steppin' out with frantic666: ROCK WERCHTER 2010: GREEN DAY, THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM, EDITORS... Werchter (BEL) July 2, 2010

The second day of the Rock Werchter Festival (the only day I attended), ended up in a recordbreaking day: it was the hottest festival day ever. The day before, I drove to Amsterdam, straight after work, to see The Gaslight Anthem's club show at Melkweg (see previous blog). After that concert, I drove back to Belgium and had to get up at 6:30am again to get to work again for a few hours before I'd move on to Rock Werchter.

All forecasts predicted the hottest day of the year so far. And for once, they weren't wrong. I parked my car, did the 30 minute walk to the festival grounds and it was terrible. I was thinking how anyone could be shaking and dancing with that heat, let alone how 80000 people could do that all smashed together on a meadow in the burning sun. At the entrance there was a temperature clock that said: 38°c. It was 1:20pm, which meant the worst had yet to come.

Everytime I enter Rock Werchter, I'm amazed how professional the whole thing is. It really is the best organized festival in the world. At every drinks/food tickets counter, you could pay with your bank card. Because of extreme heat, tapwater was made available for free. I had a few bottle caps with me, so when I got drinks and they removed the caps, I could use mine. Very handy if you're planning on staying in the pit for a long time.
My first real goal was gonna be Rise Against at the mainstage, but the scedule didn't match with "my main band" of the day The Gaslight Anthem. If I wasn't able to the see complete Rise Against show in front, I wasn't gonna see them at all. It gave me some extra time to get to Pyramid Marquee early for Gaslight's gig. I got a center front row spot and didn't want to give that up so I also saw the whole concert of The Morning Benders. It was a decent show, with a typical lazy sunny afternoon feel to it. I was hoping that would change when The Gaslight Anthem was on because last year at Dour, the band was playing a fantastic set and there were hardly any people at the mainstage, and only a few seemed to 'get' what they were about.

Anyway, Gaslight takes the stage and only the front really responds to the band. The rest of the Marquee seemed to just stand there and check them out if they were cool. There was so much energy onstage that by the 3rd song the whole Marquee joined in the cheering. VICTORY. Apart from the first 2 songs, there seems to be no system in the setlist which is great too. Lots of different songs and orders again. Last song was Drive and it was a request from the front row. Belgium is finally ready for Gaslight. I hope, Belgium might also very quickly forget, especially because their fantastic performance got 0 media attention on TV. Booh.

After the concert, my plan was to eat and move on to the mainstage pit for Paramore and 30 Seconds To Mars. I decided to skip that plan and catch some rest and occasionally some shade near the food stands. It's simply impossible to be in there in the bright sun for so many hours and with limited drinks.
I watched half of the Paramore show and half of the 30 Seconds To Mars show from a big distance in the back. It seemed all pretty decent, but average.

If I wanted to see Green Day from really close, I would have to be in the pit for Editors too. Not a problem at all because I love Editors, especially the latest album. Editors played a wonderful set, and it's clear that Belgium is Editors country: Papillon -with pyro- was definitely one of the greatest moments of the day.

Everybody's talking good things about the Green Day show and their concert was voted the 2nd best of the whole 4 days (after no1 Muse, who played on the first day). I thought it was a fantastic show, but the one in Antwerp had a lot more pace and continuity. On the other hand, this Werchter setlist a whole FUCKING lot better than the one from Antwerp. The Werchter setlist contained 1hour and 10 minutes of pre-American Idiot songs, including 2000 Lightyears Away and Welcome To Paradise from the album Kerplunk! From the album Dookie, we got Basket Case, When I Come Around, She, Longview. and Burnout! Another of my GD-favorites was Nice Guys Finish Last. All this was great but there was too much breaks between songs and in the songs for audience participation. I can't count how many fans ended up onstage for singing along, stagediving, receiving a guitar, dancing. It's great to watch and it gave me goose bumps many times, but it there was a bit too much of the good stuff.
But I had a lot of fun as usual and nobody else seemed to mind the crazyness onstage. Green Day ended up being one of the Werchter winners. If you're voted higher than other headliners Rammstein, Pear Jam, Editors, Pink, Alice In Chains, Them Crooked Vultures, you did really well.

My 1 hour drive home was hell. At 15 minutes before I would be home, I had to stop and catch some sleep. My legs cramped up, and singing along with the cdplayer didn't work either because my lips refused to move. My body just said it had enough over the passed 2 days. I decided to save my life and stop, even though I was so close to home.

Werchter 2010 : hotter than hell.

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