Nostalgia by the sea...
If there is a festival with a better USP than Primavera, then I haven’t found it. Taking over various points around Barcelona, it’s kind of like SXSW crossed with Glastonbury where you spend your days hanging out on the beach and your night’s wandering around a picturesque grotto, checking out bands and bumping into hyper Spanish kids.
Traditionally, Primavera is also the beginning of Europe’s festival season and acts as a launch pad for a lot of this year’s break-through bands, meaning that most of the people on those ‘Hot for 2011’ lists you were reading in January are here. Add to that the whole music conference side of things, and you have a melting pot of hype, rumor, counter rumor and general feeling of excitement that the next big thing could be just round the corner.
After saying all that, by far the biggest buzz of this year’s festival had to be the promise of Pulp playing their first major gig in something like 25 years. They did not disappoint, with a stampede of people packing into the main stage to watch them perform a greatest hits set infused with all usual chip-shop glamour that we all know and love. Always one to play up to a crowd, the biggest cheer comes when the band play ‘Common People’, with Jarvis dedicating it to the recently evicted protesters from the camp in the Plaza Catalunya, and joining the protest by declaring himself "indignado! (which means outraged if your Spanish isn’t too good)
In fact the whole festival had a slight whiff of nostalgia this year. Up in the old Olympic village, Echo and the Bunnymen ran through their seminal debut album ‘Crocodiles’ in its entirety, while elsewhere, John Cale performed ‘Paris 1913’ and PIL, Pere Ubu, Mogwai and the Monochrome Set all playing out to packed out and very receptive crowds.
It wasn’t all old bands doing classic albums however, as always Prima left plenty of room for new blood. As you’d probably expect, Caribou’s slightly Balearic take on experimental noise pop went down like a naked guy at a house-party, but I was quite impressed that British bands like Male Bonding and Yuck also enjoyed pretty hefty crowds. It was also cool to see Pissed Jeans, a band that only plays to 400 people in London lay the smack down on the massive Ray Ban stage. Who knew sludgy hardcore could be so popular, huh?
For all of the good bands, some of this year’s innovations didn’t work quite so well. You still had to queue up for everything, with the line for day tickets often looking like one of those POW movies you see on the Discovery Channel. Even more annoying, the top-up card system that was meant to replace the token system of last year broke down after an hour leaving plenty of irate people unable to buy any beer for most of the festival. Like a Pussycat Doll, Primavera wants you to spend all of your money on it, but being told to put money on a card and then asking people to take out yet more cash was too much. It was OK for us, as we were upgraded to free-drink heaven, but if I’d put 200 on a piece of plastic, only for someone to tell me I couldn’t use it, I’d have been pretty pissed off as well.
Break-downs aside, the general vibe of festival itself couldn’t have been any better, with almost everyone there being friendly, welcoming and up for a party. The sheer amounts of commersating hugs we got after the Barcelona tonked United in the football was so alien to what we’re usually confronted with that it left us all a bit emotional. Yet again, it proves that when you get out of the UK and leave the yobby knobs behind, humanity can seem fairly nice.
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Photo by Chris Fenner
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