The Lowlands Festival
August 28th, 29th and 30th

This year I went w/ 3 friends on Thursday evening to The Lowlands Festival, although it officially opens on Friday morning. When we came there it was already pretty crowded. So after distributing the drugs, so nothing would get stolen by security when we got our wristbands and program. There we saw a yellow trashcan, almost empty. We emptied it and put our stuff in it. I was glad we did this, otherwise I had to carry a 12 kg tent, 12 litres of beer, 6 litres of chocolate milk. And more stuff. We went to camping 5 and when I spotted an empty place we put up our tents. Mine stood up first, although I did it alone and had the biggest tent. Let's put it on years of practise. After the rain we went juggling near the tents. This was pretty amusing.

All right let's check out the 24 hours cafe, there I met other friends and lost the other 3 I came w/. This is pretty normal. After a while I met a lot of people I already knew. After 3 hours of sleep I woke up on Friday. I looked in the program and started to use some pretty bad language, what do you expect, The Hellacopters got cancelled twice. Then it was time for a genuine Lowlands breakfast, that is currantbols and beer. Oh well making fun all day until it was time for Rancid in Alpha, the largest tent (16.000 people). The sound was pretty bad. The show, well, it was okay, nothing special. Like they were on automatic pilot. The next 1.5 hours I had to bore other people and after that I went to Undeclinable Ambuscade in Charlie, which is the smallest tent. This place was packed. The sound was better, but I expected them to be better and left after 1/3 of the show. After that I saw the beginning of P.J. Harvey before I had to leave, because I didn't want to miss anything from Nomeansno on the Dommelsch stage (open air). They made fun of Green Day and Beastie Boys, which played at the same time. After the programmed hour, they kept on playing. Totally they played about 90 minutes without losing quality. Definitely the best gig of the day. I danced and had loadsa fun. After that I had the wormer, the ml I maintain, meeting. It was funny and there were beer. After the meeting I went to Alpha and had some fun, dancing, when some good music filled that place.

After not much sleep the usual breakfast. Some people told me to check out the band Zonder Banaan (band without a banana). They sucked, no fun to be found there. I told some people if they really wanna throw a party they gotta see The Toy Dolls later on this day. After I left I met some friends and joined them. During this we could hear The Bossen. I left to see Charles & The White Trash European Blues Connection. I never heard of this band before and they kicked butt. Even w/ a cover from The Rolling Stones, Red Rooster. During this show I had to move my butt to Alpha for The Toy Dolls. The first 45 minutes I danced my ass off. Their show was great. I cooled down the last 15 minutes. Their act is predictable, but I didn't care. After that some street theatre, this was kinda boring so I went to Charlie for some Rocket From The Crypt. Again something good. After this I went back to my tent to eat something and get some more beer. There I met my friends again and the tomato soup was pretty good. We had fun and that was a result of missing Theraphy?. Anyway I went back to the festival on time for Night of the Comedy in Foxtrot, a small tent where you can sit like in the circus. There was this woman who played piano on a bounceball. This sucked and is condemned to the worst I've seen ever. I laughed my ass off during Night of the Comedy, which is 3 stand up comedians and one person who talks everything to 1 thing. After that I moved pretty quickly to Charlie for The Ex. This is one of the eldest bands in the Netherlands. They also were good. Old people rule. When this was over back to the tent for beer and a meeting with people I know from the Internet. After a while some people got the idea to watch Face/off in the movie tent, Echo 1. It was so crowded we went back to the someones tent. Where we had more beer drinking and talking. During the walk we had loadsa fun w/ drunk people. When it went light I got back to my tent to sleep a little bit.

After a couple hours I woke up and had the usual breakfast. Also I drank some chocolate milk. I took 1 liter of that w/ me to the festival area. It was funny when I got searched this time. The security didn't trust me, but the chocolate milk was 100% chocolate milk and I could make fun of them. After some walking around I went to see The Toasters in Golf. From there a little bit of Save Ferris, which came over w/ the European Vans Warped Tour, which played all day on the Dommelsch stage, to go back for The Toasters. Almost near the end back to Dommelsch for Unwritten Law. After that the lame-assed Magnified Plaid (mxpx) played, def. The 2nd worst on lowlands. Next up the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, they rocked. Luckily it wasn't as hot as it was in 97. So I skanked my ass off when The Specials played. The Specials were great to see & skank to. After that No Use For A Name, which got kinda boring so I hurried w/ some friends to an eating thingie. We ate a pancake, only thing I trust there. After that some Deftones which were good. After seeing them for about 20 minutes we got back to the Vans Tour for Lagwagon. This always seems to results in throwing pop sickles & some other candy. You could tell Lagwagon was bored and therefore they played kinda bad. After that the last bad Bad Religion. They played loadsa old songs and got pretty quickly very boring. When this was over I went back to my tent for some warmer clothes. W/ friends I went back to the festival area. There we wandered around, had some fun in Alpha. Finally the music was sooooo boring we went to see the Ice Storm in Echo 1. Well, this movie is so longwinded and lame we left to drink some coffee. Later on we met some other friends and went back to Alpha. Suddenly the DJ's stopped playing at 3:00 instead of 4:00 and didn't want to continue so we left. I was too tired to do anything else and went back to my tent for some sleep. The next morning I had the usual breakfast w/ my last beer. I put everything in my back and went home. There the first thing I did was taking a shower and do absolutely nothing which took a lot of effort that day.

Copyright © 1998 Marcel Etten