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Roskilde Festival 2004 By Jon A Roskilde Festival '04: Who needs rock'n'roll when you got all the hip hop and metal you could wish for? Sure, this is first and foremost a r'n'r page, but since Roskilde is all about mixing the genres and opening up for new experiences, you'd be a sour old bugger to let the weak r'n'r program get you down. Starting out in the coolest festival style, a member from my camp managed to puke in the parking lot even before entering the festival grounds, let alone getting the armband, and everything was set for a cool return to Roskilde for me after a two-year hiatus. Never mind the pissing rain, then, which made this festival even more muddy and floody than I remember 97 to be, a pair of rubber boots and cool company just made it all a bit more soldier comeradeship-like, and after inaugurating the tent properly we were ready for some serious festivalling! Thursday It all started out not so festive, though, as Blonde Redhead opened the festival on the Odeon stage. On their first 3-4 records, the very New York trio played arty, angular, and aggressive Sonic Youth-inspired alternative rock, but on the latest two albums, produced by Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, no less, the Italian twin brothers and female japanese bassist have cut back on the noise in favour of a more melodic neurosis-laden psych that's, like, rilly-rilly mature and rilly-rilly not very interesting unless you're twee. Exiting the tent, it sounded like baboons had been set loose on the Orange stage, where Danish Mnemic with a singer looking like Thomas Helveg of the Danish football team did their best to fill the entire festival grounds with brutal, yet technical metal. After a healthy dose of this to rid us of the feeling of Blonde Redhead, we went to check out Dropkick Murphys on Arena, only to arrive in the middle of a bagpipe theme. Shit! And just as we thought the worst was over, the fucking flute set in, and we had to run. An interim of turntablism at Metropol courtesy of the Scratch Perverts followed before we had to choose between the four young, Swedish girls in Sahara Hotnights playing powerpop or the apparently much-hyped TV on the Radio on Pavilion, as was my LowCut duty. According to press and some of my friends, the first half hour of the show was rather tame rock, but the second half that I heard was awesome, somewhere around Bad Brains' "Quickness" and the rocker parts of Saul Williams' "Amethyst Rock Star", which would naturally make this a fave with me. Lots of wild vocal harmonies and trippy dub music, and predictably at the end of show singer Tunde Adebimpe (sic!) put on his glasses and fired a tirade against George W. Bush, the first of many to come during the festival. It's a hard time to be an American visiting Europe, apparently, so you can't blame them for feeling the need to make a stand and show that they're not all yahoo cowboys. The first night of the festival finished at the other end of the IQ-meter with Korn playing a greatest hits set at Orange, but despite the touchy-feely stuff I dig this band for their heaviness, and the show was fine until fuck!! Not again!!! The fucking singer fucking brought in the fucking second fucking pair of fucking bagpipes in one evening. That, and their Pink Floyd cover wasn't "Interstellar Overdrive" as one could have dreamt of, but something off "The Wall" which suits their fragile sensitivity better, I suppose. Damn! Friday Friday for me had to start with the heavily dreadlocked Promoe opening the Nordic By Nature package at Pavilion, and the Swede didn't dissappoint with a set of politically charged and melodically aware anarchist hip hop that had the tent jumping for the Looptroop rocker. Thus in the mood, it was time to see if Silver could fulfil the promise of their debut album "White Diary", released earlier this year. I saw them a year ago at Loppen where they dissappointed me some, but at the Arena decked out with church windows for the holy boys I found out why: This is a fullforce stadium rock band! All the attitudes, ripped jeans, and gay cigarette swapping were so Guns N' Roses that I'm ashamed to admit I like this band, but I totally do, and their punk energy is what does the trick. Extremely Norwegian in their overblownness, but Silver have got way more sincerity and nerve than any of your Turbonegros. Having filled up on beers for some hours it was time for the big singalong party that the reunited Pixies on Orange would inevitably be. I didn't expect much of this show really, reunions as a rule suck (but bring me the recently reunited Helmet now, just for a chance to prove me wrong!), and Pixies sure as hell didn't give much, just a run through the songs - but what songs! It was like being back in gymnasium, and I remembered all those appointments I was too late for back then because I would accidentally put on a Pixies album and couldn't leave the house before I had heard the album through. So Pixies, you're forgiven for reuniting. Now go back to your dayjobs. Having dragged my lovely wife along to Korn the previous night and with an intention to drag her along to Slipknot later on as well, it seemed only fair that I'd accompany her to N*E*R*D. I dig the first album and a lot of their productions are wild, but their second album and every girl gawking over Pharrell is, to paraphrase the Pixies, so ta-a-ame, and to make things worse Roskilde made the obligatory mistake and put them in the Arena tent, with a mob of thousands of young girls and their bratty boyfriends pushing hard to get in. All of which together with the boring show