Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.07.2006, Page 25

It would take a die-hard stalwart of a Guns ‘N Roses fan
to be satisfied with the million-dollar joke the distinctly
ungainly Axl Rose pulled on his 60,000 strong audi-
ence. Swaggering onstage almost an hour after they
were scheduled to start, he led a bandful of elaborately
decorated sessionists through a note-for-note recital
of their hits, but disappeared backstage after suffering
some sort of fall after their first couple of songs. His
helpless band then grooved and improvised incredibly
obnoxious solos for well over ten minutes before Axl
returned… only to evaporate again after another song
or so.
It was something one might have expected to hap-
pen at some ridiculously overpriced Guns ‘N Roses
revival show in a sold-out stadium in California, with
halogen searchlights illuminating advertising zeppelins
wafting above the crowd and hundreds of thousands of
people f looding the parking lots, offering their bodies to
Satan in exchange for one ticket, one chance to catch a
glob of Axl’s spit on their face.
But no. This was the first night of international
headline acts at Roskilde Festival 2006, an outdoor
music festival in a township of the same name. It is the
largest music festival in Northern Europe, and attracts
audiences from all over Europe, including, in great
numbers, Icelanders, who thanks to their close relation-
ship with Danes and their country, have been attending
diligently since its inception in the early seventies. This
year, they hosted over 170 bands performing on six
stages and 80,000 guests tended to by 21,000 volun-
teers.
Axl Rose is an Idiot and an Icelander Turns
Down a Free Drink
So a lot of people had come for many other reasons
than to watch Axl Rose behave like a complete prat.
Even though such behaviour should maybe have been
expected from someone who willfully inf licts upon
his fellow man atrocities like November Rain, a little
professionalism couldn’t have hurt.
Disgusted with the disrespect the old man was
showing the 60,000 people watching, I decided to go
and wait for Sigur Rós in the Arena tent nearby, only
to find that they hadn’t started yet, and some incredibly
terrible band was playing. Now, I hate a lot of music, but
this was indescribably bad. It sounded like something
college students might accidentally play when not smok-
ing pot or masturbating to pictures of Natalie Port-
man… good God, they were bad. Haphazard melodies,
awkward dancing, smug grins, banal guitars, unneces-
sary keyboards and general lameness f looded the stage
and audience; they were so bad that you could practi-
cally smell the shit wafting in the air as they played, a
scent so strong it almost overpowered the earthy tang of
weed in the enclosed tent.
I checked my schedule to find out who these musical
toilet plungers were, only to discover I was at the Odeon
tent, not the Arena, and was in fact watching Clap Your
Hands Say Yeah! while Sigur Rós were on the other side
of the concert area from me. I sighed gently at my own
obtuseness and made my way through the crowd still
watching Guns ‘N Roses attempting to improvise their
way out of their Axl-lessness, with extraordinarily bad
results.
When I finally got to the Arena the place was
absolutely packed, with the crowd extending far beyond
the actual edge of the tent and into the yard surround-
ing it. My view was perfectly dismal, but from what I
heard, Sigur Rós’ show was particularly illustrious, and
well worthy of the massive crowd they had drawn. Their
songs practically beamed with a crisp and vamped-up
energy that was well received by the largely Icelandic
audience, and I did feel a distinct sense of pride, as well
as surprise at just how many Icelanders had come.
The fact that they would travel 1,300 miles to see a
band from their own shores seems to offer a glimpse of
192-Hour Party People
Roskilde Festival 2006
by sindri eldon photo by skari
huge amounts of respect and devotion Sigur Rós fans
show their idols. Another glimpse of this had been of-
fered earlier in the day at one of campsites erected by the
sizeable number of Icelandic people at Roskilde. One of
their fans, a girl of about 20, actually turned down an
offer of free alcohol to have an untainted experience at
the concert.
“I’m going to see Sigur Rós tonight, so I’m not going
to be, you know, drunk,” she said. The solemn silence
that followed suggested many in the tent wished they
had done the same. Not many bands I know inspire
people to make such sacrifices, especially at the interna-
tional bingefest that is Roskilde. Everyone, it seems, was
there to get immensely wasted. Even the most devoted
of music lovers all had grand intentions of observing
their band of choice through the bottom of a bottle… or
through a gigantic cloud of smoke.
The biggest acts, such as Tool, Bob Dylan, Scissor
Sisters, Kanye West, The Strokes and Roger Waters all
played shows seen by well over 60,000 people, and all
the concerts I saw were well attended, and it’s not that
people didn’t care about the music, it’s just that it played
second fiddle to the primary purpose of Roskilde. The
only people who go there and remember enough of it to
tell you about it will no doubt tell you a sad tale of woe
and suffering, whereas the people who have the best
time will remember next to nothing.
Good Clean Fun
The music was all conveniently grouped onto the dif-
ferent stages by genre. The Odeon catered to the wide
variety of marginal acts tentatively labelled ‘indie’, the
Metropol was home to the various electro, breakbeat
and dance acts, including at least a dozen post-show
DJs. The Arena contained the more progressive end
of rock, while the Ballroom hosted the various ethnic
acts, with anything from tribal drum music to reggae
to soul to Latin; Carlos Santana will no doubt have felt
at home here, but if he had been playing, the Orange
Stage would have been his venue. The famous Orange
Stage has provided a forum for Beastie Boys, Marilyn
Manson, Suede, Metallica, Korn, Iggy Pop, Bob Mar-
ley, Ray Charles and Radiohead to name but a few since
its inception in 1978, with most of them playing at the
peak of their greatness; the Orange Stage was, basically,
home to those who had made enough money to prove
they could entertain 60,000 people.
As commercially motivated as the Orange Stage’s
line-up was, it at least provided variety, as opposed to
the pretentious genre-oriented shelf-stacking the fes-
tival organisers were pulling as far as the rest of stages
were concerned. It seems to go against every principal of
an open-air multi-genre festival to encourage people to
stick to their music of choice, and many people felt they
had done a bad job, anyway. A group of kids I spoke
to were agonising over who they would see on Friday
night, Bob Dylan, Death Cab For Cutie or The Streets,
all of whom performed nearly simultaneously.
There were several acts which were universally
admired, or at least should have been; even people who
wholeheartedly despised electronic music would be
hard-pressed not to appreciate the antics of 64-year-old
Annie Nightingale, a British nightclub DJ swirling
around in her booth to her fairly standard and badly
mixed breakbeat electro as the crowd applauded ironi-
cally and took giant tokes of their joints so they could
giggle some more, but hey, at least they were seeing
something new.
Swedish hair-metal proggers Evergrey didn’t draw
quite so big a crowd, but they didn’t care in the slightest,
playing as if in front of a sold-out stadium of worship-
pers instead of the mixed bag of bored metal enthusi-
asts and Opeth fans trying to make the most of their
Roskilde bracelet. Evergrey’s music may not have been
that daring, or even interesting, but man, did they rock.
“I checked my schedule to find out who these musical toilet
plungers were, only to discover I was at the Odeon tent, not the
Arena, and was in fact watching Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! while
Sigur Rós were on the other side of the concert area…”
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