FM4 FREQUENCY FESTIVAL 2005 ::

FM4 FREQUENCY FESTIVAL 2005
salzburg ring / salzburg, austria
18th - 20th august 2005

well, it's been quite a while since my last entry here. there were quite a few concerts inbetween, but i just didn't have any time to write about them. this one's going to be all the bigger for it.

i never was much of a festival goer myself. sure, it's fun if the line-up is good and you have someplace nice and cozy to crash. somewhere with a bed and a shower. but camping? oh, hell no! actually, if i weren't forced to (job obligations) attend them, i'd skip on most of these festivals. fortunately, this year it's only 2 festival i have to go to. frequency '05 marks the first one.

no first hand information on the first day, because i wasn't there at all. my sources tell me that WEEZER weren't as lethargic as everyone was expecting them to be. purportedly rivers cuomo actually moved around and did rock things on stage. who would've guessed. OASIS on the other hand were obviously every bit as shitty as i like to tell everyone who cares to listen that i think they are. well, so much for unbiased coverage.

the real deal started rather pleasantly with a quiet train ride - i enjoy travelling by train - and finding out that my hotel was top-notch. the arabella sheraton was quite luxurious, i have to say. sorted quickly through my things, had a cab take me down to the venue, picked up my working pass and started with what i did most of the time: waiting. you see, there is nothing quite as tedious as having to wait for something and not having anything to do meanwhile. there was nothing good on while i was waiting and i was already starting with my work for the day, when THE RAVEONETTES tore up the stage. sure would've loved to see them. funny thing: a friend (female) from fm4 nursed up a nice crush on sharin. and while it is perfectly ok for a journalist to have something going on with an artist, there's the old rec-biz saying: "never fuck the biz." - and nobody really gives a damn about it anway. case in point: steve bays' girlfriend natalie who used to work for warner uk.
yeah, you guessed it, HOT HOT HEAT were the reason i had to work. although they aren't one of 'my' (us product manager types like to refer to our work in a possessive manner) acts, i filled in for my colleague who couldn't make it. there are worse things, especially considering that the boys from the band were darlings (no kidding - real swell fellas) and their tourmanager carlos was also quite a nice man. they gave me no trouble whatsoever and so we managed to get everything done in time. even an impromput meet and greet was arranged and HHH were quite nice about the whole deal, met the kids, gave autographs - all in all, a successful work endeavor. i even managed to see the start of their show. they're good, don't miss 'em when they come round your place. and don't miss LADYTRON - they had some technical difficulties, but what a great band!
i spent the next few hours running around and drinking beer.
later that night QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE performed. i barely made it in one piece to the foh (that's short for the 'front of house' mixing desk for the sound engineer), because of approximately 40.000 people shoving and pushing. no exaggeration: roughly 40.000 people were there. i'd later hear that all this pushing and shoving resulted in the origin of a weird sound i had heard earlier: a cracking and screaming. turned out that one of the make-shift bridges connecting the walking are with the actual front of stage area had broken in two. several kids got injured severly but most made it out there with a few scratches and a scare. the next day the army replaced the broken bridge with a heavy-duty-river-crossing-bridge. anyway, QUOTSA weren't quite as good as i remembered them from their last performance i had seen. might have something to do with neither mark lanegan nor nick oliveri tagging along. but then again they outfitted their old songs with some really nice space-rock jam pieces. nevertheless, i wasn't quite convinced. they can do better. i've seen it.
even worse were that day's headliners: FOO FIGHTERS. don't get me wrong, i might not be a big FOO FIGHTERS fan, but i can appreciate their music and dave has put together a group of very formidable musicians, no doubt about that. the gig went accordingly: very solid, clean performance. no hightlights, no surprises. in other words: a bit of a let-down, since everybody was raving about what a great live band the FOO FIGHTERS are. but dave grohl's presence delighted me in another way. a friend of mine (robert, promoter for edel records) looks a bit like dave: similar hair-do, also quite tallish, big teeth. the chances to confuse dave and robert (if they aren't exactly standing next to each other) are not too bad, especially in an intoxicated state with bad light. so, we were sitting in the car, slouching forward towards the exit. bence (another friend, also promoter for edel records) driving, robert riding shotgun, me in the backseat. we made next to no progress, because it was the end of that festival day and everybody was leaving the venue, blocking all driveways. securities were standing left and righ, trying in vain to have at least some order in that chaos. after a while i noticed something peculiar: some kids stopped when passing our car and stooped to have a better look inside the car. then these kids called out to their friends pointing at us. they were thinking the robert was indeed dave grohl! now, this was quite enough to have me break out in laughter, but it got even better. the security person right next to our car was a young girl. at first she didn't pay any attention to the pointing and yelling kids. but then the crowd got bigger and she turned around, stooped and looked inside. then she approached the car. at this point robert's nerves were shot already: 'man, what's wrong with these people? don't they see i'm not him?', he went all flustered. the security gal knocked on the driver's window and bence let down the window and asked her what the matter was. she looked inside and said in a shy voice: 'do you think i could have an autograph?' ok, now you have to bear in mind that everybody was speaking german. robert turned to her and said (in full austrian-accented german): 'girl, i'm not dave grohl. really not.' - ok, and here it comes. her reply: 'are you sure?'
i couldn't stop my tears from rolling down and my stomach was busted from all the laughing.

