Words And Music From Da Lowlands

(from the Gotcha! album with the same name)

I finally have some time to put down my thoughts on the past Lowlands festival (18 to 20 August), or rather A Campingflight To Lowlands Paradise to give the festival its full name. Three days, about a dozen stages, more than a hundred acts (bands, stand-up comedy, Tai Chi, debates, movies, etc.). Surprisingly, this was going to be my first multi-day festival. So in the past weeks I'd bought a self-inflatable mattress and a tent that would also install itself. Yes, I like to do it the easy way.

The main reason for going to Lowlands was to see the Urban Dance Squad on their final concert (for now, unless they decide to come back together again). Michael Franti & Spearhead were also playing. Having never seen them live, I really wanted to see that concert too. Their song People In Tha Middle is my sig song after all. As for the rest of the program, I didn't know it by heart and didn't really care. I'd go and see what I wanted to see. Although Iggy & The Stooges (yes, that Iggy: Iggy Pop! ) was also high on my must-see list. If you want to know the full line-up of the festival, do an online search. Maybe the official site http://www.lowlands.nl will still show it for a while. You may also try http://www.festivalinfo.nl/festival_detail.php?festival_id=3835 (the site is in Dutch, but for the list of bands that doesn't matter anyway).

Originally we (my concert buddy and a whole group of her friends) would already go to the festival on Thursday evening to set up the tent and just chill until the official start on Friday. But they decided to not go until Friday morning, so she'd pick me up on Friday then. Not that I minded that much. The past week the weather in the Netherlands had been pretty horrible with lots of rain. I wasn't really looking forward to wade through the water to my tent every night, or whatever wet piece of whatever I would find when I got to that place. And when I heard the rain on Thursday night I was quite happy to be sleeping in my own bed for another night.

It's Friday morning around 9 and I'm all set to go when I get a call from my friend. On her way to the car and while carrying all her luggage she tripped over something and hurt her ankle. So she's a bit later at my place and she might want to see a doctor first. After some 30 minutes she arrives at my door and it's immediately apparent that she can't properly walk. Even driving the car had given her problems. So we'll go with my car to the festival. But first the first aid of the hospital to see how bad the damage is. Fortunately, it seems she has only strained her ankle, nothing's broken. They put a bandage around it and after buying some crutches she's all set to go. It's around 11 AM when we're finally on our way to the festival.

We arrive, get our Lowlands wristband, meet the rest of the group (about 20 people in total), unpack the tents and are all set to go. By this time it's past 3 PM and the first bands are already playing. You can't see everything and we still have the rest of the 3 days. Not to mention that I think that 3 full sets is quite enough, even for a festival. Add to that picking up some more music here and there and you already have a day filled to the brim. And even though this was my first festival I wasn't going to get all worked up about missing some band or running from one festival tent to another. My main goal was to have fun! So in the rest of my review there won't be any mentions of bands I've missed. If you saw the Arctic Monkeys you couldn't see The Raconteurs because they were playing at the same time and when I made the decision to see a certain band, then of course I couldn't see the other acts that were playing at the same time (this is a fictional example BTW as those two bands did not play at the same time. They didn't even play at the same day. Besides, I didn't see them at all). The only band I do want to mention that I missed is Mew. Sorry Mew fans. When they were playing we were still setting up our tents and such. Afterwards I heard they weren't so spectacular, so maybe it's for the best that I just have to comfort myself with their studio tracks.

On Friday I did see full sets by Razorlight and Snow Patrol. I didn't know that much of Razorlight, but they were surprisingly good. Their latest album got a 5-star review in Q magazine and that's why I was interested, but I didn't know that many songs by them. It was good stuff.
Snow Patrol was also quite good, although a bit too solid in my opinion. When the announcer, erm..., announced them () he asked for the audience to light up their lighters for a certain song, so it wasn't that big a surprise. Still, the band was very moved when they saw all those lighters during their song Run. It was the first spine-tingling moment of the festival for me. For the rest the band wasn't bad at all, only the arena-sized music went a little bit past me. But Run was all worth it.
On Friday I also saw/heard bits and pieces of the Fun Lovin' Criminals (who had a nice lazy groove to chill out to), Bloc Party (some said they were really good, but I left after a couple of songs as they didn't really interest me), Anouk (this Dutch rock chick was quite good and she had balls by opening her show in the big tent (10,000 people?) with 2 ballads, but ultimately her music isn't totally to my tastes so I left about halfway) and Placebo (a bit boring to me, but that might also have to do that I went there after the Snow Patrol concert and that I'm not that familiar with their music as it's not exactly to my taste either). In between I walked around a bit on the festival terrain, did some drinking and eating (a wide choice of food, from the festival-hamburger to an Oxfam Fair Food stand with cous-cous, from Mexican food to Vietnamese dishes, there certainly has to be something to your choice) and just lying in the grass. Because despite all the rain forecasts it was mainly sunny on Friday. We'd had some rain drops on our way to the festival, but once we were there it was just sun, sun, sun!
After Placebo (or I guess even during their set) we went to another festival tent to get some cocktails (Piña Colada! ), dance a bit and then a big group of us headed back to the tents. The whole group was about 20 people, but we were never really all on the festival terrain. There were some metalheads, some dancey girls, some who even preferred the camping and others with varying tastes of music. Anyway, on our way back we bought some cans of beer to enjoy while chilling out in front of our tents (we had a party tent with us, so there was this small space in front of the tents where we'd all sit down, talk and have fun). This was a great first day that they couldn't take away from me. But my main day would be the Saturday with some of my favourite bands playing. The weather forecast was warning about rain and only 4 hours of sun during the day. All the more reason to head to my tent around 3 AM, so I'd be at least a bit fit for the music and the weather.

