Location: Belgrade / Ušće / Serbia
Date: Friday, 06/29/2012
Friday morning greeted us with a slightly spinning head, but mostly with impatient anticipation of the evening ahead. The afternoon was reserved for sightseeing and sampling local grill delicacies on the legendary Skadarlija, where the musicians treated us to a selection of schlager hits for the first musical highlight of the day, hehe. The great thing about Belgrade Calling as a city festival is that on top of the festival action, you also get the pulse of the city, which in Belgrade is seriously strong. The afternoon went off without a hitch, but we hit a snag again at the festival entrance, where another hour-long delay was waiting for us. Still, you could feel the tension and excitement in the air (along with the smell of grilled meat and the obligatory cold jelenček, of course), because Friday was tailor-made for a gig by two legendary alternative bands from the nineties.
The scorching afternoon sun summoned the big comeback kids of the nineties alternative rock scene to the stage around six, and what followed was a proper trip “back to the nineties,” when MTV was still a real music channel that regularly and generously played the videos of the legendary California outfit Ugly Kid Joe. For me this was the most anticipated set of the whole festival, and I’m happy to say Ugly Kid Joe more than lived up to the huge expectations. They’ve also made a studio comeback with the recently released EP Stairway to Hell, which shows them in a somewhat more serious and darker light, but stylistically it’s still 100% Ugly Kid Joe. UKJ took the stage in Belgrade in the biggest heat, but the seasoned Californian “surfers” didn’t mind in the slightest. The legendary vocalist Whitfield Crane, dressed in a Motörhead shirt, sent the crowd into ecstasy with the opening V.I.P., and it was great to see that despite the blazing sun, a decent number of people were actively singing along with Ugly Kid Joe. With an excellent choice of tracks (unfortunately limited by the short time they were given), they created a perfect summery “feel good” atmosphere, with the classic UKJ tunes Neigbot, Milkman’s Son and Goddamn Devil proudly marching to the front. Whit is still a crazy frontman who controls the crowd with the pinky of his left foot, and even more importantly, Crane’s voice is still in top shape. It was truly astonishing to hear a vocal performance so close to the one on the albums. Playing the guitars, the fun-loving Dave Fortman and especially Klaus Eichstadt did fantastically, with Klaus serving up some crazy, cool and scorching solos from the UKJ repertoire. On this tour, guitarist Dave Fortman and drummer Shannon Larkin were replaced by Sonny Mayo (guitar) and drummer Yael, who did their job so well and with so much energy that I’d never have guessed they were just session members. Fortman in particular, together with bassist Cordell Crockett, delivered a goofy stage show, constantly pumping up the crowd and using every inch of the stage. Ugly Kid Joe crowned an unforgettable set with excellent versions of their biggest hits, Cat’s in the Cradle and the summer anthem Everything About You.
The wonderful start to Friday fizzled out fast when Britain’s The Horrors infected the stage and served up some of the worst and most idiotic music my poor, innocent ears have ever had the chance to hear. These anorexic boys/girls in checkered shirts and neatly slicked-down quiffs couldn’t have picked a more fitting name – their quasi-goth/horror version of post-punk was musically something like Vogon poetry in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If I’d gotten my hands on them, I’d have eaten my own ears. As it was, I managed to survive this horror by hunting for corners of the venue where the tentacles of this Lovecraftian, unnameable musical terror couldn’t reach me.
A somewhat easier-to-digest continuation of Friday evening came courtesy of the legendary Sex Pistol, Rotten Johnny, ahem, Johhny Rotten or John Lydon, as he’s known today, once again under his birth name, the former frontman of the legendary British punk pioneers Sex Pistols. Lydon visited Belgrade with his band Public Image Ltd., which he founded after leaving Sex Pistols in 1978 and which made it the first representative of the newborn post-punk. Lydon restarted PiL in 2009, and this time too he marched onto the stage totally in his own style, with a bottle of cognac from which he knocked back a few serious sips before launching into one of PiL’s best-known tracks, (This Is Not A) Love Song. The good sound meant you could mostly hear the deep, dub-inspired bass lines, over which Rotty half sang, half recited the lyrics to the band’s biggest hits – Warrior, Flowers of Romance, Rise and others. Communication with the crowd was minimal, and Lydon mostly stood stoically behind the microphone, delivering his abstract lyrics half in a trance. Still, John Lydon remains a unique musical figure, and it was a real pleasure to see him in action, even though I personally found the band’s rather repetitive music harder and harder to take with every song. Public Image Ltd. aren’t music for every ear in the first place, and they’re far from anything you could label “easy listening.”
