Recieved the ticket for this festival a few minutes ago! So it is final, I'll be there. Listening to all those great bands like Metallica, The Prodigy, Nightwish, Kid Rock and much more. Definately one of the highlights this year.
As mentioned before the Nine Inch Nails were booked headlining for the Frequency festival. But they had a very hard stand. The organizers gave them the next to last slot at the main stage on the 2nd day (starting 10:30pm). Generally this is not a bad slot– prime time at the evening, main stage with room for a lot of crowd, not too late – so the crowd shouldn’t be completely exhausted. But due to some unfortunate circumstances it ended in a scandal.
The slot was between the two German bands “Beatsteaks” and “Die Ärzte”, those two bands share a lot of fans. One reason for the Beatsteaks success was advertising of “Die Ärzte”, who referred to the Beatstakes in on of their songs. Also both German bands play German punk rock, where NIN’s style is American industrial rock from that point of view, they would have been far more compatible with Interpol (they are doing American indie rock). But Interpol was put into a similar slot trapped between two other German bands (“Jan Delay” and “Freundeskreis”) at the second stage.
Plenty of people attended the Beatsteaks’ concert, who afterwards stayed in the front rows waiting for Die Ärzte, without any interest in the performance of NIN. Even worse, a lot of them was not open minded enough to take the NIN performance and started chants demanding Die Ärzte on stage (“Wir wollen die Ärzte sehen! Wir wollen die Ärzte sehen!”. So the atmosphere got really screwed. NIN lead Trent Reznorcommented the show
“the worst performance and certainly the worst crowd of the whole tour by far.”
in his official tour blog. This was a very annoying situation for all fans of harder music, who already had to cope with the canceled performance of Tool the day before.
For those who followed my short reports about the frequency festival - i safely returned this morning quarter to four, after visiting Bee and later Tom in Munich. So far I caught up some missing sleep and read the media I recorded at the festival (some 3GB) into my computer. Later I will get my notes and start writing my festival review. So far I think there are going to be two reviews - one official for Feki.de, and a rather unofficial with my impressions for my blog. I think I might split the last into different postings, since there will be quite a lot of different aspects in it.
Seeing the Beatstakes yesterday, I had to admit, that there perfomance was outstanding - something that couldn't be topped to easily. But the Kaiser Chiefs did it - unbelievable how they moved the crowd. More about this in my review - now I'd better be out to see Billy Talent.
Groove Armada definately rocked yesterday evening. I was really surprised by there diversity. Only gotta say, that I will write more about is in my review. now I gotta rund to see the beatsteaks. For today - so far Jimmy eat world really rocked the stage!
I'm currently backstage at the press tent, taking a short rest an giving you some updates. Unluckily mobloging is not working too well, due to the overloaded cellphone networks..
Todays headliner Tool has been canceled, since the singer got himself a "Kehlkopfentzündung" - since this was an real short notice, Groove Armada has been moved from the smaller Green Stage to Tool's slot on the main stage. I'm really looking forward to this perfomance Now I gotta run, to see some part of the show of Tocotronic, and probably listen to one ore two tracks from Silverchair.