As I entered the festival field, El Guapo Stuntteam and Hattrick Hero had already left them and Sense Field (14.20-15.15) was entertaining the crowds. Entertaining is a good word, since Sense Field is a typical American band. A European cliché says you only need to meet an American for two minutes and you’ll know every single detail of his/her life up to the minute (s)he was born. Sense Field is the embodiment of that American cliché. By the time they wanted to let family pictures of the roadies’ mothers go around, we realized we’d come to Herk for the music and not a neighbourhood chat. If listening to the monologue of a guy with a microphone falls under ‘chat’ these days. Not everyone is like GvsB’s Scott McCloud, not every singer is wise enough to keep his lines to a polite ‘Thank you very much’ when the audience applauds for another well-played song. By the time Sense Field mentioned they were ‘going to play one more song and then come down and drink some beers with us’, we didn’t believe them anymore.
But – ah, here comes the important part – believe their music? Well, it was certainly okay. They reminded me of Live when they were young and less annoying. (Live’s Ed is the prototype of a singer who just talks because he can’t shut up. He’ll ask if everyone’s happy without listening to the reaction of the crowd. If half the audience is shouting ‘No, the bass is much too loud!!’ and you still don’t react, we’ve reached telltale sign n°2 that the man’s living inside his own bubble.)
But we were talking about Sense Field, a nice band with the enthusiasm of young Weezer. We weren’t too impressed, but we wouldn’t mind having to see them again. Sense Field sound like they’re here to stay, but it doesn’t matter if you won’t notice that. And, the truth must be told, we never saw the band come down and drink some beers with us. Liars! (Which by the way also holds for the genre they play: if they confess they’re commercial rockers, I have no problems with them, but if they continue the lie that what they play is punk, I have to say that they’re horrible and completely untalented. The ball is now in your field, Sense guys!)
Second stage is a big word for what is it really was: a well-endowed bandstand. Approximately two hundred people (350 if everyone’s supportive enough to be packt like sardines) could stand underneath the shelter of the metal roof. There was plenty of space left around the bandstand if you wanted to listen to local hardcore or, later that night, dance music. Hypnos 69 (14.55-15.45) was the first band I saw there: three boys who should be extremely thankful that noisy rock was invented, otherwise they’d look like useless slobs for no reason. Their name was awfully descriptive: their music had a slightly hypnotic effect that let you travel back in time to the year of Woodstock. Van den Graaf Generator sprang to mind and frankly that doesn’t happen very often to me. That Hypnos 69 sounded better when their songs were instrumental, was no big compliment to the singer, but maybe he already knew that because most songs were strictly instrumental anyway. Which wasn’t so abnormal in the spirit of ’69, so I’m told.
’Nostalgia’ is the word the announcer used to introduce Victims Family (15.45-16.45), proving once and for all that ‘nostalgia’ is a relative concept. I couldn’t find anyone who’d heard of Victims Family. Seems like I was one of the few who suddenly switched from Samantha Fox and Paula Abdul to alternative music. (Hypnos 89?) I confess, I didn’t know Victims Family were still around. I heard parts of their 2001 concert in San Francisco, which looked quite pale compared to what I remembered from their early 90s work, so you could say I was somewhat doubtful when the trio hit the stage. Welcomed by a die-hard fanbase (or in the vocalist’s words: ‘How weird to see such a big crowd and then realize I probably know everyone of you.’).
Victims Family, together with the more cartoonesque Primus, still there to prove why nu-metal sucks. It looked like Jay (of ‘and Silent Bob’ fame) was in the band, dancing along on the sounds of the spasms created by his own instrument. Victims Family played the only concert where people came to ‘mosh’, where the singer walked into the crowd to dance with his fanbase and where ‘nostalgia’ was an inappropriate word. Nostalgia rarely lives up to the high expectations. Victims Family was such a seldom treat.
That morning the weather forecast had been all but optimistic: showers and three kinds of storms (wind, hail and thunder) were going to ravage Belgium. I tucked a raincoat in my backpack. No idle decision as thick raindrops hammered down on Herk. It was 4.30 pm and Between The Lines. An ideal moment to run to the centre of the village, call the homefront to agree upon a time and place to pick me up and hide in a local pub where a roof gave you shelter and the toilets weren’t chemical. Free festival or not, there wasn’t enough shelter for everyone on the festival grounds and pneunomia is a lot more expensive than an hour in a pub. Even if that pub subjects you to Gloria Estefan. And I would do anything for you… Good, how about shutting up? From my pub table I could witness how Herk was slightly turning into a big puddle of rain and mud. The next band would have to guide us through the rain…