Szeeing Szongs Being Szung at Sziget

On Tuesday, we headed on over to Obuda Island, in the Danube river, on the edge of Budapest.  We knew exactly which station to get off at, we just followed all the young people with backpacks, tattoos, dreads and Converse all star shoes. Followed them right to a reeeeaaaallly long line up, the sight of which made us think "HEY! A line up! Nothin like a gooooood line up to make a day fine!" So we joined the queue, which was more orderly than the queue to get into the Vatican city museum/ if you can believe that! Punks more orderly than Nuns and old people! And would you believe it, the line up led to a MUSIC FESTIVAL!!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

It was quite busy, even though it was the day before the festival began. Once we got our never-fall-off bracelets, we looked for a place to pitch our tent. And again, though the festival hadn't begun, it was PACKED! TENT CITY! We found a place right along the Danube, in the more secure enclosed camping area (there were tents wherever there was grass, even just behind stages!), but we were crammed right next to three tents, with a fence on the last side. We were also next to a wasps nest, but set up a pop trap for them.

Because there we no shows the first night, we just got familiar with the island. Well, most of it... we avoided the 'metal area'. There are bars everywhere competing for the loudest speaker trophy. So every ten feet was a new song! There were also booths selling all sorts of Rock and Hippie paraphenalia: Iron Maiden tshirts and tiedyed sarongs and hemp products (By the way, hemp is VERY environmentally friendly, especially compared to Cotton, which sucks nutirents out of the ground until nothing can be gorwn there but peanuts... Also, it makes great paper and has a higher and more regular yield than trees so it can be made without killing a 100year old tree... GO HEMP!!! *i figure while i have your attention...) etc etc...

On the first day we checked out the art pavillion and did some paintings on cardboard and did some screenprinting on some tank tops that I never wear and sat in a giant tent full of bean bag chairs and listened to classical music.

For concerts that night we saw the GYPSY POP ORCHESTRA which plays 80s hits with a gypsy style and actual gypsy instrument- neat and kitschy but it was a bit grating after a while... So we moved on and went to the jazz tent where we saw the Hungarian Bohem Ragtime Jazz Band- ka-zow! It was pretty jumpin! Except that everyone in the tent was sitting and lying down! That was the great thing about the jazz tent- it was the only place on the island with carpet! After they finished, we stuck around and saw an AWESOME ragtime pianist and singer from MONTREAL of all places! Her name was Mimi Blais and she did amazing things on thosel ittle keys and was also very funny and full of stage presence. Afterwords, before heading on to more music, we went to an acrobatic show put on by some very funny and daring aussie guys, which gave me that feeling of being a kid again!

Next we were off to the main stage where we saw Hungarian rock band Quimby (singer had a great Tom Waits sound which we both really like) which had a very large crowd, but that may have been because the next band was FRANZ FERDINAND! Which, although the popluarity and hype around them is understandable, because they definitely have that mass appeal, kind of bored us quickly. If we'd gone to a concert of theirs under different circumstances, we wouldnt have walked out...but.... Given that we couldn't see and weren't mind-blown, we headed over to the world music stage and guess who was playing... ROBERT PLANT!!!! That's right THE Robert Plant, of Zeppelin fame. Well, Let me say this... he's not the young whippersnapper he once was, not as stick thin, but he is still rockin the long hair. His voice also doesn't have the same really high scream but I guess that's to be expected after 30-odd years of performing! All in all, he is still pretty on for a guy in his sixties who has been performing for so long. He closed with a few Zeppelin songs (we'd missed most of the new stuff) which got a lot of screams from the very large crowd.

You would think the night would be over, but no... it's only just begun. Next we saw a pretty good gypsy Mogwai-ish band called Uzgin Uver then a russian band called Deti Picasso (Picasso's children), which was extremely different and exciting and original and energetic and just plain swell. After a really bad hot dog and french fries supper though, we weren't dancing much... Also it was a bit late after all that music so we went to bed although no one else seemed to since we could hear music for many hours....

Some of the other daytime activities that we did we included seeing an automaton puppet theater from 100 years ago that is the last of it's kind, having been recently restored, checking out the Hungarian heritage tent, (for me) trying some hungarian beadwork, which was really fun (Scott kept me company while he drew and drank coffee). A lot of different companies had tents with activities, and we went to a bank one where you could try wall climbing (line up was tooo looong, which was pretty common, our impatience made us miss a few things!) and paint some sun visors.

