Best music festival I've been to, which of course isn't saying much, but it was still good. I went for the last 2 days, I couldn't justify the first day because of time, money, and the fact that it didn't really have many bands I wanted to see. The remaining two days were full of bands that I was very interested in seeing, as well as a bunch I'd never heard of. The festival was in this small town south of Hamburg, a couple miles outside of town.

Apocalyptica
Picture your standard heavy metal band member on stage. He's got hair down to his waist, he's wearing leather pants and no shirt, and he's head banging violently to the beat of the music. Now picture him holding a cello, and you've got Apocalyptica. It's amazing how well cellos (with the help of a drummer, which in my limited knowledge may be a recent addition) can well...rock. For the unintitated, Apocalyptica is a band consisting of four guys with cellos playing their version of heavy metal. They got popular doing covers of Metallica songs sans vocals, then more recently doing original stuff. They put on an excellent show that never got boring, a feat when you're doing an instrumental only show. They did have a vocalist come on for two songs, but I didn't paricularly like her. Having someone singing seemed to lessen the impact of their music. I think one of the reasons I like Apocalyptica is that they remove the lyrics from heavy metal, which very often come across as cheesy when they're trying to sound sinister. In the case of the guest singer, it just didn't seem to fit. That and she came across as rather silly from the stuff she said between songs. Her aside, their music was great live, and they were rather entertaining as they don't sit still with their cellos for very long.

Björk
I had no idea what to expect from a Björk show, coming from the type of music she plays. The lineup consisted of a string section(about 8 people I think), two guys on electronics, and two woman moving around playing a harp, keyboards, accordian, and various other things. Björk herself came out in white makeup and these weird green fans on the side of her head. The music was wonderful, it worked really well live. The contrast between the harsh electronic sounds and the softness of the strings was really evident at this volume and it was a great effect. On several of the songs, there were visuals going on on the screen behind them. That combined with the fact that the show eclipsed most of the sunset, made for a very surreal show.

Massive Attack
Another band where I really didn't know what to expect from their live show. My knowledge of the band is fairly limited, other than having listened to their first three albums. I like a lot of their stuff I really like, but on each of them, there's always several songs I don't really care for. This turned out to not be an issue, as they pretty much played only my favorite songs. These may have just been the songs that were popular, but I've never heard them on the radio so I don't know. The band has 4 or 5 singers who have varying parts in different songs, and only the ones that sang were on stage during a particular song. The music was excellent, it was kind of mesmerizing. The show reminded me of the Tricky show I saw a couple years ago (which makes sense, seeing as Tricky used to be in Massive Attack) They had a light show going on behind the band showing mostly what seemed to be politcal statements, most of which I couldn't get because they seemed to have translated a lot of it to German for this festival. I did get a lot of anti-US/war sentiment and a bit of cautionary information overload stuff (internet stuff). While the politics part seemed a bit heavy handed, I still really enjoyed the show.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Although I think the Bosstones put on a good show, it didn't quite have the energy I was hoping for (keep in mind that any criticisms I have may be due to the fact that I was very tired by the time they went on). Everything was real upbeat and they were really fun, I just kind of got the feeling they were just going through the motions. Still, it was highly entertaining to hear a bunch of their songs live. That and I swear that Dicky Barrett (the lead singer), looks like Colin Quinn.

Counting Crows:
It's amusing when you can tell a band is tired of playing their old songs. Adam Duritz is the type of singer who puts a hell of a lot of emotion into his singing, so it seemed obvious to me in his treatment of Mr. Jones that the song had lost it's meaning to him, at least live. Not that the song was bad, it was just the song that everyone in the audience sang along with. This seemed true with other songs from their first album, although not as apparent. He seemed to put a lot more into the songs off the new album. Of course, this being the first time I've seen them live, I could be totally off base. None of this detracted from the show however, it was a great time. Adam Duritz is like a sad clown on stage, half the time dead serious, then bouncing around like a little kid. The rest of the band was also fairly entertaining, especially the two guitarists, who seemed to be having more fun than anybody.

Underworld
Other than catching a brief bit of The Crystal Method last year at EndFest, I had never seen a concert from a band doing any sort of electronica. As a result, I was rather looking forward to this, not to mention Underworld is one of my favorite bands. Underworld consists of two guys (used to be three, but one left in between their last 2 albums). One of them sings on most of the songs, while the other works the soundboard. They came out unannounced and just went right into their set with no fanfare; there wasn't even a noticable transition between their music and the music that was playing in between shows. Karl Hyde was incredibly animated, he never stopped moving, dancing, and above all smiling. Rick Smith was silent, but with his head ever bobbing to the music. I thought the songs worked really well live, although I always wonder how much is actually 'live'. They managed to vary the songs enough from the album versions to keep it interesting. Unfortunately, a large portion of the crowd wasn't really into it (they were waiting for Radiohead to come on) and that kind of detracted from it.

Radiohead
While I was waiting for Radiohead to come on, I was constantly crushed by the throngs of people trying to get close to the stage. The crushing of course got worse when they actually came on, especially when they played an upbeat song. Still, it was worth it to be that close. The show was great, I'd heard good things about their live act and it did not disappoint. Thom Yorke looked more than a bit crazy and he had some earpieces on that made him look like a deranged elf. I say all of this as a good thing. The extensive light show certainly helped, and made the whole band look surreal. The music was phenomenal, several of the songs having been reworked to play live, to great effect. Also Thom Yorke's voice is just great at that volume. Excellent end to the festival.