Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Ušće, Belgrade, Serbia
Concert date: 29.06.2012
Attendance: 10,000
Friday morning greeted us with a slightly spinning head, but above all with impatient anticipation of the evening. The afternoon was mostly given over to sightseeing and sampling local grill goodies on the iconic Skadarlija, where the street musicians delivered the day’s first musical highlight with their selection of schlager hits, hehe. That’s the perk of Belgrade Calling being a city festival: on top of the festival action, you also get the pulse of the city, which in Belgrade is seriously strong. The afternoon ran like clockwork, though things snagged again at the festival entrance, where yet another hour-long delay awaited us. Still, you could feel the tension and excitement in the air (along with the smell of grilling and the obligatory cold Jelen, of course), because Friday was tailor-made for a show by two legendary nineties alternative bands.
The scorching afternoon sun brought the big comeback kids of the nineties alternative rock scene onto the stage around six, and what followed was a proper »back to the nineties« trip, back when MTV was still an actual music channel that played the videos of California legends Ugly Kid Joe on heavy rotation. For me this was the most anticipated set of the whole festival, and I’m happy to report that Ugly Kid Joe more than lived up to the hype. 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 hit the stage in Belgrade in the worst of the heat, but the seasoned California »surfers« couldn’t have cared less. The legendary vocalist Whitfield Crane, wearing a Motörhead shirt, sent the crowd into ecstasy with the opening V.I.P., and it was great to see a nice number of people actively joining in despite the blazing sun. With an excellent choice of songs (sadly only as many as fit into the short time they were given), they created the perfect summer feel-good atmosphere, with the classic UKJ anthems Neigbot, Milkman’s Son and Goddamn Devil marching proudly to the front. Whit is still a crazy frontman who has the crowd wrapped around his little toe, and even more importantly, Crane’s voice is still in top shape. It was downright astonishing to hear a vocal performance that close to the albums. Fooling-around guitarist Dave Fortman and especially Klaus Eichstadt did a fantastic job on guitars, with Klaus serving up some wild, cool and scorching solos from the UKJ catalog. 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 such 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 worked the crowd and used every last inch of the stage. Ugly Kid Joe crowned an unforgettable set with great renditions of their biggest hits, Cat’s in the Cradle and the summer anthem Everything About You.
That wonderful start to Friday fizzled out fast when Britain’s The Horrors infected the stage and served up some of the worst, most idiotic music my poor, innocent ears have ever had the chance to hear. Those anorexic boys/girls in checkered shirts and neatly licked-down mops couldn’t have picked a more fitting name – their quasi goth/horror take on post-punk was about as musical as Vogon poetry in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If I could have reached them, I’d have eaten my own ears, but instead I managed to survive the horror by hunting for corners of the grounds where the tentacles of this Lovecraftian, unnameable musical dread couldn’t reach me.
Something a bit easier to digest followed in the evening, courtesy of the legendary Sex Pistol, Rotten Johnny, ahem, Johnny Rotten, or John Lydon, as the former frontman of the legendary British punk pioneers Sex Pistols is known today, once again under his birth name. Lydon came to Belgrade with his band Public Image Ltd., which he founded after leaving Sex Pistols in 1978, and with which he became the first face of newborn post-punk. Lydon restarted PiL in 2009, and this time too he strolled onto the stage in his own style, with a bottle of cognac from which he took a few serious swigs before launching into one of PiL’s better-known tracks, (This Is Not A) Love Song. The good sound made sure the deep, dub-inspired bass lines came through loud and clear, and over them 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 mic, delivering his abstract lyrics half in a trance. Even so, John Lydon is still a unique musical figure and a real treat to watch in action, even if personally I found the band’s highly repetitive music harder to take with every song. Public Image Ltd. were never music for everyone’s ears in the first place, and they’re a long way from anything you could label »easy-listening.«
Next came something completely different, from a band I never thought I’d see live. At least not on purpose, since I’d only ever heard their best-known hit by accident. But after the darker, morbid and hard-to-listen-to The Horrors and, in part, Public Image Ltd., the total lightness, carefree attitude and above all positive, optimistic glam/hard rock of British giants The Darkness fit like a glove. They came back to life last year after going on an unplanned hiatus in 2006. The reason? Completely in line with The Darkness’s image as proper debauched rockers – vocalist Justin Hawkins went to rehab for drugs and alcohol. Well, Justin cleaned up, grew himself a proper manly mustache in the meantime, 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 bit jealously at the band members on stage, who aren’t exactly the most attractive bunch. But what The Darkness served up to the warmed-up, playful crowd over a good hour was pure rock enjoyment. Mostly thanks to Justin, a frontman without equal. Skinny Hawkins filled the stage entirely: front, back, left, right, on his feet, on his hands, with guitar, without guitar, with a shirt and, obviously, without. There’s no matching the charisma of this can of Red Bull in human form. The guy has his stage act studied down to the last detail, and he keeps the crowd in total rock ecstasy from the first moment to the last with just his left pinky. I figure the high falsetto is down to Justin’s really tight pants, and even more so to the zebra-striped catsuit he wore later, not exactly a pleasant sight. The guys more than successfully presented the biggest hits from their first two albums plus new stuff, 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, out soon. To top it all off, during the second-to-last song the explosive Justin climbed onto a security guard’s shoulders and went out into the crowd, soloing the whole time. I can’t remember ever witnessing such a fun and energetic show in all my years of going to gigs. And I never thought these words would come out of my fingers. The guys can actually play.
