Every decent festival has a prologue: at Lowlands you can spend a whole extra day sleeping on a half-inflated air mattress whilst fighting boredom by inventing stupid games that don’t really work but hey, you’ve got to entertain yourself one way or another. At Pinkpop you spend that extra time queuing in varies places to get your wristband and secure that one place that isn’t at the bottom of a hill for when the inevitable rain will fall, and at Glastonbury you get drunk. At Primavera you spend it watching a couple of bands in a fake ancient looking square just around the corner from where the ’92 Olympics were held (que Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Cabbalet). And no, Las Robertas and Comet Gain might not be the most entertaining bands in the world, but when you know Echo & the Bunnymen and Caribou are also on the bill it is certainly worth that cheap metro ticket and the 30 second wait to get your wristband. Yes, the food and drinks might be slightly overpriced, and the queue for the toilets is a tad bit intimidating, but other than that even the Dutch and English audience combined can find very little to nag about.
Chapter 1: of Montreal, Suicide & Girl Talk
Imagine: a festival terrain right next to the beach and a shopping mall with wonderful clean toilets, and metro and tram stations right in front of it. Sounds rather perfect, doesn’t it? It gets even better when you realise that there are actual seats at some of the stages, though this also means that there are a lot of stairs. And I really mean a lot of stairs. But hey, as long as you can also use them to sit comfortably whilst enjoying a bit of Glenn Branca I’m not one to complain.
The day starts of with thirst. Yes, thirst (and no not for knowledge, we’re not from Greece). There’s around 40.000 people roaming the festival, but there’s only bar that’s actually open leading to queues that only move when people give up on getting a drink there and make their way to the mall. The reason for this is a new way of paying for your drinks with a futuristic plastic card linked to an account you have to set up at the festival’s website, a system that requires a working computer system and wi-fi connection and which fails miserably on the first day.
After missing the whole of Of Montreal as we were waiting to get a bottle of water (it looked great on screen though, but no new tracks), it’s on to P.I.L. who are playing the Llevant stage, which is condemned to solitary confinement in the outer corner of the festival. Surprisingly though, the stage is about twice as big as the main stage and hordes of Johnny Rotten fans managed to find it. After having seen a rather miserable reincarnation of the Sex Pistols a couple of years ago, P.I.L. seems to suit Johnny Rotten a whole lot better: he can actually sing. Glenn Branca and his ensemble are the next surprise and probably an act that wouldn’t fit on any other festival (well, North Sea Jazz probably, but Oneohtrix Point Never and Salem wouldn’t be listed on the same stage).
From one old man to an even older one: it’s Suicide. And at the age of 72, Alan Vega is showing that somewhere between 62 (Glen Branca’s age) and his age is the right time to quit music altogether. The horrifying scream in ‘Frankie Teardrop’ is reduced to a feeble ‘Oh no!’ which is enough to convince us to go back to the present day with a bit of Ty Segall. The band from California feel right at home in the warmth of the Spanish night and manage to get the whole crowd on their feet and dancing (except for me as I seem to have finally reached that age where I really need to sit down every now and then because my back is killing me – in my defence, it was around 2am at this time and I had been up on my feet since 7am the day before and am generally a whiny person). (and I do welcome you to that club –ed)
After a sneak peek at Salem (avoid at all cost) it’s on to a bit of the Flaming Lips extravaganza. It’s predictable, but it’s fun. At 5am in the morning it’s finally time for the best act of the day: Girl Talk. The guy is a bloody genius. Nothing’s more fun than a whole crowd of pretentious hipsters singing along to Bon Jovi and Kelly Clarkson like their life depended on it.
Chapter 2: PULP!!!!
It is finally there: the day most of the people present at Primavera have been waiting half a lifetime (or at least half a year) for: Pulp. After scaring away most of the other hostel guests by doing an overenthusiastic Pulp-karaoke on the ‘house and R&B’-evening on our first night there, we know we are prepared. As we made it back pretty late on the first day (“we saw the sun rise” wouldn’t do justice to the time we finally made it back), the day starts of pretty comfortably in the auditorium of the museum of natural sciences which, for this festival, houses DM Stith and Sufjan Stevens. DM Stith is amazing, and it’s a shame he’s only allowed to do four songs. Sufjan’s performance is perhaps even better than the one a week earlier at the Royal Festival Hall in London. It’s crazy, absolutely ridiculous, genius and just plain indescribable. There are angel wings, various alien costumes, the whole of Age of Adz, talk of star people and Royal Robertson (the artist who inspired the album) and a half hour finale consisting of one song only. And of course there is an encore with ‘Chicago’, which is still one of the best songs ever written. And this only the opener to the real headliner of the day!
