Odd Future
“Suz, my friend got a new job. She won’t be able to travel to Barcelona, so she would give you her ticket for free!” That is how I decided within shortest time to go to Barcelona to attend the Primavera Sound Festival – which is indeed no secret tip anymore, since they have The National, Caribou, The Flaming Lips, PJ Harvey, Interpol, Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes, Salem, Odd Future, Pulp and many more playing. My festival report, pics and favourite festival songs after the jump.
Try to get ready for a festival when sharing an appartement with 5 other girls. “Where is my shower gel?” “Should I wear the skirt or the dress?” “Have you seen my mascara? It’s been here on the shelve.” It goes like that every day. This has been my first Primavera Festival – unlike my crazy flatmates, who go there every year. Since I mixed festival and sightseeing it has surely been no wellness holiday, seriously!
Day 1: involved a lot of sightseeing and queing. A queue to change the online tickets into wristbands, an even longer queue for the press counter, lining up to get in at all! After waiting for 3 hours we missed all acts that were playing at the old Poble Espagnol, a beautiful castle with a big yard – all acts, but Caribou. Although the Caribou hype is actually over, the atmosphere was a magic one and I had found my first can’t get it out of my head – melody, many others should follow.
Day 2: No sleep, more sightseeing und the first real festival day on the massive area by the sea, visited by a total of 130.000 people. Extremely stylish people, most of them English, and the whole scene governed by beards. It seemed that every guy attending the festival had a beard. A beard in the face and a beer in the hand. After jumping around to Big Boi from Outkast, dreaming away and making marriage plans for me and the frontman of Interpol, I had to rest in order to be fit for Salem, one of my favourite bands, that I missed playing in Berlin. There they were, with thick fog covering the stage. Unbelievable music from outta space and shivers down the spine, ahh, Salem. And one song I couldn’t get out of my brain cells: King Nights
Day 3: we’re wasted. The girls put on make up with shivering hands, Sophia has to do the eye make up for all of us. We’re in a respectably good mood, despite our headache. At the festival, everybody is waiting for Pulp, the main act. Iam feeling dizzy and head for the chill area. People sleeping around me, I lay down and watch a balloon flying above us. My friend Mag comes along and dances wildly between the sleeping people. Later there is a dj playing, rather pathetic dance music, but Iam jumping around as a child or as the tourist I was, in a foreign city. It’s perfect.
Day4: we are so tired that we’re almost fit again. It’s the day of the big soccer match and the Placa Catalunya has just been”cleaned”. We’re heading early to the festival and sit on the gras just like thousand others around us. You would find political banners all over the city and the festival’s walls and most bands start their gigs with political messages. Shivers down our spines. The Fleet Foxes are playing and Iam thinking: “just like that must have been Woodstock”. Well, at least a bit.
Later on Pj Harvey is playing and she is still as beautiful as she used to be. But the best act of the day is Odd Future, just because of their show. The band starts with a neverending curse “motherfucker yo, motherfucker, ni… bitch, fuck you, motherfucker”. Just repeat it several times and watch the frontman who without warning jumps into the crowd – and no one catches him! Man, he was pissed off. At the end of their gig they call up the audience to enter the stage and demolish the equipment. Watch out if you intend to book Odd Future, man!
On Sunday we trot into the park of Gaudi, we are doing pseudo sightseeing without having slept and try to look as neat as possible. It wouldn’t work though.
