During the long “road trip” from the airport to the festival, Artrocker is horrified, and yet a little bit thrilled, to discover that the Norwegian driver has inserted his ‘Classic Rock’ DVD compilation into the player for our viewing (and listening) pleasure.
Not only that, but he precedes this act with what we can only presume is some kind of local ritual: he holds up the cover of the DVD (complete with archaic/Germanic font, as was popular among certain heavy metal bands of the late eighties/early nineties) and proceeds to wave it about in our faces. Needless to say, the mini-bus is still stationary at this point.
Then we hit the road - and the hard metal. ‘Old Skool of Rock’ it’s called. All the greats are there: Poison, Cinderalla, Scorpions, Motley Crue and, erm, Ugly Kid Joe. Horror upon horror unfolds, as poodle-hair, motor bikes, guns, cages, ripped jeans, girls in bikinis, girls in frilly underwear, girls in cages, girls in handcuffs, girls on motorbikes and girls pole-dancing, assail us. We (Artrocker and fellow delicate music hacks) are forced to concede that they just don’t make videos like that any more.
Eventually, we beg the driver to make it stop, and the unpleasantness on the screen is begrudgingly replaced with ‘Ice Age 2’. We are calmed.
And so we finally arrive at Hove, allegedly the world’s first carbon-neutral festival. And we arrive to a complete lack of controversy whatsoever about JAY-Z headlining the main stage here, just before he heads over to old Blighty for our own famous enormo-fest. Eventually he plays to around 20 thousand utterly non-shocked Norwegians. Unfortunately, we are shocked – by the banality of the music.
In fact, the nearest we get to any kind of controversy is LES SAVY FAV singer Tim Harrington, who gets on stage and declares to the nonplussed locals that he is now to be known as “Jay C”, or, simply, “JC”. He goes on to say that he has “99 problems, plus one small one with a lady – it’s my mother”.
On top of this, he variously: jumps several times into the audience area, takes his trousers off, bares his belly, steals a giant video camera from a TV guy’s arms, puts on a blonde wig, wraps bandages around his head (invisible man-style) and steals a bike from an audience-member, riding it around the arena while singing through his cordless mike.
Artrocker is in a state of shock. Well, until tomorrow at least…
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