PREVIEW: Serbia ready for its top musical event

Belgrade - Hundreds of performers from all over the world, including such big names as the Sex Pistols and Manu Chao, are gearing up to play for tens of thousands of fans in the EXIT festival, Serbia's - and Balkan's - largest music fest. Held in a sprawling, 17th-century Petrovaradin fortress overlooking the Danube, in Serbia's second largest city Novi Sad, 80 kilometres west of Belgrade on the highway to Budapest, EXIT also showcases such talents as N.E.R.D, Paul Weller, Primal Scream, Juliette and the Licks, the Hives, Nightwish, The Streets, Ministry and Deep Dish. More than 600 musical performances overall, as well as movies and theatrical plays, are scheduled to be featured across the festival's 25 stages until it closes on early Monday morning. 'We're in for the new EXIT and a phenomenal program. Everything is working perfectly,' event manager Bojan Boskovic said. Launched in 2000 as a protest against the rule of now-dead strongman Slobodan Milosevic, EXIT first drew 20,000 people, and the nest year's concert, in July 2001, was a spectacular success, attracting 200,000 fans from the still war-scarred former Yugoslavia. The festival also quickly gained a following among 'real' foreigners - apart from Slovenians, Bosnians, Croats and Macedonians - with Britons being the most numerous among the 20,000 who attended. The EXIT site (www.exitfest.org) says British fans voted it the best European festival in 2007. Organizers now expect 12,000 Britons, and apparently so too does the British embassy in Belgrade, which will have a presence on site in Novi Sad to help their compatriots and keep them out of trouble. Three officials will be on rotating duty for each day of the festival, to provide immediate assistance to Britons, the Fonet news agency said Tuesday. Though EXIT traditionally remains clear of big trouble, visitors have broken bones falling off the fortress walls after drinking or smoking too much and police usually detain dozens in possession of drugs. Some 200 foreign guests were already on site at the start of the week, when a camp for 14,000 people opened beneath the fortress. Half the camp, which has improved each year from its humble beginnings and now offers free internet and mobile phone chargers, was booked months in advance. EXIT has lured its following by offering an 'adventurous' variety of musical genres and directions, be it rock or rap, classical or chill, dance or drum'n'bass or electronic or experimental. Since the first concerts in 2000, the festival has brought to Serbia Basement Jaxx, Billy Idol, Franz Ferdinand, Fatboy Slim, Morrissey, Massive Attack, The Prodigy, Robert Plant, Snoop Dogg, Scissor Sisters, Underworld, Moloko, Garbage, The Cardigans, The Cult, The Beastie Boys, Slayer, Apocalyptica and many others. Novi Sad is 80 kilometres west of Belgrade, right on the Budapest-Belgrade highway.