Roskilde 2012: 10 Best Moments

Picture Bonnaroo. Now add more people, more drinking, a flurry of European soccer (ahem, football) chants and a heavily relaxed attitude toward standard (U.S.) societal mores. Welcome to Roskilde, one of the biggest music festivals in the world located 20 miles west of Copenhagen, Denmark. What started as a hippie retreat by two high school students in 1971 has turned into a mecca for Europeans, drawing more than 125,000 people, including 30,000 volunteers. This year, Bruce Springsteen, Jack White, the Cure, Bjork, Bon Iver and Mew headlined the four-day fest, featuring 200 acts from 36 different countries. The sheer volume of music can be overwhelming, but we've distilled the four wild, action-packed days down to the 10 best moments.

I could get all jingoistic and put the Boss playing "Born in the U.S.A." on Fourth of July weekend as a best moment, but we're going with Saturday night's headliner bringing members of the Roots, including Black Thought, Captain Kirk and Tuba Gooding, Jr., onstage for a rambunctious version of 1973's "E Street Shuffle." Having watched the Roots perform for the first time earlier that day, Springsteen, a first‐time Roskilde performer, shared a mic with Black Thought midway through his three‐hour set, with Captain Kirk returning to the stage at the end of the set for Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout." Bonus points for Springsteen pronouncing the festival right: It's Rah‐skeel‐ah.

Jack White is no stranger to long, instrumental jams, but Friday's headlining set on the Orange Stage was a record even for him. The singer, backed by the all‐female band the Peacocks, stretched the Raconteurs' "Steady as She Goes" into a 10‐minute epic highlighted by a jazzy, downtempo middle section. For a crowd more accustomed to the recorded version's steady bounce, the change was jarring, but welcome. While "Seven Nation Army" has become the de facto European chant for anyone waiting for a band, White's set was highlighted as much by Raconteurs material, including a blistering version of "Carolina Drama," as his better-known former group the White Stripes.

It's not news that musicians will say, with dubious levels of authenticity, that they're "so happy to be in (your city here)." Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto, though, talked the talk, peppering Friday afternoon's main stage set with Danish phrases and remarking, “I love this place with its cute houses, cute cars and cute little bicycles!” (Fun fact: Denmark is second behind Holland for most bicycles per capita.) Ditto repeated the words “tusind tak” (”Thank you very much”) throughout her set and ordered her fans to “Skåååål!” (Cheers!) The crowd, naturally, ate it up.

Roskilde organizers have a strict rule against booking the same artist two years in a row, but they capitulated this year for Janelle Monae, bringing the soul singer back to quell overwhelming demand. After covering Prince's "Take Me with U" and Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," Monae gave away a painting she finished onstage as a birthday gift to one lucky fan. Classy.

Roskilde is more than just music, with tens of thousands of concertgoers building their camping spaces into different themes, including "Camp Burt Reynolds" (a tribute to all things Burt-related), "Farmer's Speed Dating" (each person dressed as a farmer and hosted speed dating rounds each night) and our favorite: Camp Mordor. With more than 200 football fields' worth of space and the festival awarding Camp of the Day and Camp of the Year awards, groups will spend months planning and constructing their spaces and arrive days before the festival to ensure a good spot in the first-come, first-serve spaces. The group above spent three months building their site, addressing themselves only by their 'LOTR' names and reading from 'The Hobbit' for two hours each day.

Dressed in a giant orange wig and an outlandish dress composed of glistening black coils—think pythons slithering over her body—Bjork brought a 13-piece Icelandic female choir to assist her festival-closing set Sunday night. During 2001's "Pagan Poetry," the singer stretched out and reconstructed the song's repeated chant of "I love him," singing solo before engaging with the choir. Bjork twisted and bent certain vocal notes, elongating syllables and somehow delivering unique urgency to a simple sentiment.

Call me provincial, but one of the festival's biggest surprises was that Danish people actually love country music. Hank 3, son of Hank Williams, Jr. and grandson of Hank Williams, blended country, punk and metal in an overflowing Odeon Stage. During 2010's "Rebel Within," numerous audience members began to jig, line dance and do-si-do, proving that Nashville, Tennessee can travel to Scandinavia.

Danish rock band Mew blend grandiose pop with post‐punk and electronic sounds, splitting the difference between the anthemic hooks of Muse and the psychedelic atmospherics of 'Soft Bulletin'‐era Flaming Lips. Midway through Saturday's 90‐minute late‐night set, frontman Jonas Bjerre theatrically laid down on the stage and was surrounded by five "ghosts" (read: people in costumes), who brought him back to life while otherworldly keyboard sounds soundtracked the spectacle. Rock purists will scoff, but it was bizarrely perfect drama for a 2 A.M. crowd.

Comprised of Coldplay's Guy Berryman, A-ha's Magne Furuholmen, Mew's Jonas Bjerre and producer Martin Terefe, vocoder-loving synth-pop group Apparatjik rarely appear live or give interviews. So when the band agreed to play Thursday's late-night set on the Orange Stage (minus Berryman, who was on tour with Coldplay), you knew to expect something bugged out. What no one predicted was bodybuilder suits, silver capes, bald wigs and eerily realistic masks of Terefe's face worn by each member. Like Kraftwerk at Halloween, the effect was both mesmerizing and terrifying.

Let's get one thing straight: 99.9% of the time, conga lines are corny cruise ship fodder employed by some no-talent hack looking for a cheap way to gather a crowd en masse for easy entertainment. Brazilian musician Criolo is the exception. The singer/rapper, who blends samba, Afrobeat, hip hop and soul, stirred the surprisingly large crowd into forming a giant, raucous conga line Saturday evening. Participants waved flags, spit beer in the air and jovially fondled each other; a microcosm of the uninhibited nature and attitude of the entire festival. Cruise ships should take note.