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Friday, June 9th through Sunday, June 11th I was at Rock Am Ring (Am = in the), a big three day festival held inside a Formula 1 race car circuit. It is an annual event, and this year it was sold out with over 70 000 people. I camped there with some friends and we basically lived like animals for four days (mainly because we were without showers). Another festival, Rock Im Park (Im = in the), took place at the same time with the same bands, with bands playing on different days of course (and travelling from one show to the other). The race circuit I was at is called N�rburgring, as it is near a small town and a castle, both called N�rburg. There were a lot of big names there. Sunday was a heavy music day, I saw P.O.D., Weissglut (German band similar to Ramstein), Such a Surge (another heavy rock/rap German band), Korn, Rage Against the Machine, and Die Toten Hosen (super Great german punk band). P.O.D. covered a U2 song (bullet the blue sky), and Die Toten Hosen did some covers of Bad Religion's "raise your voice", the "should I stay or should I go" song, and Liverpool's "you'll never walk alone". They also played a song against FC Bayern Muenchen and their fans, one of their own, it's hilarious. Korn and Rage were super heavy and I found myself in the middle of the largest and most violent mosh pits I have ever experienced. Korn fans are brain dead. Saturday was a bit of a lame day but still very entertaining. First I saw a German group with an Irish singer called Reamon, there were pretty good but way too trendy/teen-pop. Then I went to one of the two side stages to check out a band called Arid on the advice of a French friend I was there with. They were pretty good too, but also a band for chicks. Then I went back to the main stage and saw Freundeskreis (the name means "circle of friends"), a German hip-hop band which had a lot of supporters. Unlike most of the rest of the weekend the fans for this band were really cool and easy going. They sang mostly in English, but also in German and French. Next came the Eurythmics. I'm not a Eurythmics fan but it was still really cool to see such a big famous name like Annie Lennox. I must admit, she was cool and knows how to perform. She should, she's been in the business for about 96 years now. The Eurythmics didn't have a supporting band, just the two of them and most songs were just Annie singing and buddy on the guitar. Next came Santana. Carlos Santana can really play the guitar, although he often has the same steely kind of sound. His band was large, about ten musicians, and he didn't do much of the singing, rather two other guys. His bassist is really good too. He did some cool solos. After Santana came Sting. Again, I'm not a Sting fan, but it was fun to see so many famous people in one day (or weekend). Sting was super lame though, and I left after about half an hour (he was closing out the main stage) to check out Tracy Bonham (best known for her "mother mother" song) on a side stage. That turned out to be a great decision. She was terrific; she also has an amazing body and knows how to show it off too. After Tracy I passed by the alternative side stage, and there was this band called Slipknot. They are absolutely the heaviest and dumbest band I have ever heard/seen. Basically four or five guitars all screaming at once, two or three drummers banging away like mad, and a crowd with a combined IQ of 12.3. Everyone in the band wore nasty/grotesque/scary masks. It was very worrying to observe this show. Friday was the big day with the big bands. It started on the main stage with Canada's own The Tea Party, which was very exciting for me. They are less known in Europe and as the first band only had enough time to play six songs, including fire in the head, psychopomp, messenger, temptation, and a song from the edges of twilight. They were well received and really got the crowd going with Temptation. Jeff (the singer) was looking a little more pudgy and somewhat tired. Still he played great. Next came the counting crows. They started off with Mr. Jones. I recognized a lot of other songs from august and everything after. They were alright but not terrific. Only the lead singer has any crowd appeal, the rest of them aren't too cool. Next came Live. They played really well. The singer had a lot of energy. I recognized most of their songs. Live was the first band to get a really large excited group moving at the front. Next was Bush. When Gavin first walked on the stage every female within 50 km was screaming as loud and as high-pitched as she could, pretty much making my ears bleed. They played a lot of songs from sixteen stone even though they have two newer albums. Gavin said they were going to play a "traditional German folk song" and then started off with glycerine, which he played on his own. They also played everything zen and machinehead, among others. After bush came Oasis, which was bullshit. I now truly hate Oasis. They are so incredibly arrogant and a terrible band when performing live. They were without Noel Gallagher, who left the band a few weeks ago, and his replacement sucked big time. Liam Gallagher, as usual, never looked at the crowd and never smiled or laughed or said anything entertaining. He just stared at the sky with his hands behind his back, posed for photographers, and sang horribly. Oasis sucks. Finally, the main stage was closed out by the best band of the weekend, PEARL JAM! woohoo! And they were, of course, as always, absolutely amazing. They played for about two hours (including a long encore). When Eddie first came on the stage he tried to say "Ihr seid spitze" which means "you guys are awesome/cool/exciting/hot/the best" (not sure how to translate the last word), but he had trouble with it. He said something later in German too but didn't quite get that either. The German fans were great, they sang along with pretty much every song. They did some new stuff, maybe four new songs, and of course lots of great old stuff. From Ten they played once, even flow, and Alive. They didn't play Jeremy. Mike played the guitar behind his back during Alive. Eddie played Wishlist and Betterman by himself. They did do the evolution, which is one of my favourite songs. They did at least three covers, the first was some song written by a guy from liverpool, that was all Eddie told us, I don't know what it was called. The encore was seven songs long, the last two were also covers, namely the "last kiss" song and finally Neil Young's "why do I keep fucking up". That was really funny. Eddie's prologue to the song was that he had asked a German guy (who had helped him earlier to come up with stuff to say to the crowd) how to say "fuck you" in German. The crowd then yelled, all in unison, "fick dich" at Eddie, which is the translation. But Eddie said that his translater had told him that Germans just say "fuck you" too, so Eddie didn't know about "fick dich", and then just said "so there. FUCK YOU!" to the crowd. Then they played Neil Young's song. After their encore they came back again for one more song. Eddie had a bottle of red wine with him during the encore. Back to the Main Page - Zur�ck zur Hauptseite |