Sonne Mond & Sterne by neko: Friday, August 12th, Saalburg, Germany Last weekend was pretty much the perfect weekend with a show in Edinburgh and two in London, perfect and easy to travel to. This weekend here is a bit more complicated though, Friday night somewhere in the out of nowhere in Eastern Germany south of Leipzig and Saturday in Denmark, equally hard to get to venue. So after a lot of research for travel options I have to resort to renting a car in Germany and be good and drive. I'm not being good all week though and end up having pretty big nights out on Wednesday and Thursday. So on Friday when, after just 2hours of sleep, we arrive in Berlin sometime in the afternoon I'm already pretty knackered. The first part of my big drive is Berlin to Leipzig. Takes over 2hour, mainly due to getting completely lost in the centre of Berlin during rush hours Friday - fun! We're staying in a hotel in Leipzig, about 130km away from the festival, so I estimate about 1h driving time. So wrong again. Just as I want to take a well deserved nap I get a text from a friend who's in a traffic jam between the motorway and the festival - adding about 2h to the journey. Damn, no nap then and we're getting ready to get going just after 10pm. Once in the car the traffic jam is announced on the radio, so we decide to take a risk and go a stop further on the motorway and drive to the festival from the other direction. So to cut a long story short, at about 12:30 - 40 min before the prodigy are due on stage - I'm somewhere in a small dark street in a forest, driving through hills in Eastern Germany, hours away from the next big city, not knowing whether to go right or left at the next turn. Somehow we make it though and get into the festival at 1am, just 15 min before Prodigy are on. Sonne Mond Sterne (or 'SMS' as you call it) is one of these massive dance festivals over many stages with lots of DJs and a couple of live acts. We're obviously heading directly to the main stage and, wow, it's crowded. We somehow make our way a bit nearer the front and on our way I actually see multiple fights between people who can't seem to come to an agreement on where they should be standing. So basically we're awaiting the Prodigy in a field of thousands of angry and extremely keen Germans. So the band are soon on stage and, yeah, this is great. The audience is quite aggressive throughout the show so i'm keeping myself a bit to the side of it all. Set list wise it seems a bit a shorter version of what we've heard last week... the 'osaka fill' has gone, so have Memphis Bells and Hotride as well. So it looks as follows from start to encore: New Intro Then, as usual, the band disappear and return. It's all going great.... Poison & Method beat go down really well, all sounding very good. THis now leads into a perfect sounding Smack my bitch up. Or so it seems at first. because suddenly there's a bit of a 'bang' and then nothing. Yes, somehow the electricity blew up...not good. There seems to be a real attempt to fix things, but it doesnt happen anymore. There had been similar problems with other artists earlier in the evening apparently, so I guess it had to happen. A bit a shame about the sudden ending to a great gig, but what can you do.... Skanderborg by neko: Saturday, August 13th, Skanderborg, Denmark Now this is one of the worst days in my life ever I'd say. We only get back to the hotel at 6am in the morning (don't ask) but have to get up again 1 hour later so we can leave punctually at 8am as planned. It's Saturday now and I've had a total of 6 hours sleep since Wednesday - even for my standards that's very little. And that AFTER the Brixton weekend. I'm more dead than alive now. Also it's not just a case of sitting in a train or airplane, I'm actually driving. Yes, all the way up through Germany until the Danish border in Flensburg. There we want to catch the 1pm train to Arhuus. So we're on our way. I'm almost asleep but drive 180km/h on the German motorway. Pretty dangerous I guess, wouldn't recommend it. Frequent stops for coffee, so far so good. If i had had to pay a fine for every time I speeded that day, Germany would be a rich country now. Until we hit THE Traffic Jam. That's now even more tiring. There's two hours of traffic jam ahead of us, so I try to leave the motorway, and try to drive around it, but get lost, so it's all one big mess. When we finally get to Flensburg, the reader tells me I've driven 1100 km. Not bad for a 20h rental. We catch the 5pm train (instead of 1pm). So what follows now is 3 hours in the train up to Arhuus. We finally get there, after 8pm. A friend of mine, AnnBritt, is also there and offers us a lift, but they want to leave right now, so we have about 10 minutes to get ready and are sat in a car already again. After 9pm then we're there at the festival and have a bit a wander around. I know my reviews always have a slight focus on alcohol and I dont want to give a wrong impression, but the amount of bars here is remarkable. All I see is well stocked bars and pop corn. That's all you can buy here. It's a bit of a weird festival, a lot of families and not really your typical crowd. the people here know how to drink and how to party though, it all looks good fun and I really need a drink now. So we have a few and then just head into the crowd just before Prodigy come on. The set list then goes something like this: NEW Intro encore: No power problems tonight and it's a great show. Lots of crowd reaction, nice little new fills and good band performance. From what I can remember at least, which isn't that much - Sorry. back to prodigy live [go home] (If you copy this, please link back to this URL) www.nekosite.co.uk - copyright © 1998-2005 by neko - all rights reserved |
