HALDERN POP 2006 3/4/5 augustus 2006
Rees-Haldern, Deutschland




WEDNESDAY
I went to Anneke's place, we had some dinner (where I already denied my vegetarian diet) and watched a couple of episodes of The Mighty Boosh before we went to bed.

THURSDAY

We woke up extremely early (5 AM) and after we showered and all, we took the bus to Amsterdam and then the train to Duisburg.

We had plenty of time left at the station because we had to wait for Ines, Franzi and Marleena so we had something to drink..



Then we got traintickets, the others arrived and we took the train to Haldern, we had to switch trains again because this one wouldn't stop at Haldern so we ended up at a station somewhere. Anneke and I got new traintickets because the bitch in Duisburg gave us the wrong ones (okay we were stupid enough not to check the dates) so another €9,90 down the drain, boohooo..



We were called 'all really beautiful ladies'... tssk, tell us something we don't know, lol, and we had a cheese fight. In the meantime we all admired Anneke's Zoo magazine and then finally we took the train to Haldern

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When we arrived in Haldern, our bags were driven to the festival, quel service! We had to take ourselves there by foot though, and we enjoyed a tasty Diebels apple lemon beer on the way. When we got there, we put up our tents and nearly got hurt by flying hammers..

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(the Didz-mouth returns!)

After relaxing for a while we got bored, so we decided to go the festival area. When we got there we saw a tourbus and: William (Haldern-)Rees Mystery Jets! We talked to him for a bit (not me though, I didn't know what to say) and he signed Franzi's selfmade tshirt.

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DU BIST DER HAMMER! Quote of the weekend.

We sat down at the benches, and after a while we decided to go and stand in the queue for the Spiegelzelt. We got in after about half an hour and we were amazed by the interior of the tent, it's really one of the most beautiful festival tents I've ever seen, they should make it a permanent venue!







We got the best spots in the front row and the first band to perform was The Waking Eyes, they were quite good, but sometimes they were taking it a bit too 'classic rock'. I was scared they were going to do a drum solo, but that didn't happen, fortunately. They did do a cover of Come Together by The Beatles though. Some pics:







After that: Zootime! Mystery Jets! There were a couple of frustrated roadies building up their stuff, but after a while they kicked off with.. The Boy Who Ran Away. Okay I was already mentally preprared for that, but it was still weird. They played the usual stuff (Diamonds, Alas Agnes, Dennis...) but also Inside Four Walls and the new song called Half In Love With Elizabeth, which I loved! I made a little video, watch it here if you're interested.

Kai called William a dumbass when he couldn't find his 'shakers' and then he (Will) dedicated Diamonds In The Dark to him (Kai) because it's a love song.. and Kai poured some water over Blaines head and then he called him a fucking bastard.. anyway, great fun. Too bad they didn't play Quite A Delight, I would've loved to hear that. When we asked, William seriously considered it, but the rest didn't, bummer.



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Henry!!


This pic is EVIL, Will looks dead or something



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Kapil the king of cool





Btw, how weird is this? Google 'haldern pop mystery jets pictures' and the first result is... HUH?. (I just saw it changed, but it was my MySpace profile...)

I managed to get their setlist... well actually Franzi and I both grabbed it, but she let me have it. THANKS FRANZI!

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After the Jets we saw Martha Wainwright



She was quite lovely, but the circumstances were a bit bad (too hot, too tired) so we left after a couple of songs and went back to the tent.

FRIDAY

In the morning we went to the local supermarket and got some food and drinks


I love nice yoghurt

When we went to the festival area, we saw the last song of Daniel Benjamin in the spiegel tent, really beautiful, everybody was so quiet and it was only early in the afternoon.

After that we waited for the mainstage-area to open. The first band we saw were The Veils.







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They were good, but had to do with some technical difficulties. Finn (the singer) broke a string, but continued to play but when something went wrong with the vocals he threw his guitar away, shouted "Fucking fuck" and left the stage. This situation was kinda funny, because the rest of the band didn't really know what to do. He came back eventually and they played some more songs with a new guitar.



The next band was Morning Runner







They were okay, but somehow I expected more of them. They sounded a bit too much like Starsailor and Keane and all those English bands. The blue eyeshadow of the singer was really distinguishing though!

The Zutons were fook'n great! The only bad thing about it that all of a sudden there were evil cameras EVERYWHERE. They were really annoying and blocking the view the whole time. And during the first three of four songs there were also all these photographers, so you first saw 38 other people, and then, oh wait! There's also a band on stage! 5 people playing music! Good music!




(the actual view)



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She's so pretty, but unbelievable skinny

And then the rain came down...



We Are Scient(olog)ists started and the rain just kept on coming down, they were really good again, but I couldn't really focus on them because of the rain and the mud and the fucking camera's.







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Mud people...

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Me, looking like fuckin' E.T. here

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Franzi, me, Anneke

Keith came into the audience THREE TIMES and since we were right in front of him, he came to us every time. The second time he even climbed over the barrier and joined all the people dancing in the mud. It was sooo cool of him to do that! He said something before like "I wish I could join you guys" but everyone was like "yeah, whatever" but he did it. Sure, he could take a shower afterwards, but he's my hero now.