As for the rest of the day: Male Bonding were okay, as were M. Ward, Pere Ubu and the vegan cakes (vegan cakes! At a festival! If anything indicates the quality and variety of food availability at a festival, it's the presence of vegan cakes!). Belle & Sebastian were in a league of their own, that is, if they weren’t playing at the same festival as Pulp and I wasn’t just standing at the front during their performance to get an even better spot during the next gig. After a nigh endless period of waiting during which someone discovered you can display silly messages on the screen behind the stage using Pulp’s laser show, the 4 letters that were already faintly visible light up (just after someone had the clarity of mind by texting their position as ‘near to the ‘P’’) and the festival explodes. It takes ‘Do you remember the first time’ to get the most annoying people out of the way, but the rest of the set is pure bliss, being surrounded by hundreds of people who can sing along to every single line of every song (a feat which does unfortunately drain out Jarvis himself at times). But Jarvis – and the person in charge of the sound – soon recover and the rest of the set is just perfect.
There’s a marriage proposal at the end of ‘I spy’ – which causes an emotional overload for a lot of people – and a lot of grinning at the loud shouting of inappropriate lyrics in unison or marvel at Jarvis's manual to sex during 'This is hardcore' (which is a lot more informative with the visual representation). Jarvis is still in top form and he moves across the stage in ways the twenty something hipsters on the Pitchfork stage can’t even contrive. It all culminates in ‘Common People’ which Jarvis dedicates to the Spanish Revolution -- or #spanishrevolution -- a lot of whose demonstrators are present at the festival. After admitting he’s only a foreigner and doesn’t know much about what’s going on, he claims it can’t be right if police beat over a hundred protesters into the hospital. His words are greeted more enthusiastically then Barca’s Champion League win will be greeted the next day and a glorious mess ensues (and what else would you expect with 45% of the ‘common people’ being unemployed). The rest of the night sees people spontaneously bursting out in reiterations of ‘Common People’ in line for food or the toilets. It was awesome.
Oh, and Battles played later. The drunk people dancing to their music was more entertaining than the band.
Chapter 3: the afterbirth
So two days have already gone by and the real headliner of the festival has already played – what’s left? Although the last day of the festival has a pretty decent line-up, it still feels a bit like an afterbirth (© Ilse van de Spoel). But showing up does pay of: in the line for John Cale (which is in the auditorium again) we get treated to the sight of Jarvis himself who gets priority treatment whilst entering the building. That alone makes it worth it – that and the seats that are perfect for sleeping (I can vouch for that).
Tune-Yards (imagine wonky spelling) is pretty amazing as well, as are Einstürzende Neubauten, Gang Gang Dance – garbage bag boy apparently is part of the band – and Swans. Matthew Dear is where things get a bit more interesting: you might have already read about his charismatic stage presence earlier on this blog but I can now reveal where he gets it from. For he is Freddy Ruppert’s (of Former Ghosts) long lost twin brother. Damn, I even had to check whether any of their live dates had clashed to be certain they weren’t the same exact person. Both have the same looks, the same charm, same manner of moving around on stage and both make dark electronic music that I really like.
Matthew Dear finishes just in time for me to catch the best bit of PJ Harvey’s show, which is very long but very good. And her white outfit makes it easy to spot her even if you’re sitting on a staircase at the other end of the field, a necessity because your feet are finally starting to really give out. To end the night in style, we catch three bands that are playing at the same time. We start of with Odd Future who jump into the audience feet-first. Nice one guys. Then it’s on to Animal Collective who are as incomprehensible as usual (they mainly play as yet unreleased tracks) and finally Pissed Jeans who sound like being born and vomiting at the same time (again © Ilse van de Spoel). Holy Ghost! loses out to the prospect of a nice warm shower and a comfortable bed (What? WHAT?- ed).
Epilogue
The festival finishes the same way as that it started: with just a couple of bands in a square. We prefer a day at the beach and some tapas over Mercury Rev at this time though.
Bands I would have liked to see but missed (but don't really care about as I've seen so much else): Caribou, Interpol (I know, but I’ve never seen them), Islet, Glasser, Baths, The National (they played on the same day as Sufjan Stevens and Pulp, had I gone to see them as well it would have the most perfect festival day ever rendering all other attempts to entertain myself with live music futile), Deerhunter, Julian Lynch, Twin Shadow, Jamie XX, Lindstrom, Warpaint, Perfume Genius (honestly though, those bands in itself would make for a successful festival as far as I’m concerned –ed).
And oh yeah, just to answer the question burning on everyone’s lips: Yes, I will be back next year.
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