Having fun at Springfestival with Wolfram
Springfestival is arguably the best festival for electronic music in Austria, and you’ve already heard some of the stories of which legends are made – Felix the Houserat recounted some of the best memories of ten years of Springfestival and even told you about Graz’s best culinary treat: vanilla ice cream with pumpkin seed oil. Now it’s time for his partner in crime Wolfram(formerly Marflow / Diskokaine and long time member of the Electronic Beats family) to tell us some of his adventures and long-kept secret stories.
The problem with Springfestival is that it’s almost too good. As a result, my own memories from – six times four days – from 24 days of excitement in Graz are very cloudy. On the one hand, this can be seen as a bad thing. How would you feel if you realized that after going to a festival five years in a row only a handful of memories can be brought back? On the other hand, it makes those surviving memories – which were apparently awesome enough to make it through the merciless onslaught of alcohol and partying they were subjected to – all the sweeter to share with you now.
One night (after all that sentimental talk about the memories that survived, I feel like I must add that this is actually story my friend Patrick Pulsinger told me afterward) I lost my iPhone at least six consecutive times, in a very short period of time. I was wearing these huge African pants and the mobile kept falling out of my pockets as soon as I would sit down. Backstage, in the cabs, basically everywhere I chose to plant myself for more than a minute, Patrick had to be following close to be sure to scoop up my iPhone. For me it was a fun night, though I’m afraid I couldn’t say the same for Patrick.
A rather sad story was meeting DJ Mehdi backstage last year. We talked for quite some time because we had previously had the chance to hang out on a couple of occasions in New York. A few weeks later he fell through a glass veranda and broke his neck, so that Springfestival was the last time I saw him.
One of the best moments ever happened during Springfestival 2008. I was DJing at Dom im Berg, which was back then the main location, and everybody went nuts when I dropped ‘Hyper Hyper’ by Scooter. Afterward, the festival’s man in charge, Stefan Auer, told me that some guy wanted his money back since he didn’t pay for an après ski party. Funny thing: Later I also happened to meet the legendary H.P. Baxxter himself in Graz (ok, actually my friend Felix did, but I saw them together, haha).
Also great and quite absurd was the year where they had some kind of synthesizer museum. Synths are fantastic and every musician I know (including myself) is obsessed with these marvelous little machines. So it didn’t come as a surprise that every second afterhour ended with a trip to the museum and, as a result, every time I went there, I’d encounter at least one musician who hadn’t slept a minute the night before.
For this year I’d recommend you to go to the opening night party at Helmut List Halle, (since I’ll be DJing there) and don’t miss the lecture from Stefan Sagmeister. He was born in Bregenz but moved to NY in the 90’s and designed some iconographic covers for The Rolling Stones, Brian Eno and David Byrne. He even won a Grammy.
Published April 25, 2012.