3xS :: Blog

Pinkpop 2008: A long long long overdue review, part 1 posted by Kiron on April 10, 2009

Just a month-and-a-half or so to go before Pinkpop 2009. Since I always promise to review these damn festivals but never actually do so, let's take the opportunity to look back at last year's Pinkpop.

The festival started on a Friday and ended on a Sunday, in contrast to the usual Saturday to Monday with Monday being part of the Pentecost weekend, etc. etc. This was because Pentecost was particularly early in 2008, and thus putting Pinkpop there would have put it outside of the festival season.

My brother was dropped off at the festival camping at about 4 AM so we'd get a decent spot. I skipped German class to get there in time, but my tent was still in a ditch which was annoying.
We weren't in a particular hurry to get there; traditionally, the band that wins the "Nu of Nooit"-contest ("Now or Never") opens the festival, and they're usually pretty generic and fall apart soon after. This year, there were two openers; the 3FM-stage and the tent-stage were used, the latter for what I perceived as a generic screamo-band. After watching the last two songs of the opening band, things were REALLY getting underway; time for Flogging Molly! I emerged from the pit 30 minutes later drenched in beer, but fuck if it wasn't awesome.
I was a bit disappointed that the video screens on the side of the stage weren't being used, but as the day progressed, it became obvious that Metallica were responsible for all these stupid little restrictions like not allowing other bands to use the screens.
Anyway, after Flogging Molly, we decided to just hang around for a bit; Jonathan Davis was playing on the tent-stage, but we didn't like him, so we walked over to the 3FM-stage to be confronted with a creepy clown in a suit. Apparently, this was a nu-metal band from Norway called Animal Alpha; as far as I know, nobody had any idea who the hell they were, and they were only there because Chris Cornell cancelled his tour. After being amused by the creepy clown for a while, my brother decided to go over to the tent stage and wait for Porcupine Tree. Meanwhile, my sister and I went over to the main stage for Incubus, who were goddamn awesome. There were these small fences some way around the main stage, but they were barely a restriction; we stood just outside of them so we wouldn't get annoyed by the camping Metallica fans, but it didn't feel like we were 'outside' at all. At any rate, I jumped along to the Incubus songs, most of which I knew, and afterwards we also had a new Incubus fan in the family. Awesome.
After this, we decided to grab a bite to eat. We could still catch a bit of Alter Bridge on the 3FM-stage from where we were standing- they were okay. By the time they were done, the sun was nearly down. Of course, Metallica took three centuries to actually get on stage. When they actually did, I was already too fed up with their annoying fans, so I sat on the stairs and watched from afar, since, y'know, they were the only ones who could use the damn video screens. I'll admit, I only like two Metallica albums; Master of Puppets and Metallica, informally known as "The Black Album." For most of the set, they bored the hell out of me with overly long songs that weren't very exciting, and even "Master of Puppets" didn't get much energy flowing. The only part that got to me was "Nothing Else Matters", since even the people who hated Metallica were singing along.
In the end, Metallica played an annoying, overly-long set and it seemed they didn't want to leave. As a result, it felt like a good portion of their show had James Hetfield saying "Okay, here's ONE MORE SONG!" In the end, we finally went back to the tents- despite the rather underwhelming finale, we'd had enough fun. Besides, the really cool stuff was on the other two days.
Oh yeah, I also ran into my German teacher. Oops!

(Review of Saturday and Sunday later...)

Currently listening to: · View Comments

2010
Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr
May	Jun	Jul	Aug
Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2009
Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr
May	Jun	Jul	Aug
Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2008
Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr
May	Jun	Jul	Aug
Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Default