Natural High

On 27 August, I would see Kula Shaker live for the third time, first time on a festival. Needless to say, I was looking forward to it a lot! They played at the Pukkelpop festival which is a good two hour drive from where I live so we had to get up very early to be there in time to see or hear as many bands as possible. :-) ....which meant, getting up at 6.30am! But it promised to be a beautiful day with lots of sunshine so that really made up for it.

Kula Shaker were only on from 6.10-7.05 pm so in the mean time Fabienne, Benny, Steve and I listened to the lyrical ballads of such bands as Biohazard. (LOL) We also inspected the t-shirts and noticed that they didn't have any new ones to buy. It were the same ones as at the gig we went to in April. Apart from that, I had a close look at the message board for any news of signing sessions, but sadly they didn't do any.

Fabienne and I dancing along with the merry tunes of Biohazard ;-)

Finally, Silverchair had finished their set and it was time to invade the territory in front of the main stage. Fabienne, Benny and I got hold of a very nice spot, third row on the right side of the stage, in the middle. Next to me, there was the passage way for the roadies and cameramen, so I had a very good view. The drumkit was rolled on stage with Pauli sitting on it which was quite a funny sight. In the mean time, a guy had approached me, pointing to my t-shirt, asking me if I was a big fan. 'Yes'. He told me that he heard them for the very first time during a radioprogram. But he had never managed to see them live and so he asked me what were they like? Well, uhm....quite brilliant! ;-) We had a bit of a chat about the band, their history and the where the name comes from. By this time, the people started to show up in front of the stage and it was only a matter of minutes before they would go on stage! A bit before 6.10 pm they came on and the crowd (for some weird reason, especially the left side of the crowd) were cheering like mad! Crispian was wearing lovely burgundy velvet trousers, a black top with long sleeves and converse shoes, looking radiant as ever. Lonz was wearing a black long sleeved top as well and his golden trousers, Pauli was wearing a blue t-shirt and Jay was wearing his red converse trainers, dark trousers and his silver shirt and again loads of glitter on his eyes. I have to say that I have a suspicion that he's in fact a test person for a cosmetics company! ;-)

Crispian started by saying that they were a bit of out practise and they thought they could come to Belgium to practise a bit. Fine by me, although you wouldn't have said they were out of practise! They kicked off with Hey Dude followed by Hurry on Sundown of which Crispian said it was a very old song. During one of these songs, some guy was busy at the side of the stage and Crispian got irritated first of all because his guitar didn't sound the way he wanted it to and because that man was obviously getting on his nerves and he started shouting with one hell of a dangerous face : what are you fucking doing there????? The man at the side quickly eloped, probably fearing some curse or other! :-) After this, Stig had to help Dodge because he 'had a hole in his trousers'. (I nearly volunteered to sow it up....hehe) That was quickly fixed and then they really got into it with Great Hosannah which was as usual totally awesome. I have to admit that this is by now one of my favourite live songs. By now, some VIP's had come to stand beside me in the passage way, including Herman Scheuremans (organizer Rock Werchter), Noel Steen ( former organizer Rock Torhout), politician Johan Vanhecke and his journalist wife Els. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves a lot.

Picture taken with my dispatchable camera (so quality not that good)

During the set, Pauli looked our way and seemed to have a glance of recognition in his eyes (oh dear!) and I started to wave at him and Benny joined in upon which Pauli stopped drumming with one hand and waved at us!!! Oh glory. :-) He kept on smiling and I gave him a big thumbs up. After this they also played the following songs but I'm not sure whether they are in the correct order : Mystical Machine Gun, SOS (utterly ROCKIN'), 303 (a bit slow in my opinion). The sun was shining on them and they started to get better and better and sweatier and sweatier. Benny and I were dancing like mad, leaving poor Fabienne in the midst of all this insanity. :-) By now, the whole crowd was into it and Crispian often encouraged us to join us clapping and stuff. Much more than usual. He even did a funny dance during Govinda at the end apart from jumping and balancing on the drumkit as usual. But what they also did, was having lots of mantra's which was incredible! At some point, Radhe Radhe started, followed by Sound of Drums and I'm pretty sure that it was this song that ended with a beautiful mantra (I think for Radha), which went on into a pumping Narayan. Breathtaking. During the mantra, Crispian was doing his graceful handmovements that left me almost hypnotized....What is it about him?? I don't know and I don't care but his impact live is overwhelming.

Anyway, they also played Hush and Tattva which Crispian dedicated to the 6 million baby cows that have to be killed in the UK. Here, in Belgium, we also know a lot about animals (chickens and pigs) having to be killed at the moment so I thought it was very thoughtful of them. 'Maybe this is the price we have to pay for progress', he asked himself....The last two songs were Last Farewell and Govinda, again with a lovely mantra. After this, they walked off with lots of cheering coming from the crowd...we want more...we want more....sadly, they didn't come back. But they had left me with eyes wide open and a grin from ear to ear. Yes, I was in that position of a natural high again.....I turned around and the guy who I talked to before was also very impressed....we all were. Thank you, guys, and see you back very soon, I hope!

Be subversive and prosper....

Lady K

picture taken by G. Knoeps (Humo)

What Humo (magazine and sponsor of the festival) said afterwards....

Paul Weller sings with Deep Purple : that's how Kula Shaker sounds, and on paper I now should vomit spontaneously. But I see the best real popconcert of the whole weekend. They played 4 great songs at the least (eh???) and a young god stands on the stage, and let's get one thing straight :
somebody who has something against India either watches too much CNN, or is busy with heritage problems, or is afraid for the man who was crucified. Que? Silence? Check your head!

Well, the message seems to be clear for gvn, who wrote this! :-)