The Darkness managed to set the perfect atmosphere for the stars of Friday night, the icons of the nineties and giants of alternative metal, rock, funk and whatnot, Faith No More. But first we had to endure marathon-long stage preparations, with the stage crew dressing it in funeral white and covering it entirely in flowers, ikebana and mourning wreaths (probably borrowed straight from Hiša cvetja, the Slovenian flower shop chain, hehe). The slightly morbid set shamelessly resembled a funeral, and with it the band is obviously hinting that they’re saying goodbye for good, which the official tour shirt with its obituary motif also suggests. But whatever lies around the corner, nobody can steal those hour and a half with Faith No More on Friday from us. After considerable technical complications, the crew finally got everything sorted, and one after another, dressed all in white, Mike Bordin (drums), Jon Hudson (guitar), Roddy Bottum (keyboards) and Billy Gould (bass) marched onto the stage and hit the gas with the punchy Woodpecker From Mars. When the great Mike Patton joined his bandmates, also dressed all in white and topped with 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 could have hidden from it. This time Faith No More went with a setlist dominated by calmer, slower, slightly melancholic songs, which made Mike Patton’s truly spectacular vocals shine all the more beautifully. He is without a doubt one of the greatest vocalists of all time. Patton can do it all, from gorgeous clean singing, which really exploded in the choruses sung together with the crowd, to breathtaking operatic singing, rapping, beatboxing and scat, and even proper death metal growls. The eclectic Patton, who with his charismatic presence alone is one of the best rock frontmen ever, seems to have no limit to his talents. Of course, at times the unpredictable stage beast still bursts out of him: first right at the start of the show, when he didn’t like an unsuspecting roadie fussing around the stage and the poor guy earned himself a solid smack on the head, and later his trademark biting, joking sarcasm shone especially when he dedicated the song 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 the slightest, especially the fantastic Billy Gould, whose deep, distinctive funk bass sound is a Faith No More trademark forever and shook Ušće too, and Roddy Bottum, who deftly built a rich, baroque wall of sound and helped Mike out 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 renditions of two mega nineties classics that cemented Faith No More as one of the greats – Epic and Easy. I still get goosebumps remembering everyone singing Easy together with a crowd of ten thousand. Patton’s psychotic side peeked out again in the schizophrenic The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and in a laid-back style (which fit the festival atmosphere like a glove) Faith No More cruised through the rest of the main set with King For a Day, Ashes to Ashes and the fantastic Just a Man. In the encore FNM surprised us with a new song called Matador (which, I hope, is a sign the band isn’t quite pushing up daisies yet), followed by a phenomenally performed traditional Serbian song, Ajde Jano, 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 a close much too soon with the classic Stripsearch. If this really is the final farewell for Faith No More, it was a pure pleasure to witness this magnificent funeral, but I sincerely hope Matador is the herald of a new record.
Friday wrapped up with an exclusive midnight set from goth rock pioneers, the gloomy Sisters of Mercy, who wrapped the stage in a thick blanket of fog within the 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 late-night walk through the city. Saturday offered a good number of Serbian bands, but the sunny Saturday was even better suited to wandering around town, one last beer and a proper 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 dismal turnout (reportedly only a little over 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 there was no shortage of serious birth pains. First of all, the hour-long delays at the opening of the grounds need to be cut down or scrapped altogether, the system needs to be friendlier for multi-day visitors by introducing wristbands (scanning barcodes on tickets is the dumbest thing I’ve ever witnessed), and the food offering needs improving, since leaving the festival grounds wasn’t allowed. If they fix just these shortcomings to begin with, Belgrade Calling can have a bright future, and its call will surely be worth answering!
Setlist
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
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