A day to remember

I like festivals. I am not sure what I exactly like about them as I usually end up in extreme situations, but they seem to satisfy me in one way or another. Last Sunday I went to Pinkpop. It is the second largest festival in Holland and it lasts three full days. I bought a ticket for the last day Sunday and went down there (2,5 hour drive and YES it is on the other side of Holland. I actually think it is the furthest I can drive without leaving Holland. Thankgod for a small country!) with some friends.

All week we were watching the weather (hey Roskilde is still fresh in our minds) praying for it to be dry.

Well, it was dry

Not only that

It was a clear blue sky, no wind at all and 30 degrees or something. Now I am your average gamer, which means I like it behind my PC. I am not very fond of the sun and my skin turns from pale white, to red, to loose skin all over my burned body, to pale white again. There are hardly places to hide and those few places are crowded with lots and lots of people. 65k people there on Sunday i read later. In the morning it wasn’t very hot, so after an easy drive (we left at 06:00) and a small breakfast we enter the terrain to get us some beers. One of the 24-year old girls we brought with us, would drive us back. Lovely!

We started the festival at 11:00 or so with Fiction Plane. This is a band with the son of Sting (The Police (for those over 30)) as their lead singer. If you were not watching, you would actually think it was Sting himself. I considered Fiction Plane an ‘OK Band’ which means it is all fine if you leave the scene to get beer in between and miss a song or two.

Next band was ‘The Wombats’. This is really a refreshing band with happy melodies. Beer + Wombats = good times. So I sat this one out and made a mental note to download some of their stuff.

‘The Hives’ was next. These guys rock. A nice show with hardly any time to get beer, cause we enjoyed them so much. Their podiumskills were undeniable as well and good interaction with the public. But wtf is that burning sensation on my arms, in my neck and on my face?

We grabbed some food, and drank some more and discovered the sun owned us bigtime, but it was too late already. I started protecting my neck with my sweater which I brought along for unknown reasons as it was really hot. My neck survived but my arms and face were glowing and with each second the sun got me, i burned more.
I started throwing down glasses of water to make sure I did not dry out and we sat down to enjoy some food.
A new act was coming on. Serj Tankian. No clue on what he was, I listened and was suprised in a very pleasant way. I recognized his voice immediatly. He is the lead singer of System of A Down. ZOMG! W000000t. Now make sure to download some of his stuff, cause this guy is amazing.

We continued to Queens of A Stone Age, which is just good music and clearly made for live performances. It was cooling down and I started on beer again while waiting for the main act.

Rage Against The Machine
Wow, I was more than surprised. These guys broke up 7-8 years ago, came back last year to perform live again and are here now. AND THEY ARE AWESOME LIVE. You know: some bands just don’t have it live, but these guys are playing cd-quality live on stage with a good podium act. What more do you want? It was the perfect closure of a festival-day. I loved their intro. Here it is.


The trip back took us 2hours extra because of traffic jam and I was home at 04:00 or so, completely broke, completely burned (out) and with feet that were killing me, but I felt great. This was another day I did enjoy to the fullest. Then I remembered I had to bring my daughter to school the next day. I put my alarm on 07:30 and still went to sleep with a smile.
Life is great

-- Zhero (more festivals to come, more great days ahead!)