Something completely different came next, from a band I never thought I’d see live. Not on purpose, anyway, since even their best-known hit I’d only heard by accident. But after the darker, more morbid and hard-to-listen-to The Horrors and, to some extent, Public Image Ltd., the total lightness, carefree attitude and above all positive, optimistic glam/hard rock sound of British giants The Darkness fit perfectly. They returned from the dead last year after going on an unplanned hiatus in 2006. The reason? Totally in keeping with The Darkness’ image of proper debauched rockers – vocalist Justin Hawkins went to rehab for drugs and alcohol. Well, Justin cleaned himself up, grew a proper manly mustache along the way, and The Darkness are once again laying waste to stages and groupies. Belgrade was no different. The women screamed, Justin screamed even louder, and the male part of the crowd looked a little jealously at the band members on stage, who aren’t exactly that attractive. But what The Darkness served up to the heated, playful crowd over a good hour was pure rock enjoyment. Mostly thanks to Justin, a frontman without equal. Skinny Hawkins filled the stage – front, back, left, right, on his feet, on his hands, with a guitar, without a guitar, with a shirt and obviously without it. The charisma of a Red Bull can in Hawkins’ form is unmatched. The guy has his stage act down to a science and keeps the crowd in total rock ecstasy from the first moment to the last with just his left pinky. The high falsetto is, in my opinion, a result of Justin’s really tight pants, and even more so of the zebra-striped leotard he wore later, which wasn’t exactly easy on the eyes. The guys more than successfully presented the biggest hits from their first two albums plus the novelties Everybody Have a Good Time, Every Inch of You and a cover of Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out), which will appear on the upcoming record Hot Cakes, due out shortly. To top it all off, during the second-to-last song the explosive Justin hopped onto a security guard’s shoulders and went out into the crowd, soloing the whole time. I can’t recall ever witnessing such a fun and energetic performance in my whole career of going to gigs. And I wouldn’t have thought these words would come from my fingers. The guys can actually play.
The Darkness managed to set the perfect atmosphere for the performance of the stars of Friday evening, the icons of the nineties and giants of alternative metal, rock, funk and whatever else, Faith No More. But first we had to endure a marathon-long stage setup, as the stage techs dressed the stage in funeral white and covered it completely in flowers, ikebana and mourning wreaths (which they probably borrowed straight from Hiša cvetja, hehe). The slightly morbid set shamelessly resembled a funeral, and with it the band obviously hints that this is a final farewell, as does the official tour shirt with an obituary motif. But whatever is around the corner, nobody can steal from us that hour and a half with Faith No More on Friday. After considerable technical complications, once the techs had finally sorted everything out, Mike Bordin (drums), Jon Hudson (guitar), Roddy Bottum (keyboards) and Billy Gould (bass) marched onto the stage one after another, dressed entirely in white, and hit the gas with the punchy Woodpecker From Mars. When the great Mike Patton joined his bandmates, also dressed all in white and wearing a white hat, the euphoric crowd exploded, and Mike served up a snippet of the Tom Jones classic Delilah, sung so well that even Bruce Dickinson with his own rendition could have hidden from it. This time Faith No More chose a setlist dominated by calmer, slower and slightly melancholic tracks, which made Mike Patton’s truly spectacular voice, undoubtedly one of the greatest vocalists of all time, shine all the more and all the more beautifully. Patton can do it all, from gorgeous clean singing, which especially exploded during the choruses sung together with the crowd, to breathtaking operatic singing, rapping, beatboxing and scat, and even proper death metal growls. The talents of the eclectic Patton, who with his charismatic presence alone is one of the best rock frontmen of all time, seem to have no end. Of course, the unpredictable stage