Pinkpop 2002: Big names, small miracles
For the real excitement of the discovery of new music Pinkpop has lost its place.
19 mei 2002, Megaland, Landgraaf (NL)
Publicatiedatum: 27 mei 2002
For the first time ever the Landgraaf, The Netherlands based yearly returning open-air rock festival Pinkpop opened its main stage for all three days. This year 50.000 visitors crowded the festival grounds and the surrounding camping sites. Inevitably this lead to logistic problems, the first and perhaps most annoying being the extremely long wait in the rain while waiting for the compulsory wrist-straps. Sure, it has to be said, security was tight, but safety superb and it of course is no gimme to organize and event of this scale. On the other hand, this piece of planning was plain disaster. Because of the number of guests exceeding last year's by 15.000 the place felt rather crowded the first day(s) already. Normally it is a relaxed atmosphere the first day(s) when the festival slowly kicks into gear. This year the Pinkpop festival was firing on all cylinders from the very start.
After Forever [photo] played an enormously powerful set of melodic metal mixed with musical experimentation and female vocals paired with deep grunts. The evil hands quickly filled the 3FM tent with an audience fast won over by the charismatic and honest band, who clearly enjoyed every second of their performance on the Pinkpop stage. And shouldn't it be considered to be quite an achievement when a crazed fan manages to reach the stage followed by a herd of security personnel? This debut on the biggest and most well known festival of Holland might just mark the break through this band deserves so rightfully. Heather Nova again ploughed her way through a set of rather mediocre quality.
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Never achieving to capture the attention for more than a couple of songs, a concert of La Nova remains a pitiful display of boredom laced with some happy happy hippie lyrics. When will someone tell Heather not to give away her biggest hits right at the start of the set? Bush, the proto-neo-grunge rip off band, never too original, did attract quite an audience, mostly female up front, eager to scream their lungs out in praise for Gavin's looks. Musically it was okay, there was in fact a lot of energy, kind of pumped up even with a lot of fuck you's being thrown around. But with the all too apparent Seattle based sound, ripping off both Nirvana and Pearl Jam, making it into nothing new, but rehashing the same old sound, Bush still is a band that should have been forgotten all about years ago and would have been if music was all that mattered. A sweaty, party vibe of drum'n'bass and crazed audience reaction emerged from the tent when I passed Groove Armada's set on my way to After Forever's 2 Meter Session where the band played four songs crammed in a very tiny space. But with some outrageous die hard fans in front it made for quite a special treat. Closing the first day of Pinkpop on the main stage was another not too original crowd favorite. Live, blessed with a superb sound mix delivered a highly professional show with a broad selection of songs from all their releases. Carefully played and with the famous overdone pathos Ed and his band members threw their arrows of the message of love and hope right into the hearts of many a young girl in the front sections. Sure, the big gestures and not always too sincere highly commercial muzak never fail to appall me, but seeing a massive crowd enjoy themselves forces me to at least give them that much. Live does know what the people want, give it in abundance and get away with it.