next day. last day of the festival. had a nicew breakfast, saw FARIN URLAUB and some roadies from the DIE TOTEN HOSEN crew. they were obviously staying at the same hotel. took a cab to the venue. i was expecting my work to begin somewhere around 2 p.m., that was when i was expecting MASSIVE TOENE to arrive at the venue. before i got to that i got a call from the tourmanager of THE SUBWAYS, the other act i had to take care of that day, telling me that they are stuck in traffic and will have serious trouble making the festival. i reassured them that i would take care of postpoing all planned interviews. right after that i got a phone call from ulrike (tourmanager MASSIVE TOENE) telling me the same thing. so i spent some 4 or 5 hours waiting and receiving calls telling me that everything had to be pushed back another hour. THE SUBWAYS had to cancel the whole festival at one point. they just couldn't make it in time anymore and decided to rather had to their next destination. fair enough. MASSIVE TOENE arrived at 5 p.m. (roughly) and managed to get on stage half an hour later in front of a 2.000- or 3.000-strong, cheering crowd. after that we sorted out the interviews. i was surprised how nice and easy-going the band was. extremely nice guys, very enjoyable to work with them. once that was done, i could finally relax. no more work.
since my train was going in the early morning hours (4 a.m.) and i had nothing better to do (no cool performances) i went backstaged and started playing tabletop soccer with a couple of friends. soon we were joind by more people (some artists even played one or two games with us). the later it got the more colleagues and friends from other record companies showed up and soon we had taken over the table. with nothing better to do it was decided to play a 'ringerl'. a 'ringerl' is an austrian variation of tabletop soccer, where after each goal everybody has to change to the next right-hand position on the table. somebody also had the idea to turn it into a drinking game: a big gulp of your favorite alcoholic beverage after each goal and slamming down whatever's left in your glass or can once any side had 10 goals. we were drunk in no time. the rest of the night was spent in the v.i.p.-afterparty-tent (which wasn't very v.i.p. at all but fun nevertheless) dancing and joking around.
bence and robert and i returned to salzburg by car, had a kebab, made some stupid jokes and then i headed to the train station. bence and robert spent the night in salzburg at a friend's place. the entire floor of the train station was littered with sleeping, sitting, puking, passing out, kissing, talking, drinking kids coming from the festival. the same picture continued in the train. there was no place to sit, every seat was taken and only a few inches of cold and dirty floor remained for me to spend the next 2 hours on. once some of the passenger had gotten off i even managed to find a seat and get a couple of minutes of sleep before i arrived in vienna at roughly 8:30 a.m.

whew... what a weekend.
next up on the festival calendar: the last day of TWOdaysAweek in wiesen. amen.