Rock Werchter

Last week I was in Belgium for the Rock Werchter music festival. Here is a summary of what I found

Best Band – The National

Great set from a band I knew virtually nothing about, even though they’ve apparently been going for a few years now. They sounded like a souped up version of Tindersticks (If you don’t know who Tindersticks are they sound bit like Vic Reeves’ club singer impression). Fantastic.

Runners up : Grinderman, Radiohead

Best Song – Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve

Caught me by surprise this one, didn’t think I liked this song, but there you go. Almost made me feel proud to from old Blighty, Gawd bless ‘er. The new Sigur Ros song with all the clapping was good too, no idea what it was called, probably something like Smjörið er smátt hrært út í þangað (Running through the glade, where the faeries sometimes come)

Best Costume – Jonsi Birgisson (Sigur Ros)

Looking like the bastard son of Adam Ant and Edward Scissorhands, there was only one person ever in the running for this contest. Unfortunately can’t find a pic to put here, but there are pics on the Rock Werchter website if you care enough to take a look… (Go to Report->Day 3 -> Sigur Ros). He also probably won nicest/most unassuming frontman award, we liked Jonsi.

Best facial hair – Grinderman

A hotly contested category this one, with a disappointing showing from Kings of Leon, who were expected to have it sewn up, but were well off the pace. Strong showings from Justice (Great muttonchops), and Sigur Ros (The keyboardist had a marvellous Dali-esque moustache, and could easily make a career being a mid 19th century dastardly villain if Sigur Ros ever goes down the pan). But Nick Cave’s horseshoe moustache, coupled with Warren Ellis’ Grizzly Adams style clinched it for Grinderman.

Worst moment – Counting Crows

I had a bit of misfortune in that I caught the first 4 songs of the Counting Crows set. At the time I didn’t think I could like this band any less. I now like this band even less. Midway through the third or fourth song, some dirge, the lead singer started to force himself to cry, it just looked ridiculous, at no point did you believe that he was crying due to the song meaning that much to him, it was just a piece of theatre. A rubbish piece of theatre. In this time of economic strife, please don’t spend your money on buying Counting Crows albums, they have enough money. And if you’re considering seeing them, please don’t, instead, pay me the price of the ticket and I’ll slap you round the face a few times, which is a little more fun (at least it is for me anyway).

Best Dancing – Over and Over by Hot Chip

We had a great jump around to this tune. Simple as that.

Worst excuse – Pete Doherty

Babyshambles didn’t turn up to play, and it turned out that the reason apparently was that Pete Doherty had to take care of his pregnant cat. If by his pregnant cat he means smack, and by take care of he means inject, then I am probably inclined to believe him…

This concludes my little awards show, but if anyone has any other categories they wish me to arbitrarily allocate a winner to, I’d be more than happy to oblige.