Last Friday Irma and I went to Kilafors in Sweden to attend Rockweekend. We were there for the sole purpose of seeing Chickenfoot (see my review). But I figured I should share my thoughts on the festival experience in general as well.

Now, we didn’t camp out at the festival or anything, we are way too lazy and in need of comfortable sleeping arrangements, so we booked a hotel. Before we left for the festival it had been raining but it was clearing up. I don’t know what we were thinking, since we actually considered wearing sneakers, but luckily we opted for boots. That could have been a total disaster, because as we got to the festival site, we discovered that it was basically a mud-covered field, due to 2 days of rain!

Arch Enemy were playing as we got there. Not our kind of thing, so we made our way to the food area, and consumed some very questionable but tasty pizza. Our main source of amusement was watching all the people that were drunk off their asses, and had consequently proceeded to fall on said ass. Some were covered in mud from head to toe! We even saw a guy dressed only in a t-shirt and underwear that said “The Hulk”!

We made our way back towards the stage past the open-air urinals(!!!), and finally managed to find a mud-free spot from where we watched the end of Arch Enemy’s set. I should also mention that there was a water hose in the festival area that people would use to hose off the mud from themselves. Now I’m no expert, but I would think that if you’re covered in mud and proceed to spray water on yourself, isn’t whatever mud that stays on you going to harden into some sort of crust? Not to mention the obligatory pneumonia you’d get from walking around soaking wet in 10 degrees Celcius.

So we stayed in this dry spot and watched German rocker Udo Dirkschneider. Man, I love saying that name! German i such a beautiful language. Aside from all the weirdos we ran in to during the evening, next to us was the cutest little girl. She couldn’t have been more than 5-6 years old, and was standing there with her long haired heavy metal fan of a father. She was decked out in a studded necklace and braclets and wearing huge pink ear-muffs. She seemed to be having a great time and kept doing the devil horns sign. I think it’s so cool with parents who takes their children to concerts – that’s the best education right there! Halfway through Mr. Dirkschneider’s set we started making our way towards the stage in preparation for Chickenfoot, and since I’ve already written about that, this seems like an appropriate place to wrap things up.

We both had a great time at Rockweekend, and really enjoyed the whole festival experience. Now we won’t hesitate to go to a concert just because it’s a festival gig anymore. As long as we can stay in a hotel and be dry and comfortable at night I’m game. But next time we’ll make sure to buy rubber boots so we don’t have to ruin another set of winter boots with mud.

Written by Daniel | Posted in Music Musings