Music that evening was a huge success, we saw a hungarian folk band that knew how to party at the world music stage, Vagtazo Csodas Zarvas (only with a whole bunch of accents on the vowels), Then we bumped into Sarolta, our friend we stayed with in Budapest!! WHat are the odds! Even funnier, it happened a number of times all week! Next on the W.M.S (world music stage) was Lila Downs, a mexican singer who was actually in the movie Frida and made a lot of the soundtrack! She was dressed sort of like Frida, long braids and bright multi layered clothes. The next band was the Goran Bregovic Funeral and Wedding band, a serbian band that was extremely popular! After all this party music, we headed to the Jazz tent to hear Tom Walsh, a canadian trombone player with a hungarian duo behind him. He was really cool, I would like to see him again for sure!  THEN!! (not over yet!!!) We went to another stage and saw German band Wir Sind Helden (we are heroes) who is very popular as well and came really highly recommended. In fact, they are so popular it was like a rock concert in there!! hahaha.... Anyway, we weren't excited enough by the music to stand a guy twice my size jumping up and down threateningly in front of me and my sandaled feet, so we went to the Bahia stage (where they play very non-mainstream music) and saw Sarolta!  Then first band we saw there was Pop Ivan, a hungarian band that kind of blew the audience away! They were all dressed up funny, some in marching band uniforms, one guy as a maha rajah, one guy in a long robe with a giant bush on his head... The played really awesome music, kind of jazzy, drawn out rock with a circus sound...Near the end of the show, the lights and mics went out but they kept playing everything that worked, until that also went out-it was pretty hardcore to keep playing with no electricity!!! But I guess there were a lot of electrical problems that week because soooo much power is being used for the 12stages and countless bars... Once the problem was fixed, Deti Picasso Orchestra came on, which was the same band as the previous night but with three violins- they were AMAZING!! I couldn't believe how good they are. At the end I said to Scott "okay, so how the heck are we giong to get their CD??" and just then a guy came onstage and said "if you want to buy cds, come over to the side" and almost the whole crowd went!!

After 7 bands, our daily sufficency was suffuncyfied and we crawled into the tent no earlier than 3:30...

The next day we combatted our impatience and waited in line for over 45minutes for the Luminarium, a giant bubble with multiple rooms and each one has intese light pouring through coloured panels in the ceiling. In every room, people we lying against the walls (which were rubber and sooo comfy) and a lot were napping. It was pretty neato.  Then we also waited in line for a harness trampoline thing where you jump really really high!! I did it and tried and tried to do a back flip and finally did, rightr before the end! Whoo!!!  After that, the night was awkward- we mostly just saw sound checks and last songs! Except that we did see some of the scissor sisters, which was not what I expected! I pictured punky or metally but lighter and artier, just from the name and a brief write up, but they came out in sequins and sounding like elton john!!!

On Saturday, we were at the main stage from 4pm until 11pm, to make sure we were close for radiohead!!!!! So we saw Sons and Daughters, a scottish band, the dEUS, a belgian band, then these really unfortunate hungarian guys, Heaven Street Seven. I guess the organizers thought it would be good to introduce a local band before the headliners, but everyone just wanted to see Radiohead, and the crowd was already pushing (pretty strongly, I shouldn't have left the banana in my bag!!!) and so they got a very unwelcome reception. And yet, they came for an encore (despite very little cheering and some very rude people flipping them the bird) and when they came out they were booed!!!!!! People were chating "RADIOHEAD RADIOHEAD"... I felt pretty bad for them, but they probably shouldn't have come back out!!!!

When Radiohead came out, there was a great crush, shoving us forward, then the retaliation and the lean back... I jumped up and stayed up because the crowd was so packed! I wasn't crowd-surfing or anything, just barely on my tippy toes, leaning in whatever direction everyone was leaning in.

They played a solid two hours, with everyone's favourite songs as well as a few new songs that haven't been released yet!! YAYAY!!!! Within about 4 songs the crowd mellowed out and we could breath again- phew!

Overall, a definite 'Top Ten' moment of the trip, aaahhhh Radiohead!

After, we fought the crowd and went to the Jazz tent before everyone else and saw the Matthew Shipp Trio, which was a little bit of mind blowing, and yet, so relaxed because we could finally sit and bend our legs after 7 HOURS in a crush of people!!!

When they finished we went to another tent but, irritated with the pushy crowds (who I guess got a taste of it at Radiohead and liked it and thought it appropriate to behave in the same manner at small mellow concerts... the phillistines) and pretty ready to relax, we went to our tent and tried to sleep!

Sunday... Our last day... The festival was still going on for two more days but we'd decided to leave early to see prague, a spontaneous decision from a few days before... So we had to squeeze all we could out of our LAST DAY!!! And boy did we.... Pizza for breakfast... Lunch... Chinese food for dinner, fried donuts for midnight snack... mmmmmm all the grease we could handle!! (and more... we will need some foody detox when we get back to Canada!!) I did some more hungarian beading and we saw a canadian performing troop of sheep! it was hilarious, they were completely in character, accepting grass when it was offered and munching it, staring blankly and baaah-ing... then came the Ram... he chased the females around until he eventually got one, then...well, nature will tell you the rest. It was very funny! Luckily, I don't think the few kids there understood!

For music that evening we saw an R&B band that played a cool cover of a Hendrix song, then a German band called "17 Hippies" (though, in fact, there we only 13) who played folk musics from france, germany, american and other places, all mixed into one giant party! The rest of the night we walked around, soaking in the fried everything atmosphere, the lights, people and noises. We saw a bunch of Art Film Shorts, sitting outside on the grass, just some funny cartoons and weird stuff. Because it was weekend and so there were about 2x the people (all those silly working folks), every time we went into a tent, it was already packed, mostly with very drunk people who danced into us... so we did a lot of walking back and forth which was actually very nice, I didn't feel like we were missing out, just seeing everything!

The next morning we were off after one last pizza breakfast!!