Rock Werchter

After arriving at Rock Werchter, located next to a small town called Werchter just outside of the city of Leuven, we set up camp in the tent city in area A2, just one of about 15 camping areas.



We got there late, and Mike managed to miss Counting Crows for the third time. The first time, he bought tickets to their show in Adelaide and then got the day of the concert wrong, and the second time he bought tickets and they canceled.

Through a guy from Adelaide called Dan, we were introduced to a group of around 20 people, mostly Australians living in London, with a few Norwegians. One guy had brought an Australian flag, which was flown in the middle of our camp, Camp Australia:


On the last day, the flag blew off the pole and was (we think) stolen. Another guy had a Trinidad & Tobago flag he'd bought at the last soccer World Cup, so we briefly became Camp Trinidad & Tobago. There were several boxing kangaroos flying elsewhere. I also saw an England flag, a California flag, an Amsterdam flag and a Japanese flag.

On to the acts. I only saw about two bands a day. Some people like to see everything at a festival, but I find it just tires me and makes me less enthused about the bands I actually want to see. Dane and I took advantage of the free buses into Leuven on a couple of days to see a film and watch the Wimbledon final.

Anyway....

THE GREAT

Radiohead: Probably the band people were most interested in, their setlist was not what I would have chosen. They only played one track off my favourite album, The Bends, and that was Sulk which I don't like at all. However, their performance was so strong that even the tracks I didn't know or particularly like were great. In particular they put in a great performance of what I was later told was You And Whose Army. Other highlights for me included Paranoid Android, 15 Step and Nude. They played the whole of In Rainbows bar one or two tracks. Thom's voice sounded great and the unity of the band was amazing. A festival highlight for sure.

Underworld: These guys really benefited from the most enthusiastic crowd of the festival. The second-stage tent was crammed full and overflowing with vocal fans, while Beck over at the main stage had a larger but more lukewarm crowd. At one point the singer said "Thanks for turning this into the main stage" and that's definitely how it felt. Highlights included Born Slippy (obviously), Two Months Off and King Of Snake.

Ben Folds: Excellent performance as usual, Folds has a lot of charisma, there was plenty of crowd participation, and again the crowd was really into it. My highlight was probably a tweaked version of the joke cover Bitches Ain't Shit.

THE GOOD

Chemical Brothers: Almost made it to the Great section. The visual show they put on was incredible and the good tracks were great, but I've left them down here because frankly the new album sucks and half an hour of that in the middle of the set had me nearly falling asleep. Some of the blame for this should probably go to the fact that they stopped playing at 3am, but meh.

REM: I'm not the world's biggest REM fan, but they put on a solid show with a good mix of old and new.

Panic At The Disco: Good solid pop, if you like that sort of thing.

THE BAD

Only one entry in this section....

Moby: I know a lot of people enjoyed this, but I thought he was awful. Musically it was pretty terrible. Most of the songs were over a generic 4-4 beat with slightly off beat bassline designed to make people jump up and down. When he was first on stage he was playing guitar and got it completely out of time. He sang on some of the tracks, and when he does that on albums he has multiple takes and studio production magic to assist him, but the fact is that he can't sing at all. He has no charisma or stage presence whatsoever; just as I'd nearly start to enjoy myself, he'd prance around the stage and go "Yeah!" or "Come on!" into the mike and ruin everything.

I saw a few other bands, but I don't have enough of an opinion to write about them.

After another night in Brussels, we headed to the Champagne region in France. Will blog about that in a sec.