By Gordon Inc. Photo: CBS

Roskilde is rock, reggae, hip-hop, trip-hop, folk, funk, junk, punk, metal, jungle and pop. Roskilde is sunflower fields, mountains of car tyres, scrap metal cafés, cabaret stages and bonfires of rubbish. Roskilde is all the sub-cultures ever invented - in one place, at one time. Roskilde has something for everybody and everybody turns up.

Everybody plays there sooner or later. A few play there all the time. Roskilde is ahead of the pack. It is the first, biggest and still the best. Nobody beats Roskilde.

Roskilde is body. Roskilde is hair: long hair, short hair, spiky hair, tattoos, piercing, T-shirts, sweatshirts, miniskirts. Roskilde is itself a body. It is a mega-body with millions of limbs and voices held together by walkie-talkies and (cellular) phones and terminals, so it doesn't forget anything.

Roskilde is full of wrecks and lots of booze. Roskilde is mega. Roskilde is Amnesty, EMI, Sony, BMG, HA, Carlsberg, Marlboro and Greenpeace.

Roskilde is toilet queues, tie-dye, tacky tacos and motor cycle nomads.

Roskilde is everything we love and everything we hate.

Roskilde is voluntary and the guys who build the stage and paint the fences, the conceptual artists, catering crews, bouncers, roadies, managers, record company staff, media types, rock stars, poets, performance artists, service staff, organisers and telephonists are all paid for by the real main act - the hordes of headbangers, the plebs, the audience. Yes, Roskilde is first and foremost the audience, the ones who pay for it all, the ones who make Roskilde possible. Roskilde is pilgrims arriving by train, car, hitch-hiking, motorbikes, in busses. The audience who for years loyally waded their way painfully from the station before the Festival had its own train halt built, all because they wanted to experience it live and not on television. The audience who, unlike all the other semi-professional scrounging gits, pay for their tickets. Roskilde is a good audience, the happy audience, those who are double-checked and searched and laugh at all the idiots who think they are more important because they have a function to fulfil. The audience with the right to be lazy, lounge about, mess about, drink and enjoy themselves. The audience are the stars. Roskilde is the loner from the hick town with unusual musical tastes who meets people of a similar ilk for the first time. Roskilde is the girl who comes to hear Björk or something else mainstream but is seduced and corrupted by some wild different music during the festival, music she had no idea existed. She might even end up meeting the loner outside the free-sex tent. Roskilde is the older ones, the couples. Roskilde is the boys or the girls who go to the festival together to get away from the boyfriend or to find new ones or sit together in a tribe and swap old Roskilde stories and discover that nobody else has had exactly the same experience. Roskilde is unique for everybody. Roskilde is the very young hard-core nutters who rampage about, doing all the things they might or might not normally do - to excess. Parties, weirdoes, boldly going where they have never been before, seeking their inner-selves.

Roskilde is a supermarket so large, that the programmes get thicker and thicker and you need a map to get around. No, Roskilde is more than a supermarket: Roskilde is a state within the state. A world within the world with thousands of worlds inside it. Roskilde is a Chinese box with thousands of stages, big stages, small stages, backstages. All sorts of stages - perhaps because every person at Roskilde has his/her own stage and does his/her own thing.

Roskilde is to be a musician and do soundchecks on Orange Stage, feel the blast and the power of hearing your voice reverberate all around. Roskilde is standing on the stage and being amazed how little room there is, even though it seems so big from down below where the audience are. Roskilde is being a musician and getting lost after the concert while trying to find the pay office. Roskilde is being a journalist and stressing about the number of concerts to be reviewed, not reaching half of them and ending up at four in the morning listening to Prodigy and going amok in the press lodge with two Polish press girls. Roskilde is hard work. Roskilde is camera teams dashing about looking for the best angles. Roskilde is tolerance. Roskilde is about taking chances and not listening to what you usually listen to - not doing what you usually do. Roskilde is heaven with fantastic fireworks. Roskilde is pure energy. Roskilde is set lists and checklists, Powerbooks, hard-as-nails bureaucracy and wet sleeping bags. Roskilde is deadlines and onlines and lines, lines, lines...

Roskilde is sound. Roskilde is cheating. Roskilde is the armband you cut off and pass through the fence to somebody else.

Roskilde is memories. Fading photos: one of them shows the site on a Sunday morning - a jungle of crushed plastic beer glasses with a punk couple frozen in a kiss which has lasted for at least half-an-hour and the only reason they do not fall down is that they are leaning on each other.

Roskilde is standing pissing on a potato somebody has left behind on the ground and whinnying at the thought that some hungry drunk might eat it at some point.

Roskilde is earplugs for rock reviewers who puke into the bin with gravitas. Roskilde is lobby work in the backstage bar.

Roskilde is heavy drinking on a morning so beautiful. Noise, lechery, dancing, boys and girls. Roskilde is deep conversation, whispered conversation, loud talk, flat talk about what we have seen and the times we live in, what is happening and where it is happening.

Roskilde is swapping telephone numbers, music names, musical experiences, all sorts of information. Roskilde is the place where time can be killed or you can find what you seek in the music or in all the poetry which is no longer there, although the size is now consistent, we do not multiply any more.

Roskilde is a mass society and a class society.

It is stars in the mud on MTV.

It is football on the big screen and VIP's.

Roskilde is a steady job for the few and a pastime for the many.

Roskilde is good for society.

Roskilde does not frighten anyone.

Roskilde is ecologically and politically correct and money from the masses pours into the till. Roskilde is chaos and control - without violence - and cold checks.

Roskilde is so big everything gets lost.

But Roskilde is also cerebral revolution, as all positive experiences which seduce the mind, give pleasure and change us are always ultimately revolutionary.

Roskilde is the sum of all the groups who have played there; of all the songs electric troubadours have fired off over the years; of all that which has been said, felt, lived through, thought, dreamt and drunk; of all the energy which has been expended here. Roskilde is full of vitality and if you are open-minded enough you retain it even after the rush has evaporated and you leave Roskilde, ready to use it to fight for your life and your dreams.

Roskilde is light. Roskilde is thrills. Roskilde is throng. Roskilde is the satiety which follows hunger. Roskilde is an event, mainstream and cult. Roskilde is everything at once, a drone and a dream, the bing, bang and bong of a song, a thunderclap, a rush towards the year 2000, commercial and idealistic with a vision of merging everything.

A four-day sanctuary where people do what they want. Roskilde is what you make of it.