Well, the next day I woke up around 9 AM in quite a hot tent. The one I bought is small (it said it could fit 2 people, but it was already full with just me and my backpack). The day started with sunshine! It was quite relaxed waking up under the party tent, with more and more people appearing.
Around 11:30 I decide to go to the festival terrain as I want to be there on time for the Urban Dance Squad. They're not playing until 13:45, but I want to be totally at the front when they play. Plus, I also need a brekkie and noticed the day before that they have a tosti stand and a fruit juice stand too. My friend is walking with me. Still on crutches although her ankle is feeling a lot better.
To me, the Urban Dance Squad was one of the highlights of the festival. Others I've spoken to disagree, but I don't care. Yes, it was a bit of a nostalgia trip and no, they're not as good without their DJ. But they did rock out hard and I still think that their guitarist Tres Manos is amazing, one of the best guitar players evers. And I was indeed at the front, near the pit and near the end in the pit. This was a proper goodbye for me (I missed them on their last tour as I was in Spain when they were touring the Netherlands and in Dutchieland when they played in Spain and a few months later they broke up ). So I enjoyed myself. A lot.
Another highlight on that Saturday was Spearhead (nowadays Michael Franti & Spearhead to give more prominence to the frontman). While I like their music in bits in pieces, the bits that I do like I love a lot. And I wanted to see them live as I heard many good stories about them. And they certainly didn't disappoint. At times Michael Franti was a wee bit too busy playing the audience instead of the songs, but he got everybody swinging, dancing and jumping to their music. The ideal festival act for a sunny afternoon. Because up to that time it had been sunny the whole day. And that was a lot more than the 4 hours of the weather forecast. But you didn't hear me complain about that one. After the concert Michael Franti even went into the audience of one of the two front sections, presumably to give everyone a hand (he'd done the same after a prior concert at Lowlands). He certainly deserved it. Unfortunately, it was not the section I was standing in (this had also happened to me earlier in the day when Rudeboy, the rapper of Urban Dance Squad, dived into the audience after their concert and I was standing in the other front section ).
When I got out of the tent after the Spearhead concert I noticed it had rained. A bit probably as it was dry when I went into the tent and it was dry when I came outside again about 75 minutes later. As there weren't that many acts I wanted to see for a while I decided to head back to the camping, get a quick shower (the queues for the showers were long in the morning, but around 19:30 there wasn't one so I could refresh myself) and then head back to be just in time for the start of the concert by Iggy & The Stooges. And this one is my undeniable highlight of the festival (making the Saturday my best Lowlands day). I once read somewhere a description of Bono that said he was the most magnetic onstage performer since Iggy Pop and after this concert I totally agree with that description. Because at 59 Iggy still jumps, struts and dances like most of the people half his age can't even dream of. That man is full of fire when on the stage. By the second song he'd already jumped into the audience, by the third song you could find him on top of some speaker stacks and so on. For a moment I thought that it was all just an act, but he was so into it, it was amazing to see. Apart from his onstage antics, his voice was pretty good too as was the backing band. This was one legendary Lowlands performance!
After this I went to see the end of the Massive Attack gig and that couldn't be anything but a disappointment. And it was indeed quite tame, so after a few songs I left again. I saw my concert buddy (she could already walk around without crutches ) and together we went to a standup comedy show. It was fun. It was also good to sit down for a moment. And discuss how awesome Iggy Pop was. After this show, which was quite nice, but nothing extraordinary we went for a few cocktails before heading back to our tents. Having seen the UDS gig I initially had the plan to party all night, but somehow I wasn't feeling it. So instead it was a few beers back at the tents and then heading to my sleeping bag.
The only things I saw bits and pieces of on Saturday were of the Guillemots (heard their last two songs from outside a festival tent and was kinda disappointed I couldn't hear more of them) and The Frames (who were a bit disappointing, mainly because before every song the singer instructed where we could sing along and played the part for us; it has to be spontaneous, not some strict program ).

