Messed!Up
18 years ago, the Way Out West Festival opened its gates for the first time with two days of amazing weather and bands like Woven Hands, The Pogues, and Juliette & The Licks. Seven rainy festivals later, some of them with torrential rain, I gave up, moved to Germany to never return again – until this year. Well, we didn’t make it through the first day without any rain, but it was more like light drizzle for three minutes, not enough to whine about it.
The first day at the Way Out West Festival was, at least on paper, the best day, and I had a full schedule from early afternoon to midnight, starting with Beth Gibbons before Refused wrapped it up with a gig on their last tour ever. But first thing first – the atmosphere.
I haven’t been to the festival since 2017, and I’ve forgotten how many bottlenecks there are. It’s really necessary to plan when to leave for the next gig, even if the stages are very close. Walking 300m is 10min process because there’s really no space left. My advice is to expand the festival area rather than selling more tickets, because it’s quite a bummer not to be able to make it to the next band in time due to traffic congestion. Other than that, people are in a great mood, and there are more food stalls than people. I know, some of you complain about the time it takes to order food, but that’s how it is when you always run to buy your favorite dish between shows. If you sacrifice one song of a show, it takes 2-3 minutes tops. ‘Nuff whining! Back to the gigs.
After a few glances at bands I’ve never seen before (and probably won’t do again), Beth Gibbons entered the Linné stage just a couple of minutes before six. Gibbons is a safe start because you know she’ll wrap up her shows with a few Portishead songs, like “Glorybox”. The thing is, I watched Beth Gibbons at the Roskilde festival in June and knew what to expect. It was basically the same, but with a less educated audience this time – people don’t seem to know much about her solo project. Anyhow, the audience was fired up when the Portishead run of songs turned up at the end of the show, and even if I love her solo project, there’s a whole other quality to Portishead’s music.
As there was no space left to breathe between shows until the end of the day, we set off for punk icon Iggy Pop. Again, I was at his show in mid-June in Hamburg, and although he pulled off a great show tonight with iconic songs as “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “The Passenger”, the Hamburg show was slightly better – who doesn’t want to see a 77 year-old crowdsurf?! But again, many young punk bands have something to learn, even from an old man with hip problems. Another problem was that, from where I was standing, the wind caught the sound and blocked it. When I moved further back, I heard how loud it was and learned that next time I have to squeeze my butt deeper into the crowd.
A quick beer break and one overpriced beer later – 10€ for a beer! Wtf!? – I set off to Queens of the Stone Age, and my expectations were high. I’ve watched the band live since the late 1990s and had some of my best gig experiences ever at some of their shows – Reading Festival 2008, lost a shoe in the moshpit – and was hoping for something similar. Josh Homme, who was sick last year, leading to the band rescheduling last year’s show to this year’s festival, had his usual ‘drunken’ behavior. People who haven’t seen the band live before always think he is drunk or high, but I’ve learned that it’s how he looks when he’s in his bubble. He looks up in the sky and comments how beautiful it is, and then points at the VIP section and asks if the ‘rich people can raise their hands’. Music-wise, they pull off some of the major hits and fire up the audience – “No One Knows”, “Make It Wit Chu”, and “Go With The Flow”. It doesn’t matter that there are two shows left, it can’t get better than this.
It was time for the only clash of the festival – Kite vs. Refused on their last tour ever. In the end, it wasn’t a tough choice to make. I’ve seen Kite four times in the last year, and Refused only once in the last 15 years. Three songs at Kite (their gig started 15minutes before Refused), amazing show although a rip-off of an old Sigur Rós tour some twenty years ago, and then off to Refused. Just when I arrived, it started with a huge Palestine demo (the zillionth at the festival), and then Dennis Lyxzén kept us stoked and bruised for another hour. The last tour ever means a lot of classic songs off their pioneering 1998 hardcore album, The Shape Of Punk To Come. I didn’t even stay the full show because I’ve had enough (i.e. my injured foot didn’t want to be here anymore) and went straight back home and put my feet in the foot massager for half an hour.
Great to be back at the festival after an eight year hiatus – let’s go for another two days!
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Photographer: Richard Bloom (Kite + Beth Gibbons)
Photographer: Björn Vallin (Iggy Pop)
