Pukkelpop – 2014
A quick and none detailed rundown; cause it's been three days ago! It was one of those years that the surprises were limited to one or two acts and the ones that we hoped would deliver, did it righteously so. Apart from maybe one… It was one of those years where after the evening had fallen on the first day you could see a crazy blonde little white glue sniffing girl jump on stage with every act screaming: “I think yer freaky and I like it lot!” Or that might have been caused by the weird stuff that might have been thrown in yer beer when you weren’t looking…
It was dry. Or almost dry. Only a little spot of rain here and there and that was much better than we had hoped for. And so was Wallace Vanborn. On the verge of releasing their third album The Orb We Absorb recorded in Rancho De La Luna under guidance of Chris Goss they had the honor of opening the 2014 edition of the Belgian festival Pukkelpop. With a hazy sun and a first beer we witnessed them explode on stage.
The songs from the earlier albums were hectic, loud and rough and the few new ones were more virtuous and made one long for intense heat and dubious amounts of whisky… What an opener! The rest of that first day we swerved around hoping for intense surprises, but they were limited. We thought
Hozier might do the trick, but apart from their amazing hit single
Take Me To Church, it was fairly flat.
Die Antwoord delivered the entertainment goods and planted the freaky line firm in our heads… Weird selections for the main stage; that is another thing that made up Pukkelpop 2014. Cause when
Janelle Monáe is performing for forty-five people and a handful of alpacas, I reckon something went wrong…
The next day we hitch-hiked (once again, cause that damn bus system in Belgium is too weird) back to the festival and were in time to run around a bit. But we wanted to see what The Van Jets were up to nowadays. They did not really seem to turn us on, but it was good to wake up to properly with some Grimbergen Blond and other beers. We decided to make our way early to the Shelter stage where Kadavar would play and Truckfighters would follow.
Both shows were amazing, loud and good but Truckfighters was way better and way more energetic. Although the drummer of Kadavar is always a sight for sore eyes. But the rest of the Kadavar show could not pull you in; perhaps due to a weird limiter that sometimes took effect in the Shelter. Truckfighters is another beast in itself; bang, bang, bang and kaboom! Holy hell. What a show it was. After which we wandered from one act to another hoping for revelations of instigations…
On the final day we finally grabbed a bus to the festival and prepared for the QOTSA family day. Unfortunately Sweethead disappointed. Especially the lovely Serrina Sims. It sounded like she had not sung in quite a while. Now, she never was the greatest vocalist, but she did have pazzaz. In this case it all seemed to falter. One or two songs she could bring properly and they ended with The Great Disruptor; which was probably the only memorable song in the set. Later on we would see Brody Dalle almost stumble and fall as well. Luckily she could just in time regain her strength and started punking the whole tent up.
But before that we saw Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats. Who unfortunately were plagued by sound troubles during the first two songs; driving some people out of the tent. Who then missed what turned out to be a damn performance. Later on we saw Red Fang in the tent who were pleasantly surprised themselves by the reception and the fact a lot of folks new them and their songs. Like Truckfighters they tore the tent up and got the crowd going berserk.
After which it was time for the headlining show of Queens Of The Stone Age. And they delivered once again; with a perfect execution of a greatest hits show they moved through all of the albums and performed every one of them with immaculate precision. Massive, meticulous, marauding and even wild on occasion. It wasn’t as dangerous as it used to be; but the Queens are a completely different animal nowadays. And we dug the hell out of it! It was a perfect ending to three days of amazing and fairly dry fun. As a desert we got a tight performance by Portishead; who were just as precise as their hard rocking counter parts who played before…
And then the next morning you wake up and try to remember why those three days seem like only one and you envision yourself in a park somewhere in your neighborhood just sitting on the grass drinking lukewarm beer out of a plastic cup and every now and again jumping up, dancing and screaming: “I think yer freaky and I Like it a lot!”