They trashed the mountain

Big Mountain, Thailand’s biggest music festival, surprised even its organisers last weekend, breaking records with an audience of 50,000 – that’s 10,000 more than last year. Adding to the pleasure was the unexpected drop in temperature to 12 degrees Celsius at night and some radical improvements to the venue.

Moving the entrance five kilometres up the road worked well, serving to reduce both the distance and the time stuck in traffic from three hours to just over one hour. And while there was still a lot of dust around, it was considerably less than in previous years because the main road around the venue was covered with asphalt. 

Other measures taken to solve persistent problems of the past included putting extra staff at the entrance to handle the exchange of tickets for wristbands and the addition of 80 more permanent toilets. Along with the mobile toilets, that meant the queues were a little shorter, though the organiser says more will be available next year. 

Garbage continued to be a problem even with two garbage-collecting teams. Rubbish quickly spread around the venue, especially in the landfill area in front of the Ferris wheel main stage, where a crowd of 10,000 people gathered on both nights.

“It’s really hard to change careless behaviour,” says promoter Yuthana “Ted” Boonorm, managing director of Gayray. “Our staff couldn’t break through the crowd at the main stage and collect the garbage. We manage to clear it all in the morning though.”

At Japan’s Summer Sonic music festival, garbage is classified by category and sponsors distribute large plastic bags to concertgoers, who are disciplined enough to the garbage into them. Could this work at Big Mountain?

“We also classify the garbage and we’ve distributed plastic bags 50,000 black plastic bags that they used for seating instead. Thai audiences don’t throw their waste into bins and we ended up with more garbage. Our two main sponsors – Pepsi and 100 Pipers – started selling their drinks together with a water canteen, which can be refilled. We really need to start fostering the notion of garbage collection in childhood,” says Ted.

Noticeable this year was the reduction in the number of booths selling goodies – apparently half of the vendors who turned up last year were dissatisfied with sales and asked for the rental fee back.

Social networking is part and parcel of any music festival yet there was no signs of anyone at Big Mountain chatting or uploading pictures to Twitter and Facebook.

“We have cooperated with AIS, True and Dtac to make their signals available at the festival. This year, we can make phone calls but it’s slow. It’s better than last year though where it was impossible to call at all. It’s in development,” said Ted.

Music-wise, the festival couldn’t be faulted, with a bigger and more interesting line-up than at earlier editions and plenty of fun moments. Da Endorphine offered her cheek to Paradox’s songwriter and singer Ithipong “Tar” Krisakorn Na Ayuthaya to kiss during her show, and Makoto Koshinaka, the singer of J-rock band Lucifer, came out on stage to introduce his favourite rock band, Bodyslam.

“Konichiwa, I love you,” shouted Makoto before singing the hook of Bodyslam’s “Khwam Rak”. “Are you ready? Are you ready? Enjoy with Bodyslam”. Bodyslam played their hits “Saeng Sudthai”, “Ok Hak” and “Proh Bang” and singer Athiwa “Toon” Kongmalai made his first-ever duet with Tanachai “Pod” Ujjin of Moderndog on “Ploi”. During Paradox’s show, Da jammed with Tar in the festival’s theme song “Man Yai Mak”.

Big Mountain also welcomed for the first time such veterans as Christina Aguilar and Jetrin Wattanasin along with hip-hop outfit Thaitanium and rising luk thung singer, Paowalee Pornpimol, who shot to fame in the movie “Pumpuang” (“The Moon”). And despite being under the auspices of GMM Grammy, the festival also showcased teen artists from RS Public’s Kamikaze label, Fay-Fang-Kaew, Four-Mod and Black Vanilla.

In short, Big Mountain is continuing to improve, especially in terms of artist lineup, relocation of the stages and the general restructuring of the venue. And it would be impossible to beat the striking scene of Big Mountain at night.