The Sunday started nice and quiet. Around noon I decided to head to the festival site for a brekkie and watching a Dutch band with some beautiful songs: Johan. Nope, I didn't spot our Salome. Anyway, I arrived at the site, got a brekkie and when I was heading to the festival tent the skies opened. It started raining. Hard. A lot. It seemed as if all the rain that was predicted but didn't fall on Friday and Saturday now fell on Sunday. In a way it was a nice backdrop for the melancholic songs of Johan. The concert maybe missed that spark, but it was certainly very enjoyable.
The weather didn't get much better after the concert, so I decided to head to the movie tent and catch a movie. That way I was inside for 2 hours and I could sit down again. The movie that played at that time was Walk The Line, about the life of Johnny Cash. While the movie was very enjoyable it didn't live up to my expectations. I can't explain what my problem with the movie is, but it didn't seem a classic to me.
After the movie ended I got a text message from my friend saying that they were in the cocktail tent again. Since the weather was still rainy, it seemed like a very good idea. There were also more people there of our group and the piña colada still was very nice. We were sitting on a bench near the side, so we had a good view outside. By this time parts of this terrain had turned into one big mudbath. Do I have to explain what we were seeing then? No, I wasn't that stupid to dive into the mud, but it was enjoyable to see.
Another band I wanted to see that day was Morningwood. They have a small (cult) hit with Nth Degree and I'd heard some good reviews about their live show. And their live show is fun! The singer Chantal Claret is clearly from the Iggy Pop/Bono school of performing. She's all over the stage, mimicking the songs, making contact with the audience, etc. During Nth Degree she even went into the audience and got everyone on their knees (literally!) before jumping up and down. As I said, it was great fun to see. Musically it wasn't that great (80s hardrock, kinda), but she made up for it.
I was planning to wander a bit around on the terrain and maybe head for the largest festival tent as the Arctic Monkeys would be playing there. Not that I wanted to see them, but I knew many of my group wanted to see them so maybe I'd see them. However, on my way I passed the standup comedy tent and saw that a show was about to start and that there were still seats available. As this would be a show by a famous Dutch standup comedian (Dolf Jansen for you Dutchies out there ) I was kinda surprised. But nevermind, I went in for the show and had a good laugh for the 45 minutes the show lasted. He had adjusted his show completely to the Lowlands festival, so it really was an unique experience.
Only one big concert was still coming that night and that was the closer by Muse. I'm not that much into their music, I think it's a bit too theatrical and over the top, but I do like some of their songs. And I thought they would be a great festival band. And they were. It might not been the highlight for me, but it was a good and spectacular (light) show. They played for nearly 75 minutes so it was almost a full concert too.
I guess most of our group had been watching Muse, because it didn't take long after the concert before we were all together. The concerts of Lowlands might have ended, but there was still lots of things to do until the early hours. Some tents still had music, although now from DJs instead of live band. We went to the tent where they played more rock-oriented songs. We had a blast there, as the music was excellent (from Elvis' Jailhouse Rock to Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out; from Dick Dale's Miserilou to Chemical Brothers' Galvanize and everything in between). So we danced the feet off our legs until they turned off the music around 3 AM. And we were still not satisfied, so we headed to the cocktail tent to continue there. However, on our way to that tent I realised I was quite tired and wasn't really feeling it in the cocktail tent. I realised I hadn't seen my tent since the rain started pouring down and I wanted to see how bad the situation was before I going to sleep. So I went back to the camping. When I got there I couldn't believe it in a way. Inside my tent it was all dry! When I lay down on my mattres it did feel a bit as if there was some water under my tent, but everything was dry. I hadn't expected that, so with a smile on my face I fell asleep.

Nothing was happening at the festival on Monday, because Lowlands was over. We slowly woke up from our short sleeps, gathered a bit in/around the party tent and tried to get into the rhythm of the day. It was dry and even a bit sunny, so our tents could dry quickly. We packed what we wanted to take with us, headed to the cars and joined the queue to get off the terrain. By this time it was already around 13:30, so I didn't get home until 15:00. The first thing I went for was a nice, long, hot shower ( ), while also trying to stay awake. Because the lack of sleep immediately started to hit me. But I got through the night and so I went to work the next day to face all the problems we have over there.

I had three excellent days and saw and heard lots of good music. In a way I can't wait until next year (apparently Lowlands 2007 is on 17, 18 & 19 August). It was indeed a paradise.

clt.: Big Joe Williams - Don't You Leave Me Here (from the Uncut magazine sampler In God's Country)

P.S. Can't forget my car selection, can I?
The Prodigy - Their Law: The Singles 1990-2005
Iggy Pop - Lust For Life
Skik - Skik
Eurythmics - Greatest Hits
Duran Duran - Duran Duran
David Bowie - The Best Of 1974-1979