aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
‘GIGS FROM YESTERYEAR, WHEN I WAS YOUNG + PRETTY AS A PICTURE’
# 03: Pinkpop Festival – Landgraaf, Netherlands (1997)
dEUS
Morphine
Eels
Dear friends,
75,- Deutschmarks equal € 38,- today, that’s £ 33,- or $ 45,-. Considering inflation it’s € 65,- (£ 57,- or $ 77) today.
The point I’m trying to make is: it is a considerable amount, and certainly it has been one back in 1997, a time when I was always skint, because by and large I lived my life in the many fine pubs and clubs in my hometown, Aachen, although already being 29 years of age. So what on earth might have driven me to invest this money back then is a total mystery to me this morning – I swear to God I have no memories at all of having attended this festival, so I had to look up the line-up:
Op maandag 19 mei 1997 staat Beck dan ook op het Zuidpodium van Pinkpop, waar die dag ook Fountains Of Wayne, Silverchair, The Gathering, Kula Shaker, Osdorp Posse en Live.
Op het Noordpodium: Bush (Headliner), dEUS, Counting Crows, Tracy Bonham, Supergrass, Eels en Nada Surf.
In addition to those apparently Descendents, Dodgy, Atari Teenage Riot and Morphine were there, I can’t figure out which stage they played though.
Perhaps I went there out of curiosity, because Pinkpop is the oldest festival worldwide in terms of continuousness. Reading is even older (they started in 1961), but there were no shows in ’84 and ’85. So Landgraaf’s Pinkpop ran from 1970 to today, only interrupted by Covid recently. Basically all the great bands played there, Peel compered it for some time in the late 70s, and they are still going strong today (this year’s headliners for example: The Cure), so looking back I can’t quite understand why it took me so long to attend this festival. I mean, you can go from Aachen to Landgraaf by bike, so travel would not have been an obstruction.
To be honest, I first cursed Little Loser for drawing just another ticket I have forgotten all about, but the more I read about the event, I imagine it must have been rather a great day with an impressive line-up. There are many great videos of this day on yt, and I spent quite some time watching them, trying desperately to recognise my younger self somewhere in the crowd – to no avail, of course! But the bands were great to watch (again), that’s for sure!
In hindsight, if I had to go again there tomorrow, I’d go for Morphine really – they are just outstandingly brilliant, I reckon. Second and third would be Eels and dEUS. The ‘big’ names, well, today I’d say you can take them or leave them, but apparently I have witnessed the three combos mentioned above. And let’s be honest: if it weren’t for this series, my memory of this would probably never have come back, right?
Either way, let’s have some music, shall we? Again, even if there is one band or one song which one of you has never heard and said band or song meets with your approval, my mission is accomplished. I mean, I know it’s boring old crap for the bulk of you, but there you are … it has never been my claim to settle your demand for new stuff, you see …
Fountains Of Wayne – ‘I Want An Alien For Christmas’ (’97)
Silverchair – ‘Straight Lines’ (’07)
dEUS – ‘Hotellounge (Be The Death Of Me)’ (’94)
Tracy Bonham – ‘Mother, Mother’ (’96)
Supergrass – ‘Grace’ (’02)
Eels – ‘The Sound Of Fear’ (’99)
Descendents – ‘All’ (’87) [this one is EXCELLENT for dancing to, in fact!]
Morphine – ‘Cure For Pain’ (’93)
As usual, enjoy!
Dirk
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 