As festivals go, Pukkelpop is a perfect illustration of a type.
The smell. You forget about the smell. The meadow consists out of good Limburg soil compounded with many generations of cow dung.
So this, being trampled by thousands of festivalgoers, and watered with by the occasional drunk, does bring out a very particular aroma. Add greasy food and old beer in the mix, and you better breathe through your mouth.
The public: nice and well-behaved, actually. No hordes of stumbling drunks or terminal stoners like in Dour. Quite young, of course – i remember going to festivals made me feel old when i was 25, and it’s not getting any better.
We went for one day, and I enjoyed myself. I think i have acquired a healthier attitude: i used to run around from act to act, determined not to miss a single minute, and to be at the very front too, dammit. Ending up singed by the sun, with a solid cold, a hangover, and completely exhausted.
Now we took it easy – taking in the acts at a reasonable distance, we sat about, enjoying ourselves. The weather remained decent, so a quite comfortable afternoon and night, all in all.
My highlights:
- Chris Cornell : great voice. And he did some old favourites of Sound Garden. “Fell on Black Days” … what more can i say.
- The Besnard Lakes: my boyfriend had seen them before, and i recommend them: guitars and voices in harmonic, yet unconventional ensembles. Very nice
- predictably, Smashing Pumpkins: soulless, if technically perfect performance. Not a fan of their new album, but they played a few old numbers a fast “Bullet with Butterfly wings” for instance
- And a few others that made less of an impression, but were pretty interesting: The Noisettes, Patrick Wolf.
OK, now i’ll go back to being a geek 