Home from my holiday
August 4, 2020OK, before we start, my holiday is largely in my head. Wacken this year cancelled a while ago, Germany was very on the ball with their restrictions. However, following massive fan support they decided to go virtual. If we couldn’t go to them they were coming to us. So I prepared. I tried to get as many elements of Wacken as I could here. So read this post, with that in mind.
Wacken is a music festival in North Germany and my annual holiday. Sleeping in a van, no not a motorhome a van, for 5 days in an often muddy field is my idea of fun. There is music great food and nice people. It is a break from reality. The flight out was great no long trip to the airport and no queues. I did miss my smoked salmon breakfast, due to a bread crisis that caught up with us a day later. Ialso missed seeing all the other people heading for Wacken. Though once the event started we did get to see some of the cars arriving on site with the W.O.A. tape on the backs. I love that. My in flight film this year was Bloodshot. The newish Vin Diesel film. I was expecting brain in a bucket entertainment and well it delivered. I hope it was based on a graphic novel, I really aught to look it up. Every year I buy a couple of films for flights and downtime. If the weather is difficult it really helps. I also took my knitting which had been neglected recently, nice to get back to it.
Setting up camp seemed to go very smoothly this year. A new coffee table arrived bang on time and looks like it will be more dog proof. It will provide a place to hide my quilt cards too. I may like little antique tables but with a large dog modern oak has it’s place too. After setting up camp we headed out to wristbands food and drink and merchandise. The food and drink delivery was less than 5 min after camp was done, pertty perfect. I actually decided not to wear my wristband, and to keep it full length, maybe I can add it to a quilt. Security this year was much more relaxed despite the much bigger audience. I guess checking so many countries would have been hard. Perhaps if I had been on the video I would have made a different call.
Food and drink is a huge part of the Wacken experience. For me pig on an essential part of the festival, as is black honey icecream. The pig on a stick was really tricky, but I managed to get some pork belly strips that were pre marrinated and they were a decent stand in. Of course that also meant we needed a BBQ, which we had had delivered a couple of weeks ago but only set up for this event. Black honey icecream was surprisingly easy, although I really need a different honey to get the true effect, still it was close enough.
This year there was only one band on a at a time, which meant I could try to see all of them, some I didn’t stay for mind you. It is the joy of Wacken, they really do try to bring us a huge range of bands, which means most people find somthing they like. It also means most people will find something they don’t. The bands also started later this year, 4pm German time. So if there hadn’t been a dog with me I could have had a lie in.
Wednesday kicked off with their battle of the bands entries. A mixed bunch as you might exect from different countries, but some of them were really pretty good. I hope some will play full sets next yeear. The next that interested me was Motor Sister. I was sort of hoping for a female Motorhead cover band. I was out of luck but they were OK, probably not a band I would seek out but fine to listen to. They were followed by Rage who I really like and I enjoyed a lot. Handily they then put on 2 bands I am not keen on just in time for dinner and doggie play time. It is another advantage of gaps in the schedule. Although it can mean meals at some odd times. The highlight of day one for me was Doro, filmed at one of her drive in concerts. She has done quite a few of these this summer and it looks like they have worked pretty well. I have reached the age where the idea of a comfy seat and a roof at a festival does have an appeal. I hadn’t realised that her bassist would have changed for these concerts. While most of her band is European her bassist is American and thus stuck with the travel ban. It wasn’t the same without him, but still a lot of fun.
We had an assortment on bands taking us to after midnight. Fenrir got to come and see some of them, he didn’t seem overly impressed. Of course being a dog he follows the you are happy so I am happy principle but the cats actively enjoy a lot of the bands we do so got far more out of the first Wacken they were able to atttend. It also suited them far better than haing a cat sitter, Fenrir has no idea such terrible things even happen.
