, named “Lad Krabang”, “Ladda Land”, “FarmVille”, “District 9” and “Fisherman Village” have been expanded to support 6,000 tents, 2,000 more than last year. While there will be fewer stalls in the market, Ted promises the quality of goods will be higher.
The stages are also being relocated. At the two previous events, the two main stages were near the entrance. This time, there’ll be a third main stage in another part of the venue plus three smaller stages.
“We don’t want the audience to sit or stand at just one stage but to keep moving from one stage to another. So, the artists at the three main stages must be able to draw crowds while the acts at the three small ones will come as complete surprises,” says Ted.
The three main stages are called “Club Cake”, which is being billed as a heaven for dance lovers, “Cow Stage”, which features a cow named Mr Steak, and the “Ferris Wheel Stage”, which has two ferris wheels as props. The small ones are “District 9”, “Pub Akojorn” and “Man Nai”.
Ted has also made big adjustments to the artist line-up. Big Mountain usually features a variety of artists and music but this year many more of them are from RS and Sony as well as from indie labels like Smallroom, Spicy Disc, Believe Record and Panda Record.
Renowned hip-hop group Thaitanium will make their debut at the festival along with Palmy, Christina “Tina” Aguilar and Dajim. Other artists include Bodyslam, Paradox, 25 Hours, Da Endorphine, Scrubb, Armchair, Wan Thanakrit, Stamp, Lula, Moderndog, Jetrin Wattanasin, Boy Peacemaker, the Bottom Blues, So Cool, Retrospect, Sweet Mullet, Zeal, Klear, No More Tears, Instinct, AB Normal, the Moussess, Kala, |T-Bone, Calories Blah Blah, Sqweez Animal, Singular, Labanoon, Jetset’er, Friday, La-Ong Fong, Crescendo, Singto Numchok, Apartment Khunpa, Barbies, Greasy Cafe, the Superglasses Ska Ensemble featuring Tik Shiro, Teddy Ska Band, Room39, Four-Mod, Fay-Fang-Kaew, 321, I-Nam, Black Vanilla and Khanom Jeen.
“Big Mountain is like a round up of what’s happened in the music circle over the past year. Tina had a very successful concert. Nong Pao [Paowalee Pornpimol] became a big star thanks to playing the late luk thung queen Poompuang Duangchan in the movie about her life and will be the first luk thung singer to sing on stage at Big Mountain. Pub Akojorn by Na Nake proved popular last year and I think it will do even better this year with such artists as So Cool, I-Nam, or even YouTube sensations Room 3.50,” says Ted.
Even the art direction for the promotion is undergoing a revolutionary change.
“We’re giving much more importance to promoting the festival,” says Ted. “We’ve taken on a Thai team that’s worked on such Hollywood movies as ‘Iron Man 2’ to create our poster.”

BECAUSE IT’S THERE
The Big Mountain Music Festival is on December 10 and 11 at Bonanza Khao Yai in Nakhon Ratchasima.
Tickets are Bt1,800. Call (02) 262 3456 or visit www.ThaiTicketMajor.com.
Buy before December 9 and include 10 caps or labels from Pepsi products and you pay Bt1,350.
Visit the website for more information: www.BigMountainMusicFestival.com,