beast still bursts out of him at times, first in the opening moments of the show, when he didn’t like an unsuspecting roadie fiddling around on stage and the poor guy earned himself a solid smack on the head, and he showed off his trademark biting, goofy sarcasm especially well when he dedicated Digging the Grave to Serbia’s new president Tomislav Nikolić (who started his career as a cemetery caretaker and earned the nickname “Toma the Undertaker” for it). The instrumental four didn’t lag behind their frontman in any way, especially the fantastic Billy Gould, whose deep, distinctive funk bass sound is the eternal trademark of Faith No More and shook Ušće too, and Roddy Bottum, who skillfully built a baroque, rich wall of sound and helped Mike with generous and effectively placed backing vocals. Through the eternal classics Midlife Crisis, Evidence and Last Cup of Sorrow, the show hit its first peak with back-to-back performances of two mega-classics of the nineties that cemented Faith No More as one of the greatest – Epic and Easy. I still get goosebumps remembering the whole ten-thousand-strong crowd singing Easy together. Pattons’s psychotic nature poked out again in the schizophrenic The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and in a laid-back style (which suited the festival atmosphere perfectly) Faith No More cruised through to the end of the main set with King For a Day, Ashes to Ashes and the fantastic Just a Man. For the encore, FNM surprised us with a new song titled Matador (which, I hope, is a sign that the band doesn’t smell of cypresses just yet), followed by a traditional Serbian song, Ajde Jano, phenomenally performed especially by Patton, with a perfectly studied tremolo (I suspect Patton took lessons from Biške of Pero Defformero). The legendary Faith No More brought their set to an end much too soon with the classic Stripsearch. If this really is Faith No More’s final farewell, it was a pure pleasure to witness such a glorious funeral, but I strongly hope Matador is a herald of a new record.
Friday wrapped up with an exclusive midnight set by the pioneers of goth rock, the gloomy Sisters of Mercy, who wrapped the stage in a thick blanket of fog from the very first seconds. But Faith No More had left such a strong impression, and the late hour took its toll too, so all that was left for us was a night walk through the city. Saturday offered a good number of Serbian acts, but the sunny Saturday was even better suited to strolling around the city, a last beer and a hearty lunch.
Belgrade Calling is a festival with the potential to grow into one of the bigger ones in the Balkans and become a serious rival to Novi Sad’s Exit. But due to the miserable turnout (reportedly only a good 15,000 tickets were sold in total), its future is uncertain, as the organizers have undoubtedly sunk deep into the red. It would be a shame to lose a festival like this, even though the birth pangs were strong. First, they urgently need to cut or completely eliminate the hour-long delays at the venue opening, put in place a friendlier system for multi-day visitors by introducing wristbands (scanning barcodes on tickets is the silliest thing I’ve ever witnessed), and improve the food offering, since leaving the festival grounds wasn’t allowed. If they fix just these shortcomings to start with, Belgrade Calling can have a bright future, and its call will surely be worth answering!
author: Rok Klemše
photos: Nina Grad
UGLY KID JOE:
1. Intro/V.I.P.
2. Dialogue
3. Neighbor
4. Penhandlin’ Prince
5. Milkman’s Son
6. Cats in the Cradle
7. I’m Alright
8. Goddamn Devil
9. Everything About You
THE DARKNESS:
1. Black Shuck
2. Growing On Me
3. The Best of Me
4. One Way Ticket
5. Get Your Hands Off My Woman
6. Everybody Have a Good Time
7. Love Is Only a Feeling
8. Every Inch of You
9. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
10. Givin’ Up
11. I Believe in a Thing Called Love
12. Love On the Rocks With No Ice
FAITH NO MORE:
1. Woodpecker From Mars/Delilah
2. Midlife Crisis
3. Ricochet
4. Land of Sunshine
5. Evidence
6. Last Cup of Sorrow
7. Digging the Grave
8. Epic
9. Easy
10. Everything’s Ruined
11. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
12. King For a Day
13. Ashes to Ashes
14. Just a Man
——————–
15. Matador
16. Ajde Jano/Stripsearch
