Saturday the 16th of August, 2008 - Pukkelpop Day #3, where we finally brave the Main Stage

One of the reasons why Pukkelpop is great - and I had completely forgotten this after my first time there - is that for the most part, everyone is very attractive. It´s those Flemmish. They are a beautiful people. I don´t just mean ´beautiful´ in the internal goodness way (which, incidentally, they also are) but in the superficial, outwards way. It´s all deep blue eyes, straight hair and angular faces.
This could all be wrapped up in my [not so] current obsession with beautiful Scandinavians.

Unfortunately, for the most part, the younger people of this place have chosen to stick two fingers to this win in the genetic lottery by perforating various areas of their faces with pieces of metal, shaving off random bits of their hair and then dyeing what´s left in a variety of mis-matched colours.

This isn´t a prelude to some story about my meeting a charming Norwegian boy in the crowd at Sigur Ros, falling in love and running away together to run a beet farm.
I didn´t meet anyone like that.
I just thought you should just how attractive everyone was.

So anyway.



Band #15 - Pivot - Caught exactly one of theirs before we headed off to get a good spot for the Black Kids. I really liked it. Bam bam thrash thrash. I lamented that I couldn´t have stayed for longer. Isn´t it funny how sometimes you only make an effort to see a band from your home country when you are in an entirely different country?

Band #16 - Black Kids - I´m going to complain again about the Marquee stage. If the Marquee stage was an amorous puppy, I would tap it on the snout with my rolled up newspaper, using my stern voice to say "no" repeatedly until it got the point. This stage never got the point. The sound was still pretty lame-o. The Black Kids were pretty good. Not dazzling, but good. They played their songs well and wooed the enthusiastic crowd in all the right ways. Emm and I did some awesome synchronized hand-dancing towards the end.

We were supposed to see Late Of The Pier but couldn't be bothered walking across the festival grounds to the stage they were playing. Neither could we be bothered staying exactly where we were to watch The National. Instead we walked a short distance and ate a lot of Ben & Jerrys.



Then we did one of the coolest things we did during our time at the festival: we stopped in at the 1 Euro Museum to check out the painted boards that artists and festival goers had been doing and displaying over the past couple of days. It turned out anyone could paint a board, so Josh, Emm and I grabbed a space as quick as we could and spray/painted away.



Our ´theme´ was to depict ourselves all together again, holding hands.
Aww.
I think it turned out ok. It made me think how much I should get off my behind and start experimenting with painting when I get back home to London. Surely it couldn´t hurt the portfolio I´m supposed to be putting together.



Band #17 - Yeasayer - I think we were all expecting a little more from their live performance. Again, don´t get me wrong - they were quite good - but we really love their recorded stuff and were anticipating an experience like what we got with The Dodos ("again with the frikking Dodos, geez why don´t you guys like get a room or something"). I did like the intensity of the lead singer though: lots of facial scrunching and hand-wringing.



Band #18 - MGMT - We couldn´t even get into that damn Marquee tent because people were spilling out it it from all corners in an attempt to hear the one song they knew from the ´band of the moment´. Puh! I knew at least three songs. I heard two of them, then left. Yes folks, I really am a douchebag musical tourist just like everyone else.

Band #19 - Bloc Party - We had managed to avoid the Main stage up until now but knew that we would have to concede to it´s harrowing crowds and poorly placed stage set-up if we wanted to see Bloc Party and Sigur Ros. I´m not kidding about the poor stage setup - it was the worst I´d ever seen...ever. Ever ever. Ever ever ever. Get this: on both sides of the stage (you know, where they usually place the camera men and main front speakers), there were huge blocks of stage sticking out, making visibility impossible unless you were directly in front of the band. In other words, from our typical position on the barrier towards the side of the stage, we could see nothing. Nada. Occasionally the head of a band member. It was pretty lame-o. So we watched the band on the screen above us instead, with our heads actually turned away from the band. Pretty ridiculous. If I hadn´t really wanted to ´see´ Sigur Ros perform, I probably would have left.

Grumble grumble grumble.

Oh, and Bloc Party did play a good set, by the way. But you already knew that.



Band #20 - Sigur Ros - Of course they were good. Obviously they were beautiful and amazing and soul-crushing and heart-uplifting and everything you´d always wanted them to be; and in the moment of the last song where they filled the air with white paper confetti, it was like getting a day pass into Puppy Heaven to be reunited with the childhood dog that was your first real best friend and died one day when someone left the front door open, and he ran out into the street and he got hit by a minivan.



Band #21 - M83 - We ran across the festival to catch the very last bit of his set. I love this band so much and have wanted to see them for years and years but have always missed them when they played London. So we hurried towards the Chateau stage and as we did, the bars of ´Don´t Save Us From The Flames´ - one of my favourite songs of all time - was wafting through the air, and we bolted it into the tent. Danced. Amazing. AMAZING. Jesus, this band is so very, very good.

Band #22 - Crystal Castles - They were equally as phenominal. My siblings had left for bed, so I stayed to see them with Anthony and Clinton, Perth boys that we met at the festival. It was too dark and crowded to see anything but again I indulged in one of those Dyonisian trances that you can only really do right when you have some fantastic thrashy electro to guide you. It was the perfect band to finish my festival with.

Considered staying up to do the last-night party thing for about five minutes before realising just how used up my body was. I made my way back to our tent, explored the outer reaches of the whole campsite for a while with Emm, then retreated to my own sleeping bag for my last night of sleeping on a flimsy blue mat.