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After having such a wonderful time in Barcelona, the UK shows, Bang Your Head and Pilsen last
week, it was sad enough the Rychean party had to come to an end this weekend in the Netherlands.
But I was not prepared for that last weekend to be full of bad luck, for both us and the band -
what an undeserving ending!
Take a look at the pictures first, then read about a night full of bad luck for Queensryche, and if you are in the mood for it, about the lousy festival organization... |
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We arrived Friday afternoon and went to a rather boring pre-party concert the same night. I do not remember
when I ever hit my sleeping bag shortly after midnight, for they had stopped the music and kicked us out of
the festival site - and we are talking a 10.000 people festival!
Finally on Saturday in the late afternoon, I hooked up with Shinobu, Cindy, Mike and Lara, and for the last time we celebrated the Rychean Party in the first row, together with Dutch fanclub member Wim who I had met at last years show in Holland. For some reason the universe seemed to be against us, for while it had been sunny all day, about one hour before QR was on (09:30pm) it started raining. I still managed to get my rain coat from the tent (I have been sick all week after all), but what the heck? During the show, the rain was on and off..... The Ryche was scheduled for a 60 minute "Best Of" show, and they had just started and were about to finish "Damaged" as the second song when all of a sudden someone seemed to have pulled the plug - seriously! The speakers went quiet!!!! "All I see is damage through the haze" and...NOTHING. The band, obviously just as irritated, stopped playing and left the stage, and it took the technicians about 15 minutes to get it back to work while the clock was ticking - keep in mind they only had a 60 minutes slot... |
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Finally they got back out and Geoff made a joke about "it sometimes happens that we blow up the PA" and they went on with Hostage,
Speak, Take Hold. When Whip and Mike were to start the guitar intro of "Walk in the Shadows", all of a sudden Whips guitar went silent, so
Mike improvised a solo until Whip was good to go a minute later or so... During another guitar intro, they seemed to have been out of beat,
for they stopped after 10 seconds and started over again...
I have seen them some twenty-something times, but never ever have the Metal gods been so irate - maybe they just did not want them to stop the tour? Well, we all felt very sorry for what happened, the guys deserved a perfect last night after their great and stressful tour throughout Europe! For obvious reasons, the show was cut short to about 45 minutes - and that was it. Since they had to drive to Calais to get the ferry to Dover and on to London to catch their flights, they were all in a hurry and it was a quick bye-bye. By the time Slayer hit the stage an hour later, they were all gone, and as I am writing this, they should be in the air flying back to the US.... |
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I did not get back to Germany until the late afternoon myself, had been stuck in traffic near Cologne for 2 hours, so it took us some 7,5 hours.
I am really happy and grateful for so many cool new travel experiences, awesome shows, meeting the greatest Rychers from all over the world :-), and of course being on stage with Queensryche doing jury duty at the Bang Your Head!!! I've had many blissful moments, they are precious and rare and will stay around. But part of me is quite sad that it is all over...for now? We will stay in touch and meet again some day...you guys know what I am talking about?!?!? :-))) Revolution & Hugs Aefa Taking time from all this worry Mesmerized by the waves of your smile I wish that I could say something You were the rose colored glass I see through So have the guts to talk it through Chasing Green and Purple Sky Damn Coward |
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And now, let's do some heavy complaining so you
get the picture of what we endured during our stay at Waldrock: Maybe the bad luck all started with me getting sick with a nasty cold earlier this week, and later it turned out I was not the only one - from what I've heard, Indirycher seemed to have been down (did not get to see her at all) and some of the crew members weren't feeling too well...was told the band was ok, though. But let's rather start by saying that the Waldrock festival organization was a complete mess! Me and my friend Chrissi (I've traveled with a Non-Rycher this time) felt exploited in many ways, regarding the quality of food, prices, sanitation and messed up organization. There had not been much information on their website, neither in Dutch nor English, so little did we know what to expect. I have been to Holland before and I like the Dutch, they are tolerant and fun people to be around with, but at this festival they did about everything wrong... First of all, I never got a press pass accreditation, although I am a certified journalist and promoted the festival. I have press friends from Spain who travel to Wacken each year and they get their accreditations, so I felt left out from the start. Once we got to Burgum after some 600 km, we were not allowed to park our car on the campsite but were asked to drag all of our belongings half a mile down the road. They had some kids helping us, but we still had to carry the stuff for quite some distance and the kids expected a tip. Also, we were not able to lock our belongings into the car so we had to carry our "valuables" with us at all times. By the time we got our tents, chairs, cooler, sleeping bag, mattresses, pump, bags etc to tour final destination, we were soaked. We opened up some beer and tried to make the best of it, while getting sweaty putting up the tents. Since all of the 20 portable toilets were stashed in one place rather than distributed over the campsite, we decided to camp close to the porta potty just in case us girls had to go at night, but the price we paid was the slapping of the doors all night long...this must have been another single man's decision, for no fool with a woman at home would allow a decision like that! But the next shock came right afterwards - no showers available!!! There is a Metal saying that "showers are no heavy metal", but we are girls, for god's sake! I have never been to a festival where they did not provide at least a couple of showers - warm or cold, but let there be water! So great to survive on wet towels, thank you so much Waldrock :-( While the first band started playing at noon, the ticket booth where we needed to exchange our electronic one did not open until 30 minutes earlier - while people had stood there getting sunburned for an hour. There was bored staff all over the place, in fact, I have never seen so many crew members before, all of them clearly visible wearing purple shirts. I have now idea what the heck they were actually getting paid for - or maybe it was just a bunch of volunteer trying to sneak their way in, I don't know... Oh yeah, and let's not forget the paper wristband we got: Hello Waldrock, there are people out there colleting them, and they are supposed to be made of fabric! Next stop: food. Expensive, unhealthy and disgusting best describes it. No variety, bad quality, greasy and served with the minimum of extras. Last time I remembered, a burger should have some salad, tomato, cucumbers and ketchup and maybe it comes with the luxury of a napkin? The lack of a variety might be ok for one day, but two days in a row? Also, me being a vegetarian, I did not know what to eat anymore for I was disgusted of the 3 fatty dishes I could choose from. Beer? Sure, 2 Euros for 200ml (which is a tiny glass) - no wonder they all smoke weed, it's so much cheaper than drinking! Also, in order to buy drinks and food, we had to exchange money for tokens. However, at the end of the night, we still had plenty of them left, but right after Slayer was finished they stopped selling drinks! So we and many other people wanted to exchange back the left-over tokens for Euro cash, and guess what: they closed the exchange and we were told us there was nothing they could do other than keep the tokens for next year's festival. HELLOOO????? Some of the people got so angry, they were ready to take that place apart, and they were right, this is intolerable business behaviour. The overall impression you get all the way is that they try to milk the fans as much as possible - way to go, Waldrock, this ripp-off really sucks! The line-up was interesting, for besides Queensryche I wanted to see Pagan's Mind and Slayer, but if it was just for a festival, I would never ever return. I have been to Wacken for the past 3 years (for those of you who have not heard about it, it is the biggest Heavy Metal featival on this planet with 70.000 people) as well as Summerbreeze and Bang Your Head (all in Germany), and compared to these the Waldrock in Holland provided low-budget solutions all the way, while asking high ticket prices for a one-day festival. |