Thursday, being another relatively late start for the bands, I had time to finish watching my film (short flight I often don’t finish it on the plane) and do some more of my knitting. I did a lot of knitting over the festival. I generally take a small craft project with me and it is surprising how much you can do in the little bits of down time. I admit I haven’t tried taking knitting in. Not sure if even circular needles would be deemed safe. As I said above this year security was very lax so I had more options. I got a surprise fun band early Thursday, Deine Cousine. They did their set from a boat in Hamburg. I knew Hamburg had had a hard time in the war, I didn’t know a lot of it is really striking architechture. The band said they wanted to show us their city and they did that, they also taught me a new word unkaputtbar. It is just a very satifying word. They are a pop punk kinda band, good on a summer day when they seem to have just as much sun as we did. The highlight of Thursday was Alice Cooper. I wondered if he might perform from his home studio, he has been working there with his daughters, but of course that would limit his stage effects which would not be him at all. So instead they showed a previous Wacken performance which was great, and I had a much better view this time around.
Friday, scheduled for pig on a stick day. The weather looks reasonable (better in Wacken proper typical huh) and it is time to give the BBQ a test drive. Annoyingly I caught the first band who I wasn’t impressed by then missed Thundermother who I really wanted to see again. I think they will be available to re-watch, maybe that is a mission for this weekend. I then had a run of bands that didn’t quite float my boat and all the bands I did want to see at the time I needed to be BBQing. Fortunately I could take the “stage” with us and set up outside. Iron Maiden were good to eat to, then Beyond the Black and Blind Guardian each played the VR stage. I called it the magic stage. I am sure I picked that up from something someone said and it does fit the stage. They have an indoor space with lots of technicians screens and lights. So they can make the stage do things that are not usually possible. They also could make it be either of the 2 main Wacken stages complete with crowd and the whole site. I guess many years of footage of all that gives you plenty to work from. Some bands did little more than a backdrop and some pyrotechnics, others really played with the system. If they do reuse this next year, and there are suggestions they will, I will be very interested to see what bands come up with.
Saturday is of course the highlight of the show, with the headline band. This year that was Sabton. I had very high hopes for what they would do with the virtual stage. While I liked what they achieved I think there is more that could be done, of course this was a first and at short notice so I need to not have too high expectations. What can I say Sabaton set the bar really high normally so I am not entirely to blame. I did love making the whole site a battle field, with aircraft and lots of tanks. For those of you not familiar with Sabaton they mostly sing about real history, the history of war. It is accurate accounts and often not flattering to the countries involved. I have heard people say they glorify war, I would suggest you listen to all the lyrics not just the titles. Sabaton usually perform with a tank or two on onstage. Obviously with the current travel issues and time constraints they were limited in what they could bring with them to Germany. Heck, I am pretty impressed they got themselves there. So rather than two physical tanks they had twenty virtual ones. I was also stunned that in the rather small stage they had brought real pyrotechnics. I imagine the band must have got rather warm. I have been to enough of their shows to know how hot those little balls of fire are and the band were surrounded at close range. It did look good though 
I was also impressed with how well they worked the virtual crowd. I know that sounds really weird, but some bands really could work the crowd despite in not actually being there. I wonder if it is in part how sure the band is that the audience is there somewhere and how the audience will react. When it is hard to not applaud between songs and impossible to stay seated when they encourage you to bounce they are getting something right. It has to be really hard for the bands but a surprising number seemed to manage to suspend disbelief and play to the massive crowd they couldn’t see. As is traditional for the last day of the festival the first bands for next year were announced. I can’t say there is anything that really grabs me yet but I know they will balance things before I get there so I am not worried. I like that they kept that tradition despite the odd circumstances.
Sunday we fly home and usually stay up late to book next years tickets, they sell out fast. This time there are no tickets to sell. They were gone before the festival started and mostly to people had tickets for 2020. Wacken posted to say that it wouldn’t be right if the show didn’t finish with a server crash so launched the first of next years merchandise. I doubt sales managed to crash the server but it amused me. On the subject of merchandise, my Sabaton shirt arrived today. I ordered it after the show on Saturday and they had a warning that there would be a delay in shipping, yet here it is. I suspect I order one of the most common sizes and that meant they were holding stock of it, but I still think that is impressive when it is coming from Sweden.
Now, back to work. I have a class at 2.30. I hope this gives you a feel of the fun and connectedness a virtual festival can achieve when people are prepared to give it a go and suspend reality for a while. I loved it and it really did feel like a holiday.