made this one guy ever so slightly fucking aggressive that my friends thought it would befit me better to make our way out before I started a fight with someone bigger than myself. A couple of tents and beers later, Slipknot replaced David Bowie, who had cancelled in the last minute, which is the best switch I've experienced at a festival since the Ramones replaced Blind Melon at the Midtfyns Festival in '94. Though I like the "Iowa" album, Slipknot turned out to be a bit too much sideshow and new melodic material for my taste. Next job was go see the reformed Wire. Oh yes, one more reunion, and not the last to come at this festival. I saw them a couple of years ago at Loppen, and at Odeon they played what I judged from the first half hour to be exactly the same show. For a band with a back catalogue like Wire - punk classics like "12XU", "Lowdown", "I Am the Fly", "Outdoor Miner", "Map Reference", the list goes on - it's hard to fathom why they choose to bark through a drudge of anonymous ditties, balding old men pretending to be young brats. Very uninteresting, and it was time to get a place in the pit for The Hives. This too could so well be a disappointment: After some three years without new material, spending the time in court, eating cherries with the big ones, and signing mega-multi-million $$$ deals, would The Hives have lost that all-important r'n'r ingredient: Necessity? Judging from the show they bashed out in the Roskilde night, apparently not. Though younger bands like Sweatmaster make at the race at the Scandinavian throne of short and furious r'n'r, The Hives are still at a different level. Idiot savants, flaneurs, posers, The Hives simply, very simply, rocks. They deserve the hype. Saturday Saturday started out in about the stoned'est way possible with the Anticon collective. Best known for the so-called artists Sole and cLOUDDEAD, this is abstract white hip hop on the absolute avantgarde of the scene, but for those drifting by the Metropol stage this noon, it might as well resemble a bunch of stoned slackers doing soundcheck more than anything else. Only Passage with Restiform Bodies came close to hip hop, while Dosh did a live collage of drumming and samples, and Alias calmly drifted off into his own smoke. And more hip hop later on courtesy of the well-established Quannum Project with Blackalicious the main attraction, delivering a set that overflowed with inspiration, ill rhymes, and integrity. During the Lifesavas warm up show, there was a chance to check out the old death metal heroes Morbid Angel on Orange, but despite playing just as fast and ferocious as ever, it all felt a bit stale. Plus, they had the gayest of backdrops for a death metal band with their logo in baby blue and pink. After Blackalicious there was the next big reunion, the eagerly anticipated Stooges. Well, everyone else seemed to like it, but to me it lacked the soulpower of their biggest effort, "Funhouse", even though it was more or less the same line up, and it felt like watching your dad getting his ya-yas out. As for the rest of the night, Puppetmastaz were one of the worse novelty bands with handpuppets miming their bland hip hop, and The Quantic Soul Orchestra tried a bit too hard to be funky in the Ballroom. Sunday By Sunday it seemed the entire festival was ready to go home and our camp too fell apart person by person. As it always is at Roskilde, really, and with all the mud and steady rain it's hard to blame anyone. We had to stay, though, for the big attraction of Baby Woodrose closing the Orange stage. Earlier on Orange, Spearhead played. I saw them in 95 at Roskilde, where their blend of hip hop and soul was so alive that I had to keep dancing, on one leg, mind you, since my foot was fucked up. 9 years later, though, Michael Franti came out with an acoustic guitar, backed by a band that looked and sounded like the house orchestra in some crappy late night show. A curious and sad way of evolving: From industrial avantgarde hip hop with The Beatniks to world pop. Fuck that. For r'n'r, Detroit's The Von Bondies delievered a slew of instant classics at Odeon, but unfortunately did so with an attitude of cool detachedness that's not really befitting for a band of their size and not really entertaining either. Only the energetically pounding drumming saved them from making you wanna do a Jack White on them. After checking out the grime with Dizzee Rascal, it was time for a show that again felt somewhat like a reunion: Atleast the Wu-Tang Clan together on stage feels like something of a different era. But still, as they proved very well, da Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta f' wit, even if Ghostface Killah in bathrobe and da blingest of goldchains made them look somewhat silly. And then, at last, Baby Woodrose got to close it all on Orange stage, and despite the low turnout, a thousand or so by my judgment from the spacious pit, they rocked a lot harder and a lot more convincing than they did in Pumpehuset about a month ago. This band is fucking big, even if they may not sound as fresh as they did just a year ago, and they deserve all hype they get. Bringing on Peter Belli for "Nok af Dig" was a treat, as was a grand finale with "Nobody Spoil My Fun" played with 3 guitarists, Martin Budde from The Defectors on the organ, and JT from LowCut magazine waving the Christiania flag like a proud Chinese communist hero, before it all blurred out in a drone of guitar feedback, smoke, and crashing drums... just like a Roskilde Festival should. Thank you. Can I have my voice back now? http://www.roskilde-festival.dk
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