August 23rd - Loreley Yard festival, Loreley DE 

11:00 AM

The day starts pretty bad. I'd told my wake-up caller to wake me at 9:00 so I could get to the festival pretty early to see some other bands and stuff :-) but it turned out otherwise. 11 'o clock it was and things could only get better from now (at least, that's what I thought) Anyway, I jumped into my pants (literally) washed myself and drove off to Lorely. According to the routeplanner the trip would take about 3,5 hours. (my parents think I'm getting more insane the older I get :-)) Anyway at least my driving knowledge improves with the months, cause with the last tourtrip in mind (read somewhere below on the messageboard) I drove the whole way without making one single detour. Yes, I'm good!! :D

2:30 PM

I arrive in Lorely after transferring the Rhein river with a boat ferry that takes cars over the river. The view on the city St.-Goarshausen (which is close to Lorely) was awesome! Nice town with beautiful mountainous surroundings and a lot of old castles and houses. A really nice atmosphere! Then, about 10 min later I arrived at the festival. The Yard festival is a really cosy one. It's in the middle of fields and small hills and the festival place itself is in a sort of old amphitheater style like thing. (like with stairs getting up towards the end. )

Everything nice so far...But then the entrance: "you're not allowed to take a videocamera sir" I was like: .."but I do have permission from the band, so what is the problem then?" Anyway I was allowed to take photos, but I couldn't take a videocamera in. But as my digital videocamera and my photocamera are one, I couldn't either take pics nor shoot a video :(.

But... it wouldn't have been me if I hadn't smuggled in my MD to record the show :-). I hadn't mentioned anything at the entrance about audiotaping, so they didn't know I was going to. So, I was excited to get the show at least on MD. But then: Bad luck number 3: When I checked my MD after the show, it seemed to have stopped recording for some reason after the first song...so I didn't have a recording, nor a video nor pictures to share with y'all...:(.

Back to when I arrived: a band called Sizzla was playing and I don't know if you know them, but they're a great reggae band...so the vibes at the festival were pretty ok, except for the crowd. I haven't seen so few people at a festival ever...But I can't put a number on it cause I'm a bad guesser (does this word exist in English? but I *guess* you know what I mean. :P) Fortunately I had a nice chat with Dave before the show, so the day was getting better and better.

4:30 PM

Spearhead comes on stage while everyone was sitting on the benches of the old Amphitheatre. If there were 5 people that knew Spearhead over there it must have been much.( and that's no exaggeration :)) Everyone seemed to look like: 'I have no clue about what I'm going to hear now.' And my first impression got confirmed. During the first songs people were just sitting there and looking around. There were a few people standing up and dancing (like me :D) But I must say, the band did a really good job to convince the people over there of their quality. After 'Yes I will' and the reggae version of 'People in tha middle' (probably the people were expecting a reggae band as it was reggae festival after all) more people stood up and danced. The frowns (with the look like: What is this, no reggae?) disappeared and a whole lot of people were smiling and dancing. Especially the last part with the trio 'Sometimes, Sleng Teng and Taxi Radio' convinced a large part of the 'small' audience. So after the show I felt a lot better than before the show, thanks guys for making me smile again!

When the show was over Michael jumped into the audience (nothing special you'd say, he does that every time), but this time he was carrying a sort of a cow bell and a stick to hit the bell and he was singing Taxi Radio while walking through the crowd. For about a few minutes the crowd kept singing 'Ohweeoohh Taxi Radio' while Michael was hitting the bell!! Nice nice...

This is the setlist they played (I mean I have one on paper from Michael, the friendly soundguy, but as you know the paper setlist isn't the same as the actual played setlist most of the time, I'll try to memorise the songs they really played. Here I go:

01. We don't stop
02. What I be
03. Pray for grace
04. Stay Human
05. Yes I will
06. People in the middle (reggae style)
07. Everyone deserves music
08. Bomb the world
09. Sometimes
10. Sleng Teng
11. Taxi Radio

Johan