Our car was closing to the place and we heard the fast beats from the TechnoTent. The Love Planet festival was starting. We built our tents in a festival city very fast and went to the gate. Sadly there were some stupid rules from the production people. Like - no cameras, no food or drink, no nothing... Not very "customer-oriented" security guys didn't let me in because of my camera. I had long argument with them. Luckily my friend had a luck and met the main organisator of the festival. He told the security, that he will accompany me to the storage room, where I will leave my OLYMPUS E1 camera (i would never do that, you know how many thefts are happening on such a places). After one minute he told me: "Don't put it there, just take pictures of whatever you want". Very funny. This whole situation took 1 hour. Imagine that you pay bloody money for the ticket and they don't let you in because you are carrying a camera. They were acting like I am a smuggler of drugs and have one kilogram of heroine in my backpack. Not a good start at all, but then every my hatred and nervosity vanished with the first performance I have seen there. My favourite australian band Loonaloop. Their energy boosted the crowd in this early evening. The band, which is contained of members from the well known band Tribal Drift (which doesn't exist anymore) and some new faces, made excellent performance. After them the Dreadzone squad was ready.
Dreadzone, a legendary band started slowly, but during the time the pressure of the beats was bigger and bigger and last four songs made 3000 people jump up like mad. Shame is, that they didn't play my favourite song "Moving On" and the performance was one hour and a few extra minutes long. But that's not their fault. It is a result of the festival program.
After that I had to rest for a while, so I went to score some beer'n'chinese noodles and had a little walk around the huge space of the airport, where the festival took its place. There were many stands with various food, drinks, "festival equipment" (frisbee etc.) and so on. Even Growshop was there - selling t-shirts and hats :-). I made a short stop on a hip hop stage and listened to some lame battle of two emcees. Well, it wasn't good, but at least it was funny...
And then I slowly went to the Dance stage to see Kosheen. This was the second biggest fuck up of the festival production. The concert was delayed for 70 minutes. Plus - it started to rain a little. Maybe because of this long waiting the concert was quite boring and the sound wasn't THAT good, as Kosheen deserves. I was regretting, that I didn't go to the TechnoTent to see Jeff Mills. From the middle of the Kosheen's performance I was looking forward to see Roni Size.
BUT... He didn't come, because of British Airways strike (so thank you guys very much. BUT... DJ Zinc perfectly replaced him. His powerful D'n'B sets made jump up those, who weren't disgusted by the absention of Roni (like myself) and I danced till the total exhaustion. In the middle of one set, Kosheen woman singer appeared on the stage with a bottle of red wine in her hand and showed some interesting moves. I think, that she and DJ Zinc are very good friends. Other interesting moment happened, when some guy climbed on the stage and started dancing. The dumb securities noticed that after two or three minutes and weren't able to bring him down. When they caught him, he was still dancing and showing to the crowd, that even he has his hand twisted and huge security gorilla is holding him around his neck, nothing can bother his performance on the stage.
After that it was about 5 am, so me and my friends went to the breakbeat stage and TechnoTent. It didn't take long and I had to go to sleep. After some 30 minutes of searching for my tent I finally found it, slipped into my sleepingbag, closed my eyes and fell to sleep...
The next day I woke up and started to think, how to smuggle my camera thru the festival gate again. I have decided to put it in my underwear. Really, no kiddin'! And it worked. I had to have long throusers without pockets and drag the attention of the security guys to my backpack. Plus I had to walk like some hip hop MC wannabe. Well... Imagine bringing E1 camera in your underpants...
The day started by Alvik, a czech band with an american woman singer. But their slow chillout music wasn't that, what I was looking for, so i left to see one of a few czech dub bands - Dub-o-net, which was truly a surprise for me, because their performance was good.
Then I moved to the Dance stage, where I saw good old friends Al-Yaman and very very bad performance of Hypnotix with their new line up - featuring Nana Zorin, which really isn't my cup of a tea. And they played for about 30 minutes - watta ridiculous time! Skyline, which were next again surprised me, they are better every year.
Apocalyptica was next on the line up. Those 4 nice finnish violin players, members of a finnish national philharmonny and their new drummer satisfied the crowd with their more than one hour lasting stream of their own compositions and the cover versions of Metallica. During the concert there was a major power failure, but that didn't disturb their good mood and they finished the song unplugged. When the power was on again, Apocalyptica played the whole song once again. Sad thing is, that I have missed Ralph Myerz, but I had to choose, because he was playing at the same time on the other stage.
The same thing happened about Stereo MCs and Nick Cave. So I choosed the first option and I didn't regret at all, because this band, which exists since 1985, made outstanding gig full of energy. And they even started right on time. Before the concert there was this sound engineer and he was testing the microphones. "One one, two two, check check". Repeating this again and again. The crowd caught on this and started jumping and repeating his words - it was really funny, I had never experienced this...
After Stereos there supposed to be great show by Adam Freeland. But... He stepped on the stage and everybody knew, what is going on. He was totally wasted by alcohol and (probably) cocaine. He even invited some star-wannabe friend, who was during the "show" shouting some nonsenses to the mic and smoked one cigarette by one... It was all boring, but as a theatre it would be good. During his performance, Adam bottomed up a half litre of Smirnoff vodka. He was tied to his turntables by some kind of leash. How the end was closing and an alcohol circulated in his vains, he started to play CDs without mixing (!!!). Every Disco DJ can do that. Smells Like Teen Spirit was first, he jumped like mad with his dickheaded friend and he almost threw his turntables on the ground. Last ten minutes it seemed, that he grew sober, so he mixed Song 2 from Blur and some other songs. And that was it! Watta star manners. "Hey mate, let us go to that ex-russian country and get wasted by vodka"...
That's it! My rating of the festival? There were some serious fuckups, but in general it was good. At least I had a great time with my friends and we enjoyed some good music and a lot of fun...
Diskuse k příspěvku
V diskusi zatím není ani jeden příspěvek.