NOVA ROCK FESTIVAL ::
NOVA ROCK FESTIVAL
pannonia fields / burgenland, austria
09th may 2005
first of all a hint for everyone who ever thought about putting together an open air festival: DON'T DO IT ON FARMLAND! especially not freshly ploughed farmland, for fuck's sake! the reason why? if you're lucky and it's dry outside you're gonna have some massive dustclouds everywhere, because the people are gonna kick up the dried up soil like noone's business. if you're unlucky and it's raining, you can recreated woodstock right there, mud whereever you look. and just in case you've been wondering: yeah, it was raining at the NOVA ROCK FESTIVAL. but more about that as we go on.
we arrived rather early to check out the venue and see if we can manage to find everyting we were looking for. our luck: just as we started wandering around the festival area, it started to get cold, wet and ugly. weathergods must like me a lot. organisation-wise the festival was ok. there were some hiccups and some not so cool mistakes, but all in all everything ran smoothly, was easy to find and well taken care of. the stage wasn't too bad, not the largest, but surely not too small. it was rather pretty when the lights were on and the crowd was there. enough about that, let's talk about the music.
first up - and for me the main reason to be there as early as i could - at about 13:00, the fabulous EIGHTIES MATCHBOX B-LINE DISASTER that got on stage totally wasted and got off stage only less so. the singer actually took the liberty of vomiting off the front of the stage. i though that was brill, if for no other reason than to bring some good old tastelessness back to rock 'n' roll. so, if you're into heavy blending of psychobilly, gothabilly, rock 'n' roll, punk and some wee bit of noise, then these guys are for you. imagine THE CRAMPS on smack, jamming with THE METEORS, while MINOR THREAT is blarring on the stereo and SONIC YOUTH are playing a gig in the basement. something like that.
weather update: cold, windy, nasty drizzle setting in.
right next another band that i think deserves much more attention, although i'd wish they'd be a lot less arrogant about it, entered stage. what can be said about ...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD, commonly referred to as TRAIL OF DEAD, other than that their range in musical styles is just as eclectic as their musical comprehension of various instruments, which they like to switch around a lot. also very much in the vein of rock 'n' roll forebears like THE WHO, TRAIL OF DEAD were eager to smash their instruments and just generally create lots of excitement and chaos on stage, including but not limited to adrenaline fights, aimlessly jumping around, running circles on stage and doing ballance acts with your guitar. don't make me have to describe their music. it's post. post-everything really: post-punk, post-rock, post-indie, post-post. fits in very well next to your AT THE DRIVE-IN, MARS VOLTA, RADIOHEAD and BIFFY CLYRO records. peculiar thing about them: they're from texas but sound so... british... whatever.
some time later, back stage, it turned out that one of the guys from the band showed early signs of pneumonia. helping them to translate the problem to the festival staff, i - or rather the festival staff, once they understood what was going on - managed to get a doctor to look at him and have him sent off for a thorough check-up.
weather update: it was raining by now. after the show i spent about 45 minutes in front of a fully cranked up radiant heater. i was still wet after this ordeal.
i missed TEAM SLEEP, the new project of DEFTONES singer CHINO MORENO, but only because i was still hoping to get dry by the time they went on stage. definitely a band to recommend. right after them MONEYBROTHER were on. no misunderstandings, MONEYBROTHER is wonderufl music, i enjoy their albums and wish there to be more to hear in the future, but i was rather disappointed by the show. i expected more energy and drive, some soul feeling. it didn't come up. perhaps because of the lousy weather, perhaps because of it being such a big festival. waiting for their next club gig. i didn't even catch a glimpes of the next band, LA VELA PUERCA, so i can't say much about their live qualities. only thing i know is that their new album is cute little piece of sunshine spaniard ska music, not the best, not the worst.
the official reason for the to attend NOVA ROCK were TEAM SLEEP, although they're being handled by my colleague, and the BEATSTEAKS. these guys are about to leave epitaph, already did their latest record, "smack smash", in cooperation with warner music (only regionally, though) and starting with their next release (expected early 2006) they'll be part of the warner music artist roster internationally. which i am really excited about. which i am looking forward to. superb guys, very friendly and down to earth, fantastic live band and also not too shabby. so, what i did was meet the guys (their manager for the second time) talk a bit to them, introduce them to our head honcho, blab about up-coming projects, expectations and just generally getting to know them a little bit.
missing WIR SIND HELDEN didn't hurt me much. already seen them 3 times, and frankyl, the enthusiasm i had for their very first effort had already been dampened a little bit their first full length and got smothered by their second album, which is just not saying anything to me at all. too bad, because they are a good band, indeed. i wish them good luck for whatever they plan next.
let's talk about some embarassing things. let's talk about a has-been singer of a seminal grunge and alt-rock band. let's talk about the instrumentalists of one of the most outspoken crossover bands that managed to enter the mainstream. let's talk about AUDIOSLAVE. chris cornell, tom morello, brad wilk, tim commeford - what would you expect from a band like that? well, i for one would expect big, big emotions, fabulous riff-harmonies, out-there rythm-section - i'd expect a melodic rock-outfit with a punch. what do you get? some watered down version of SOUNDGARDEN. hello? as if it's not bad enough that the band just hasn't ANYTHING to show for themselves, they become embarassing, too. what did they do? covered SOUNDGARDE and RAGE AGAINS THE MACHINE. sure, sure, i guess the fans of chris would like to hear some SOUNDGARDEN classics, and same goes for R.A.T.M. fans. but, i mean, when you play a set of about 90 minutes and perform 6 (!!!) coverversions of your own old songs - that's almost one third (!) of your entire show!!! how pathetic is that? and to top it off, they just HAD to play "killing in the name of". chris, by jove, he might be a great singer for all i know, but HE AIN'T ZACK! zack was a young man with a lot of anger and frustration in his guts and many visions in his head. zack came from a hardcore punk background (his previous band before R.A.T.M., INSIDE OUT, are still being held in high regard) and had strong political beliefs that he expressed through his lyrics. chris has none of that. but you need all of that to be able to deliver a song like "killing in the name of" the way it was meant to be... anyway, AUDIOSLAVE were just plain embarassing and i felt sad for them.
finally, the highlight of the entire day, SYSTEM OF A DOWN. by this time the entire are in front of the stage had turned to one gigantic mudwrestling match with more than 20.000 people fighting for the mud-champion-belt. no way i was going to go down there. no, i watched the show from a safety distance. problem: it was windy, which meant that i had some nice doppler-like-effects, with the sound wobbling on and off. and still, even in spite of that and even though the people on stage looked no bigger than my thumb from that distance, it was an amazing concert. concise, powerful, emotional. i can only hope to one day be able to see them in a club environment... or at least somewhere, where the wind doesn't blow and i'm not freezing to death.
the most interesting part about the way back home was getting the car off the festival area and on to the highway. i am not kidding: turning the steering wheel all the way to either the left or right had next to no effect on the car, because of all the mud underneath the wheels. exciting.
the ordeal of going through the next 3 days of the festival... well, i skipped on that. there were only few bands of interest for me. MANDO DIAO, WEEZER, THE HELLACOPTERS, PRODIGY, BOYSETSFIRE and GREEN DAY. i decided that i didn't really need to go through all of that just to see these bands. almost was forced to attend the GREEN DAY concert (because they were being awared platinum for sales of "american idiot" in austria), but also managed to get out that one.
hope NOVA ROCK 2006 is going to be dry. and warm.
posted by werwolf at 09:19
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