Friday 26th:
Rushing out early to see HIGH LLAMAS. This is NOT live music. Thats
really the only observation. Good music and wery good musicians. Sounds
great on album - but not live.
After this there was some changes in the schedule wich unfortunatley
made me miss BECK - who, in everybodys opinion was excellent. Instead
I had to go and make my interwiev with JEFF MILLS, wich BTW went quite
alright. And, while on this subject, I will probably not have a chance
to translate this in to english in a couple of weeks if ever - but all
you interested - mail me and we will see what happens.... He was kinda
hard to interwiev and I got about 15 minutes with him so not that much
info came out of it Im afraid - but enough for me at the moment :)
Well, back out to the festival. Running in to find that LIONROCK had
started 1 minute ago. Puuhhhh, I made it. This gig was brilliant. Live
bass-lines gave a new dimension to the lionrock sound. Maybee not that
good technically, but this was Live and wery good intensity. Especially
Fire up the shoeshaw. Killer!
Then, after a short visit to JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION, wich sounded
quite ok it was of to NICK CAVE - nice old man doing nice new songs.
I would have preferred his older material. Unfortunatley Kylie Minouge
did not show up even though this had been the intent.
UNDERWORLD. Definatley the main thing this festival.
I can only say one thing about this performance - WOW!!!! They went
for an hour and a half, never loosing anything in intesity. This was
sooooo good..... I kinda have a Underworld revival after this. They
always seem to know when the repetative beats are starting to get boring,
and then, at the exact right moment - bam, they change - definatley one
of the best live gigs I have ever seen.....
After this I went around and looked shorly here and there before getting
stuck in the Dj-session with COLDCUT. Crazy stuff - 4 turntables and
live drums made this an amazing experience. Mixing old school hip-hop
with the newer stuff from ninja cut-label, with live drums over it.
Amazing.....
This was about it for the evening, I had a great time listening to some
guys - wich I dont know who they were - playing all the latest MoWax
stuff in one of the backstage areas. This stuff was mixed up with
serious Jazz-fusion and suddenly there it was - The muppet show theme :)
Kinda nice really :) . Anyway - was waiting to see Jeff Mills but since
they made a third attempt to rearange his stage about 15 minutes after
he was supposed to get on - I got tired of waiting and went home - I
needed the sleep......
SATURDAY 27th
Ok, the main day really - but this will be even shorter:
First up - COURTNEY PINE. Nice in the afternoon. Full band and a DJ
working hard with beatz and scrathes in the background. A lot of references
to Jazzmatazz. Overall wery good even though a lot of the audience were
irritated about the sometimes wery long solos. Anyway - I liked it.
TINDERSTICKS - boring as hell..... PHARCYDE - all they could say was
motherfucker and oh, yea - would have liked to hear the show instrumental.
Then it would have been marvelous. WU TANG CLAN - could also only say
motherfucker and oh, yea. Rap can be really boring live - this was the
surley the case here.
No, then I liked BOB DYLAN more. Need I say anything? An old hero
making music the way he should :)
Then of course there was the CHEMICAL BROTHERS. Pure energy - mostly
new material which sounded really good! Excellent as always. And then
of to BLACK GRAPE who unfortunatley had a bad sound going for them.
But the show and there songs where amazing live. Surprisingly nice. Last up
there was the PRODIGY gig. Awfull, boring and annoying :(
On the DJ side this evening we had the HEAVENLY posse featuring ST:Etienne
Dave Hill (Ballistic Bros), Tom & Ed (ChemBros) and Justin Robertsson (Lionr.).
Hmmm, old northern soul is just to great :). And we also had
METALHEADZ featuring GOLDIE and CLEVELAND WATKISS making live scats,
ragga, rap and song over fat and intense jungle beats. AMAZING STUFF!!!!
Lets hope to se Mr Watkiss release an album featuring Metalheadz.
This was dope!
Well thats about it - long mail - sorry for the non-a-j content. Hope
it interested someone. NME was there making some stories about it, so
watch out for their rewievs. Also this must be considerd a sucsess with
23.000 paying visitors - about 26.000 attending people each day ?!??!
Definatley Swedens biggest festival. Bobby Gillespie who attended with
the Heavenly posse considered this to be the best line up ever on a
festival :) Good grades from him ehhh???...
Best wishes
/marten