Jason Dugan's Belgium Review
Jason Dungan 41-22-779-1626 (home) 24 Route de Sauverny 1290 Versoix, Switzerland dungan@iprolink.ch
GBV at Pukkelpop Festival, Belgium
Geneva, Switzerland is not a very happening town concert-wise, so I was overjoyed to be going to this festival in Belgium which featured tons of cool bands like Beck and Foo Fighters. My happiness tripled when I learned my all-time Rock Gods Guided by Voices would be playing. It was a fourteen-hour train ride each way to Belgium, but what the hell.
The journey started nicely enough but came to a crashing halt as my friend was not allowed to enter France because he didn't have a visa. Plan B: we are told we can use our tickets to travel to Belgium via Germany. We soon find out this is not the case as we are nearly thrown off the train by an irate German train conductor. We eventually settle the matter by buying new tickets, which leaves us with just enough money for the hotel(camping at a Euro-festival is kind of like sleeping in a shanty-town, except everyone gets drunk and sings songs about soccer). Unfortunately I don't have enough money for a GBV t-shirt, which stares at me mockingly from the t-shirt booth the entire two days.
Anyway, the festival finally got going. Mudhoney and Foo Fighters put in good sets the first day, but when day 2 arrived, I was psyched for GBV. They were given an early noon time-slot, and were only allotted a paltry 30 minutes (Silverchair got 35, for christ's sake), but I figured that since they had such short songs, it would work out okay. Things got started when I saw what at first appeared to be a roadie but was actually Mitch! He was fiddling with his guitar, smoking the first of 532 cig- arettes he would smoke during the show. Then I saw Bob downing Heinekens at the side of the stage(he looked a little nervous). Even- tually, everyone else ambled on to stage and the band started rocking with "A Salty Salute". It was great! They were playing not ten feet from where I was standing. What I noticed was how BIG they sounded, like they were playing in a stadium for 40,000 screaming fans insted of a few hundred indifferent festival-goers. They went through most of my favorites, including "Echos Myron", "...Hunting Knife", "I Am a Scientist" and a great "Mesh Gear Fox". Mitch and Bob were definitely the big attractions with Mitch's Pete Townshend-style guitar windmills and Bob's beer-guzzling/karate kicking. Slamming through hit after the hit, the band rocked better than anything I've seen before or since, and by the end of the show the once-passive audience was rocking out and helping Bob to count in the tunes. The show was over way too soon, but earned the band a place in my heart and made more than a few converts.