Horror And Disgust
In The Danish Countryside
The Roskilde Diaries 1998
 

Thursday:

Arriving at 3 am. Put up tent. Sleep (5 hours). Downtown. Buy food, beer, Peter Høeg in Danish (3 books to read during the festival, he-he).

Tortoise:
Instrument switches, string changes, old numbers remixed - serious types. Not quiet shure if are they trying to do what King Crimson failed to do when the latter reformed in the early eighties. Dig their excursions in Gentle Giant-land (!) though; fabulous vibraphone/marimba work!

Sternklang:
Caught half an hour of their canned music. Laidback rhythms with some OK samples. But why are they four musicians on stage when 90% of the stuff is on the hard disk? As with most of this type of music - it happens too little in too long time.

Smilin' Myron:
Sounds like the stuff Little Feat was doing when Lowell George was not present in the studio. People dancing. "Groovy"?

Kraftwerk:
I must admit that this was one of my main reasons for coming this year. It became the multi-media event extraordinaire we were expecting, of course. Kraftwerk had also most of their stuff on disk, but they don' t pretend (or do they?) to be playing. We got the remixes of the hits - Tour de France, Autobahn (great video from the time Hitler-Deutchland built these motorways), The Model, Trans Europe Express and so on. Hard electronic percussion, nothing left of the minimalist light-touch klingklang rhythms the two other members used to play. Loud. LOUD! May have been the loudest concert I have ever been to. But no fax machine in my ears! But I still wonder why they left their mellotrons and flutes behind.

Black Sabbath:
Not ready for their sub-primal metal after two hours of Music Non Stop. Sorry.

Friday:

Brave Combo:
Pipeline, Tico tico. Polka music from hell + Volare.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion:
Five minutes. Sorry. Too basic for my taste. Like their records nevertheless.

Bob Dylan:
Bowling in the wind.

-Hey, did you fail to catch Sonic Youth up there?!
-So what? I didn't miss Brave Combo!!

Pizzicato Five:
But I saw only two of them from where I was standing.

The wee small hours of Friday night were spent in the company of Cubans and Haitians in La Charanga Habanera and Tabou Combo. Hey hey and a bottle of rum! And cigars!

Saturday:

Sportsguitar:
The only (?) lo-fi alternative this year was our old Swiss friends. This band is quite confusing. One moment they stumble through a song that none of us seem to remember, not least the band itself. The next they are the best pop band in the universe. Their new LP is probably great.

Italy-Norway:
At the point I saw the game (and a couple of hours after), the worst thing wasn't that we lost it, but that the Danish festival goers expressed a real hate for the Norwegian side. I thought we should have some kind of Scandinavian collective feeling here, but... And to top it all, I didn't get to see Indian gypsy orchestra Musafir either.

Catatonia:
Welsh. Great voice, great noise.

Mogwai:
I am not really used to seeing football shirts on rock musicians, and I must admit that finding these Scottish lads in said clothing, surprised me. The band became one of the festival's real highlights. That was not surprising. Their Mogwai Young Team album has grown steadily on me these past months, and hearing this material live was a real experience. But will I ever attend a concert where the listeners keep silent during the quiet passages?

Orchestre National De Barbès:
I dipped into this melange of Arabic music, raï, reggae, African and jazz from this band mainly consisting of North Africans living in Paris instead of the mega-trip from Beastie Boys. Dynamic! Should have had four hours instead of their one hour plus... Still completely exhausted afterwards.

Penniless:
Used to be called Penniless People Of Bulgaria, and used to sound something like a mix between Sugar and Pixies, which is not a bad thing at all. Their sing-along power glam-ish new (?) direction was not really what I needed at 02.00, but the 57 Finnish who had turned up, enjoyed it nevertheless. But then again, they had probably just got out of "bed"...

Sunday:

Kent:
Sweden's Radiohead?

Vieja Trova Santiaguera:
Average age: 70 years plus. Love songs from Cuba was just what I needed this Sunday afternoon. Good cure for my hangover and an exceptionally good atmosphere.

Iggy Pop:
What the hell is this parody of an artist doing here in 1998?

And where the hell is Bedhead, Apples In Stereo, Built To Spill, Papas Fritas?

Copyright © 1998 Pingo