Location: Puntižela (Medulin) – Croatia, Biker's Festival
Concert date: July 27, 2002
Attendance: 6,500
Ticket price: 150.00 HRK
Medulin, Premantura, Pula… Off to the seaside!!! Fantastic!!! How boring the coast would be if you just sat in the water all day or kept frying in the sun. What could be better than this: after a full day of soaking in the sea and a hearty late-afternoon feast of ćevapčići and skewers, which you dutifully wash down with beer, thereby threatening the very survival of Earth’s atmosphere with your belched gases, you head off to a party thrown “a little way off” (practically right in front of your tent) by Motorhead.
The bikers’ festival had been moved from the airfield near Medulin to Puntižela (a little village just outside Pula). Even getting to the site was a thrill. First, a crash a bit past Pula, and right at the venue we of course ran into heaps of roaring sheet metal. A traffic infarct in the narrow street behind the Festival’s fences got on our last nerve. Somehow we squeezed through the crush and left the cars wherever they could be left, hoping they’d still be drivable after the gig.
By the way, some enthusiast with German plates had wedged himself deep into that narrow street with a Mercedes and a trailer. I really don’t know how it all ended for him. Odd that he didn’t haul along an entire apartment, a pool, a dog kennel, a garden, a fence, plus a few ornamental trees and an orchard, if he missed them so much that he found satisfaction, or at least an approximation of it, in a trailer. Seriously, sometimes when I watch people I just can’t tell: am I the weird one here, or what?
Anyway, we found the entrance in one piece, bought our tickets, got those damn dog collars strapped around our wrists, and plonked ourselves down at the first bench for a beer. It was around eight in the evening, and Motorhead were billed for midnight. Under the stage there was a concrete slab, so there was no danger of rolling around during the gig in mud mixed with the assorted secretions, droppings, and puke of the masses and spilled beer.
The stage was set up a good thirty meters from the shore. And unbelievably, a few tough guys swam over to the show, and nobody bothered them about it. But the shore had a different hazard. Before the gig we were sitting on the rocky coast, deep in some very serious debate. Five meters from me, two Istrians sat down on one of those rocks. And what a rock! Surrounded by the stomach contents of some poor soul whose food wasn’t destined to travel the full length of his digestive tract. So, partially processed leftovers had gone back out through the entrance instead of carrying on toward the exit. Well, you know where normally processed leftovers come out, I won’t go into such details. Safe to say the poor Istrian who’d just settled comfortably onto that rock was hardly delighted by this twist when he plunged his hands into that mess.
Damn, they beat us to it! The clock struck 11:30 p.m. when the organizer announced the motor heads. They’d shown up on stage half an hour earlier. Of course I missed out on the front row. So what! Watching the swarm of security guards between the barrier and the stage wasn’t exactly pleasant anyway. On top of that, that space was full of stuck-up people, obviously with backstage passes, facing the crowd and radiating pure cynicism and scorn. Not a single glance (during the whole gig) did they direct at the holy trinity on stage, nothing, they stayed ice cold. What can you do?
“Helo! It’s been a long time since we’ve played in Croatia. We are Motorhead… And We Are Gonna Kick Your Arse!” Lemmy greeted the crowd in his classic lingo, and the general mayhem began. The crowd went berserk. Between the front row and me, somewhere around the tenth, people spun around jerkily and changed position from moment to moment by the principle of Brownian motion; some (with lower kinetic energy) just staggered, but still, nobody stood still. Of course, I wouldn’t be me, stubborn as I am, if I hadn’t shoved my way to the second row, hoping to get closer to the legends and feel all the energy they radiate during the show even more intensely. Quietly I hoped some security guy would finally lower his fat, lard-swamped head (a few of them were real gorillas, I got a slight chill just looking at them). Quietly I even hoped someone from the front row would conk out ASAP so I could take over his battle position.
Well, none of that happened. Still, most of the field of view that my optic nerves relayed to the brain centers of my consciousness, which judged the information as an enviable view, was just taken up by the stage with Lemmy, Mikkey and Phil. The stage was bigger than the one in Graz. Contact with the audience far more genuine. The band was playful from the first minute to the last. In Graz they were a bit reserved at the start. This time too, Phil and Lemmy took short breaks to talk to the crowd and crack all sorts of jokes. Of course, as usual, they peered deeper into their beer glasses a few times and sucked down some cigarette smoke. The atmosphere was insane! The crowd was mostly young. The young are what the world stands on. They’d come from the nearby campsites and bungalows along the whole Istrian coast. The bikers mostly watched the whole thing with reserve from a distance, standing closer to the beer stands than to the stage with Motorhead. Only a few were in the crowd, and they made an unbearable racket within reach of their limbs. Roughnecks never rest, sadly.
The crowd was otherwise extremely decent. Not only did they breathe as one with the band on stage… When I crashed to the floor during “Killed By Death” like an overloaded camel, the culprit of the unfortunate incident came over and politely apologized, while the others picked me up off the ground before I’d even grasped what had happened.
Motorhead’s performance was top-notch once again. This time Lemmy wore brown boots, in Graz white ones. Come on, like that matters a whole lot. But Motorhead “dropped out a couple of times,” most audibly when Lemmy and Phil joined Mikkey after Mikkey’s drum solo during “Sacrifice”. Mikkey went nuts again. Behind the cymbals all you see is a flailing of yellow-dyed hair. And what that guy gets out of the drums! They must be doing some special voodoo for him so he can withstand all those heavy hits. Whole-body work, a one-of-a-kind technique; the instrument simply came alive next to Mikkey. Again he coaxed out the sound of a revving engine. And how perfectly and inventively the guy weaves the double bass pedal into the older Motorhead classics. Man, that full sound. Three guys and what a wallop!!!! One continuous headbang. Naturally, beer rained from the sky, as expected. Luckily the nights were cool, since just those days it had been blowing like hell during the daytime. Cool vacation days at the seaside boiled over to the beat of the iron trio.
The repertoire was exactly the same as in Graz, so this time I won’t bore you with the course of the show. Okay, they threw out half as many picks, and there was no merch anywhere. Any other little thing? Oh yes, Mikkey’s double bass drums didn’t have the heads with the Motorhead logo, just plain ones, advertising the company that supplies him with his hardware (I think Sonnor).
What can I say? Another superior gig, a superior repertoire from the immortal trio, and an endless rock’n’roll party. A direct wallop to the noggin!!! “Shoot You In The Back, “Damage Case”, “Nothing Up My Sleeve”, “Iron Fist”, “Orgasmatron”, “Doctor Rock”, “No Class”, “Bomber”, “Overkill” and of course “Ace Of Spades”. Aaaaaaa nothing but classics!!!!!!!
Setlist
1. We Are Motorhead
2. No Class
3. Bomber
4. Civil War
5. God Save The Queen
6. Brave New World
7. Damage Case
8. Metropolis
9. Love For Sale
10. R.A.M.O.N.E.S.
11. Shoot You In The Back
12. Nothing Up My Sleeve
13. Doctor Rock
14. Going To Brasil
15. Sacrifice (including M.Dee’s drum solo)
16. Orgasmatron
17. Killed By Death
18. Iron Fist
—encore—
19. Ace Of Spades
20. Overkill
