Gigantic.53
Festivals 1
Fire, Ice, and Glasto
Summer Festivals 99, Part 1
Faxaskali, Reykjavik, Iceland
June 22
This was the dawning of international rock festivals in Iceland and “music tourism” in general.
All the hotels in Reykjavik were booked, so they had us staying a half hour away in Hveragerdi, which reminded me of the small towns I’d visited outside of Anchorage when I’d gone to Alaska in 89.
Our guide was an amiable Dane from Copenhagen named Andis, who drove us into Reykjavik after we’d gotten some rest. The cloud cover was low, mountaintops disappearing, and the festival had been moved indoors due to weather.
Rental music equipment is common at festivals. Ideally, by supplying standard gear for multiple artists, it allows for quick changeovers to keep things on schedule. The organizers got me a PC88, pretty much identical to my usual keyboard even though the settings were different. What they didn’t think to get was a proper keyboard stand, so they set it up on a card table, and I performed sitting on a kitchen chair.
Garbage was on after us. Unlike my jerry-rigged situation, Butch Vig’s drum kit had customized plexiglass screens surrounding it, cymbals supported by plastic tubes, pretty wild set-up.
They were the only really big name on the line-up and the ticket price was pretty high, so even though a couple thousand people showed up, it didn’t come close to filling the 5,000 capacity venue. The promoter was obviously taking a bath on this one but, as Jonathan later commented to our booking agent, we didn’t come up here for the show, we just wanted to see Iceland.
Sophie, Ray, and Wendi from V2 had the same idea, so they came from London. At the afterparty, Sophie introduced us to “Russian cocaine,” which was basically a shot of vodka, followed by sucking a lemon wedge coated with ground coffee.
The next day, Andis took us everywhere. There was no shoulder, so more often than not he drove the van straight down the middle of the road. Sometimes the road wasn’t paved at all, and at least once Andis had to get out to shoo sheep out of our path.
The landscape changed many times, sometimes the greenest grass, sometimes lunar surface. The remarkable thing about the “tourist sites” we visited in Iceland was that they’re all natural.
We explored a gigantic volcanic crater. Then Geysir, sort of Iceland’s Old Faithful. Then Gullfoss, a towering, two-tiered waterfall (on the cover of Echo and the Bunnymen’s Porcupine, btw). Then Thingvellir, where you can climb into the crack between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.
One of my favorite things were these piles of rocks, each about five-feet tall, left from the Viking days when they served as guideposts for travelers. Many Icelanders to this day believe the rocks are home to the “hidden people” and they will reroute construction projects rather than disturb them.
Of course, I had to touch and photograph as many of these as possible, leading to the oft-repeated chorus I hadn’t heard this much since our 95 tours:
“Snyder, get back on the fucking van!”
That night, rather than go back into Reykjavik, Andis took us to a fishing village called Stokkseyri where we ate in a sort-of restaurant that was more-or-less someone’s house. There was no menu, they just brought us food. Cucumber salad, tomato salad, roasted red peppers in olive oil, couscous, potatoes, lamb cooked with onions, and plate after plate of lobster tails. This was no time to be a vegetarian.
After dinner, the sun was still up even though it was after midnight.
The next morning on our way to the airport, some of us went to the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa. The water is so dense with minerals that you almost float. We scooped up mud from the bottom and put it on our faces, on our heads. My skin looked great for days.
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Glastonbury, UK
June 25
Starting back in 1970, Glastonbury has the cultural importance in the UK as Woodstock 69 does in the States, except that the festival continues year after year. Without a doubt, it’s the UK’s most iconic festival.
Approaching Glastonbury, our bus was stalled in standstill traffic for miles. This gave me ample time to peruse the extensive list of bands who’d be performing.
“Hey, Dogstar is playing!” I announced.
No response.
“Did anyone see that Dogstar is playing?” I repeated.
“Who the fuck is Dogstar?”
“Isn’t that the band Keanu Reeves is in?” I asked.
No response. Anyway, I was now on a mission.
We had to pass through five security checkpoints before our bus finally made its way close to our tent backstage. We were running late, so they whisked us to the autograph booth, where there was the longest line waiting to meet us I’d seen yet, running serpentine through steel barricades from the table. I signed everything from people’s clothing to donut wrappers.
I had a premonition about the catering tent, everyone’s gotta eat. Sure enough, five minutes after I walked in, there was Keanu Reeves heading to the coffee station, just a few feet away. As friendly as possible, I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey man, you guys play yet?”
“Yeah,” he said.
I told him sorry we missed them, we just got here, said I was Adam from Mercury Rev.
“Well, take it easy,” we both said, shook hands, and that was that.
He seemed pretty cool, reserved but not too much attitude. The Matrix had come out about a month before and he was about the most famous person on the planet. Yet, his band played one of those lesser-attended daytime slots, and we had graduated to nighttime slot. What did that mean?
The sun set, it was showtime. Looking out at the crowd, it was like a movie. A medieval invading horde. Never before or since have I played for 100,000 people. The noise and power is impossible to correlate with anything, except maybe the sea, or an earthquake.
And yet, in the fading light of day, with rolling hills and hedgerows in the distance, there was something friendly about it at the same time. Maybe that’s why I didn’t completely freak out when the sound coming from my monitor seemed to be out of tune. Could it be? Sometimes the sound distorts in situations like these.
Suddenly, Slouch was by my side, to the rescue. He heard it too. As with the last festival, the rented PC88 had some lingering programming issues, but this time it seemed to be affecting the tuning.
In front of this many people, I was just about capable of playing my parts as simply as possible. Performing diagnostics on my equipment would’ve been out the question. Slouch, cool as a cucumber, dialed through the various settings, stayed with me until he solved the problem, then moved on to solve whatever other problems anyone else may have been having. Our unsung hero.
The rest of the set went off without a hitch, from my perspective, and was finished almost as soon as it started.
The next day, I ducked into a market while our bus was fueling up. There on the cover of no fewer than three national newspapers were photos from Glastonbury of…Keanu Reeves.
So much for music festivals being the great leveler.
Hollywood wins.
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Good old Slouch. He has just become a grandfather.