Hey guys
I'm back at home after two days travelling
I'm sitting here watching youtubevideos from the show I have just attended, and I can feel the aftermath of having been to a great show. For instance, I was just watching a video of The Final Countdown on my cell phone, and suddenly realized I was fistpumping, sitting right here on the couch. To that song, of all songs. A song I should be ridiculously tired of by now, almost 9 years and 21 live concerts since the first time. But I'm not.
When I hear the roaring bass that announces the intro, my first reaction is always «Nooooo, F*****ck!!» Cause even though the song is amazing, the playing of it means the end of the concert. But then the synthesizer start, and I forget everything. All I can remember is that this song is what started the whole thing. This song is AMAZING live.
When the song ends, and the band makes their walk of absolute triumph on this gigantuan stage, I'm woooing and hooing, clapping and smiling most giddy. This has been a two and a half hours concert without any crowd pressure, drunken bastards or flying beer bottles ruining the joy of it.
Imagine that. Front row in a festival with 20 000 people. Twenty-thousand! I met up with my lovely dutch friend Anke earlier that day, and she had no plans to try to get to front row, due to
her last experience with Europe at Sweden Rock, in 2009, when front row became quite the mosh pit. But this time it was different. I don’t know what made it different. But anyway, I LOVED the front row. Fans from Argentina, Chile, America, Taiwan, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Italy, to name a few, had been standing and sitting in front of the stage from 4 to 10 hours that day. Even though there was no fighting for front row. It was nice, though, to go to the biggest stage in the festival inbetween the other bands.
I had the pleasure of watching a couple of songs by Treat (they sounded really good, and I got to hear my favorite; “Skies of Mongolia”), Hardline (sitting in the hot sunlight barefoot, hearing an incredible live band doing their hit “Hot Cherie” was a dream come true, a dream I didn’t know I had)I also got a couple of songs of the band Asia. Great sound from their stage, and good songs, I have to listen to them a bit more! But when I wasn’t watching other bands on either of the other 3 stages, I kept returning to the Festival Stage to say hi to other fans. Meeting some friends I have known for sooo long, but never met before. I met a girl with the most amazing Europe tattoo. I was about to introduce myself, when she said “You’re Tone-something?”. Apparently I’m not the most invisible Europefan out there. Which is totally okay.
While waiting by the biggest stage, we got to hear Doro Pesch. Doro, whom I have seen before, was looking great, and sounding great! This time I managed to draw my eyes away from her and watch the others in her band too. The bass player was a real eye pleaser, both due to good looks, and amazing energy. It looked like the entire band had a world of fun!
From where we stood we had good vision to one of the smaller stages, Rock Stage, and the sound carried all the way to where we stood. So we could stand there and gather some of the songs from UFO. I guess most fans, like me, only knew the few UFO-songs Europe has done some covers of, like “Love to love” and “Only you can rock me”. We did hear the intro to Love to love.. But then the techies to next due artist on the Festival Stage started to tune their instruments and bang their drums, so I couldn’t hear all of the song. Pretty irritating. But what I did hear was great!
This was my first real big festival. I’ve seen Europe in other norwegian festivals, and one swedish one, but never this scale. I have been asked to go to SRF previous years, but always thought that it would be too noisy, big and crowdy for my taste. But I am absolutely IMPRESSED. Four stages taking turns to host amazing bands, a festival crew that was like a well greased machinery. Immediately after a crowd left the stage after one band was done playing, you could see plastic beer bottles everywhere, the ground was littered. 10 minutes later, the crew had come over to clean it up, leaving the ground bottlefree once more.
After another couple of hours of waiting and socializing, it was time for Krokus. But my Converse-covered feet was kind of sore at this moment, so I tried to focus on keeping them in motion, so my back wouldn’t go all out on me. I did however get a lot of Krokus’ vibe, even if I wasn’t listening that intently. They’re singer was good, and I liked their music.
But... you know what? Call me biased, but there’s something about Europe that sets them apart from all the other bands I saw. The crowd started intensifying 60-90 minutes before Europe came on stage. Fans from every country, all ages, whole families (I stood next to a family of three; a mother and two teenage/just-over-20-kids. That had come from the Netherlands.
Intensifying was natural, due to them being the headliners, having a 30 year anniversary etc etc.
No, what I meant about Europe having something that sets them apart... It could be the experience. Their 30 years of writing, playing and conveying music. They have a way of drawing the audience in. They’re not actually asking anyone to love them or their music when they’re performing. They concentrate 100% on the music, helped my some breathtaking lights and a well driven sound. They love their own music, which makes you love them.
It doesn’t hurt that they’re talented. It doesn’t hurt that they have a bag filled to the brim with old and new goodies. And the fact that they can reinvent themselves and their songs.
To be continued with more about the show, the songs and the fans. Now my arm is about to go on strike