The freaky Britpop of Super Furry Animals opened my second day after a good night's sleep. The teenage mutant pop metal freak show of Alient Ant Farm was up next. Their set was extremely poppy to my surprise, popular in the other sense too as it was very very crowded during their set. Their huge hit song Michael Jackson cover of Smooth Criminal was even spiced up by some ad-lib lyrics of Smooth Operator! Once the smile was there on my face, it was easy to keep it up when Def P. and
the Beatbusters took the stage. The front man of Dutch anger rap crew Osdorp Posse has worked with
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the Beatbusters to form a rap/ska/reggae outfit. With full brass section, matching Hawaii shirts and the right colorful and tropical flavors the Beatbusters accompanied Def P.'s genius lyrics. His rimes often are so spot on and witty there is no way in the world they could
be translated without brutally molesting their true meaning and impact. Lamb [photo], in a way, was opening act for Faithless. With their very special brand of drm'n'bass grooves that got the audience bouncing and dancing set to atmospheric, ambient, experimental, trip hoppy soundscapes, always binding the extremes of their style with is the very distinct sound of Lou's voice. Lamb played a stunning gig with equally amazing sound for a festival. Band members had a great time on stage and their enthusiasm sparked the audience! For Faithless it was like falling into a warm bath. The crowd was eager to see them, ready to jump around and warmed up by Lamb. Faithless' set was okay, quite okay, but with the intermission of songs like G.O.D. Machine R Us and Crazy English Summer their set didn't show any cohesive force. The set took some time to take off and when it finally was at a high, the slow and fragile songs appeared again instead of yet another dance anthem Faithless is so renowned for. At a festival Faithless might be better of by limiting the quiet parts, however beautiful these are. The drop dead bliss of seeing Faithless live for the first few times is over for me now (5th time this year), but they still manage to put this very special feeling across. A feeling of peace, love and unity the audience felt throughout the show, most notably put into words by Maxi Jazz during the new part of The Garden/Take the Long Way Home. Nothing new, nothing too special about it, but still and as always good fun.
The former main day on Monday showed the remarkable aspect of Dutch music where imitator bands like Bush and Live are bigger than the originals once were and a clone of these two called Kane is
even bigger. Enough said. This is just the worst possible gray noise of non original and brain dead
sing-a-long washed of 'rock' one can imagine. Stay far far away from it! Gomez [photo] on the other hand proved to be the absolute highlight for me. With a good share of summer sun, a lot )
of space to dance around and a beer in hand, this band put together the best set of festival fun I can imagine. All the pieces fell together in this very concert. Check them out whenever you can! Great fun and so much better than all the hyped and crazed Britpop wannabe's. This is the real deal. Back on the main stage Muse played quite a strong set featuring all the favorites, but the show was marred with horrific sound. Macy Gray and her band drenched the already steaming audience into a tropical melting pot of sunny, relaxed and sweaty grooves. Perfect music to recline to and lay back in the afternoon sunlight. After her set it was up to Lenny Kravitz to reproduce the magic of a few years ago. And he failed. Lenny's music is a soulful constantly repetitive drone of same sounding boring guitars and way too slow rockers. Highlights in his set were formed by the old favorites,
painfully displaying this man's total inability to reach yet again to the level of his earlier status. A failed headliner. Another headline act for which expectations rose high was System of a Down
[photo]. Coming to Pinkpop with a pocketful of megahits and with a dubious reputation as a live act because of the massive show at Lowlands last year and a pure deception at the Heineken Music Hall later that tour, System of a Down ruined every hope of a good show in the first song. With a band
missing nearly every note or beat, a singer unable to sing spot on or even sing at all, their sound was nothing more than a pathetic blast of drums and bass with sometimes a scream or a whoosh of power chords. Have you ever wondered how drug use can kill a performance? Watch this band on their last concerts. A shame. Now it was up to Rammstein to save the festival. And they did. Just, but alas. With nonsensical Teutonic metal power chord Tanzmetal and dubious flirts with dark sides of )
German history their show is a strange joy to watch. Fireworks, explosions, the whole damn lot. It is all too much, it's all way over the top. Is this irony? Or is it clever commercial thinking? Who knows? Who cares? It was indeed good fun to watch, but still it is somewhat chilling to see 10.000's fists in the air when a strong, big Arian declares them to march: links, zwei, drei, vier! Well, in dubio pro reo?
This edition of Pinkpop held all the promises of the greatest Pinkpop Festival of all times. So many headliners and so much potential. It is striking to see a smaller band attracting only a fraction of the audiences Live, Bush or Kane did, play one of the best shows this year. But Gomez deserves this honor in full. With Lamb and After Forever being good seconds. For the real excitement of the discovery of new music Pinkpop has lost its place. Like Werchter and the German Rock am Ring and Rock im Park Pinkpop is a festival of the big numbers and the big names. A little bit more adventure could do no harm though, just a little bit.
photo credits: VPRO 3voor12
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