My RSS Feeds
A Campingflight To Lowlands Paradise 2005
Date: Fri 19 Aug 2005 , 01:00 PM — Mon 22 Aug 2005, 03:00 AM
Duration: 1 days 2 hrs
Lowlands! FESTIVAL! Barely 4 days after my return from Poland it was time for the best party of the year. And what a party it was promising to be, especially with almost the whole of Goes attending! Since Irene had remained with Irena and Jasz she was barely 10 minutes back in Goes when she was put in the car to Biddinghuizen :-D
With a stationcar stuffed with food, drinks, vódka, tents and of course people we still had a relatively smooth journey.
It is very hard to explain to people who haven't been there what it's like to attend a festival, especially when your opening story has to be standing in line for over 2 hours (and being lucky with that, believe me!), but the ambiance is just incredible. Thousands of people who carry at least as much stuff as you do, who feel just as invigorated and excited as you do, who are all open and sociable whilst sitting in the sun waiting, with an occasional wave or yell rolling through the crowds; It's just part of it all and that's no problem at all. 2 Hours will quickly pass away and all the beer you drank means less kilograms to carry across the infamous bridge.
Having successfully negotiated the entrance and security (which ones?) we worked our way through the endless streams of people toward camping 3, which is one the best ones to stay on (it turned out we weren't the only ones with a 2-second tent).
After a night of partying in the 24-hours tent (known nowadays as the Lowlands Café) and a quick administrative tour the next day while people were still arriving by the thousands it was finally time to enter the festival terrain.
First suprise: The opening-act was replaced by Racoon! These guys are a very clearly (re)rising star and succesfully escaped the one-single status Sony tried to give them, and everybody in the India-tent agreed wholehartedly! Also the only specks of water we've seen all weekend fell during this concert.
After that what turned out to be the gastronomical peak of the weekend: Daarna het gastronomische hoogtepunt van het weekend: Wild boar ham. Fingerlicking Good! Lowlands has clearly become much more commercial. Most of the catering is sponsord and taken care of by major suppliers instead of local ones as was the case at Dour. Though I have to admit that there were few reasons to complain about quality and choice, quantities however sometimes were bad.
Strawling around in the sun with a beer in your hand and the sun in your face, listening with your girlfriend and friends to bands like Gabriel Rios, L-Dopa, Roni Size, Zuco 103, Zita Swoon, Bad Religion, NightWish, Pixies, Marilyn Manson, Ellen Allien (with an extremely cuhl lasershow!), Enge Buren (very relaxxed to start off your Sunday with), Korn, Morcheeba, Dropkick Murphy's, Gentleman, Queens Of The Stone Age, Amp Fiddler, Incubus, 2 Many DJ's, The Hacker and some more will give you more relaxation and unwinding in a single weekend than two weeks' worth of sunbathing in Turkey or wherever will ever be able to give. The storms crossing the Netherlands passed the festival at a mere kilometer. Everybody was watching the huge dark clouds that were gathering and closing in fast. As the sun disappeared it got darker and darker, and the winds swelled untill the treetops started to bend over heavily under the pressure, but that was it. It came and it went, and, sitting on the fields besides Alpha waiting for Apocalyptica the sun even returned.
Apocalyptica were very good this year! By this time not only have they learned how to headbang whilst playing cello on those big black skull-chairs of theirs, they're dancing all around the stage rocking on those 200-year old things (and wearing down at least a dozen sticks), which makes for a very impressive show!
The Prodigy were in better shape this time than they were a couple of years ago as well. With an additional encore and quite some interaction with the audience it's still amazing to see how of all bands the Prodigy, and only the Prodigy, manages to get the entire Alpha-terrain completely packed.
However, after Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds it was the only time I saw the audience in the jampacked Grolsch-tent being so wild about the performance that they simply refused to leave, long after the stacked stage started to be broken down. Having waited for over 15 minutes for the crowds to leave, they apparently finally decided that another 3-song encore was inevitable. Nick seemed to have no problems with it, nor had we.
With the disappearance of the Higher Grounds the deficit is partly being filled by the Texelse Boys, who are always looking for the more experimental side of multimedia in their metal hangar. And they do so succesfully. One of their highlights this year was Eboman's Sensor Madness. After the curious Funkstörung & Pixelpasta Eboman puts on two gloves crammed with gyrosensors. Using homemade samples and software he starts dancing, controlling both the music and the videoscreen completely by movement of his hands and fingers. Trés bizarrre!
Other activities and attractions between all performances included stamping as much Beats Op Je Fiets stickers as possible, nightly excursions and parties across the camping, including a suprise jam on the lavatories (which was allowed to continue for quite some time!), the Grolsch-bottle tent which in the end turned out to be much less dramatic than initially thought, Dancehall versus Reggaeton, space-tea and the inevitable broken and burned tents and making some 54.000 new friends.
And although the getting off the area takes at least as long as entering it the same goes here as well: Sociable, thought a little calmed down and of course the annoyance of line-cutters.
That evening there was the traditional afterparty in Eric's Bar to all have a last drink on the best party of 2005: A CampingFlight To Lowlands Paradise!
