We are in the middle of the OpenAir Festival Season. I went to HydePark Calling today, mainly to see Peter Gabriel. I arrived at the Festival area shortly after five, and although there were a lot of people there, my first impressions were still that I have been at better OpenAir festivals in the past. Huge are, but not too many activities. Anyway. The first act we saw were “The Feeling“. I have to admit that I never heart of them before, but actually enjoyed it! A refreshing sound
from a young, energetic band. They really enjoyed there time on stage!
The next act on the main stage were “Crowded House“. As expected, great fun! A lot of the old songs and a few new ones! Some good old memories….
But unfortunatly, well, we are still in London, the worst thing happened. Although dark clouds were hanging over London the whole day, it didn’t really rain a lot, with the execption of a few short showers, but the sun always managed to get through again quickly. That was about to change during the last third of the Crowded House concert. As if it was the revenge of the weather gods…Neil Finn (front man of Crowded House) used the F-word against the threatening dark clouds, and the result was that it started to rain..well, really rain! Within minutes we were soaking wet. The shower, combinded with thunder and lightnings lasted for 15 minutes…
After Crowded House finished, we were on teh point of leaving, without even waiting for Peter Gabriel to start, since it was still pouring down…ob teh way to the exit we decided to go into one of the tents (Stage 3), since, although it was already packed with people, just when we passed by they allowed some more poeple in. Well, again a positive surprise. We saw the last 15 minutes of Seth Lakeman. Never heard of him before, but certainly worth listening to.
Wehn we got out of the tent, it had stopped raining, so we changed our mind and went back to the mainstage to see Peter Gabriel! What a disappointment! Terrible selection of songs..I didn’t know most of the songs. He explained tha the selection of songs was based upon a list of songs chosen by visitors of his website. Well, I guess only real hardcore fans were participating in that poll. You could clearly notice that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know most of the songs. Anyway, we decided to leave in the middle after an hour into the concert, since it started to rain again, and we really didn’t enjoy it that much.
Still a great afternoon/evening. No regrets!