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In the yellow circle :P





During the last time he came in he also let us sing the "ooohs" of The Great Escape!

Keith also wrote this blogthingie on the NME website and he uses the word scallywag. How cool is that. And this...



And this is how we looked after the gig..







Anneke and I went to the tent to drop off our stuff, like our cameras and all, so from here there are no more pictures I took. Except for this one.



When we came back, The Cooper Temple Clause were playing. According to the festival booklet, Didz was still in the band but he was hiding behind a keyboard or something. It was still raining, I was kind of freezing but they were quite good actually. Better than I expected.

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Because we wanted to go back to the tent, we didn't see their whole show. Back there, I could finally take of my wet clothes and slip 'into something more comfortable' (lol). Final Fantasy was the only thing I still wanted to see for that day, but since he was playing at 3 AM and I didn't want to get into my wet shoes and jeans again, I decided not to go and go to sleep instead.

SATURDAY

Sunshine! Back into muddy shoes, get some coffee and we're ready to go. Unfortunately my camera was still blurry, because of the condensation (?) on the lens, so that was shitty. It's okay again now though, but I didn't take pictures obviously.

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Lookin' bored in the queue

Gem opened at the mainstage, the singer finally cut off his mullet, hurray! I kind of feel sorry for them, because every time I see them, they play in front of such a bored audience, while they have nice songs and really try to entertain people.

The Rifles were next, I really liked them! They turned out to be quite normal guys who are just rocking out, when I saw their promoshots and their album advertisements up in the big megastores in London I thought they might be a little arrogant, like "look at us, we're a big band now", but they totally weren't like that.

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Found these pics on Einslive:

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Haha.

Islands did their own soundcheck, I heard their album before but I couldn't really remember it. They had violins and a big bass-saxophone (or clarinet?) and other instruments, they turned out to be really really really good! Especially the Asian violin guys were so cute, the singer was a bit weird with his bone necklace but the whole band was just amazing. Their songs fitted the weather and the day so perfectly, really a nice surprise.

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Guillemots were also adorable! The singer has such a lovely voice, he looked like a mad professor in his seventies-suit and his wooden chair. During this one song he made a funny sound with his voice, like it missed out or something and he looked like "whoops!", that was so crazy. But they're so great. They even had typing machine on stage and the drummer was wearing a dress, the female bassplayer's contrabass was so big compared to her.. overall I really really liked them.

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After their show I went away to get a crepe with nutella (yummm) and some drink tickets which were sold by kids, cute! When I came back The Wrens were playing, they were quite boring, just a bunch of older men calling this "the best fucking gig of their fucking career" and they were so über-American, blegh.

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I joined Ines and Franzi in front of the stage again and The Kooks (better known as The Cocks) were next. Max looked like he'd gone into death-rehab or something, apparently it wasn't him. Luke really turned into an arrogant prick (okay, he already was one), I really don't like them anymore. Only the drummer, he even looks good in purple! But they even played 10 minutes shorter than they were supposed to... There were thousands of crowdsurfers and the security guys finally had something to do, lol. One of them (crowdsurfers, not the security guys) fell on floor and he couldn't move anymore, that was scary.

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Luke Prick-chard

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After that, my faith in young musicians was repaired by Paolo Nutini. Gosh can he sing! I thought he might be boring but it really wasn't. His voice is so sexy, I just can't believe he's younger than me.

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James Dean Bradfield was playing after him, he was quite good. Ed Harcourt was his special guests on keyboards and he also did some backing vocals. He played a lot of Manics song, which really reminded me of what a great band they are and I should get their greatest hits album.

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After that, we went to the tent, got a jacket, saw the fabulous Buddy Holly monument...

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...went back and sat on the benches near the Spiegelzelt for a while. We heard The Divine Comedy, he/they (?) did a cover of Maneater by Nelly Furtado, that was so cool! When we went back into the actual festival/mainstage area, we saw the rest of his/their show and afterwards we went to the Spiegeltent to join the queue.. it was so cold but fortunately they started playing Mystery Jets on the screen after a while, yay! There was no sound though, we just heard The Twilight Singers in the background.

Ines and Anneke went back to the tent but Franzi, Marleena and I got in after a while. First there was some kind of indie disco going on with music like The Smiths and Belle And Sebastian and a lot of drunk people dancing, which was funny to look at.

Then we saw Ed Harcourt doing 'his own shit' and it was nice. Totally different than the glimpse I got at The Music In My Head though, he also played guitar now.

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He reminds me a lot of Ryan Adams in a way. Franzi and I went back halfway the set because we were so tired and we couldn't see it really well.

SUNDAY

Time to go home.. Ines, Franzi and Marleena were picked up by Franzi's mum so they left quite early. Anneke and I packed our stuff and left the festival at about 10:30, we arrived in Duisburg earlier than we had expected, there was even a train to Amsterdam in 20 minutes but we booked the next one, so we had to wait another 2,5 hours...

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Arrived in Amsterdam around 6, then we went to Anneke's place, had some (extremely yummy) salad for dinner and then I went back to Amsterdam and took the train to Tilburg... and almost fell asleep with my clothes on.

Pic credits:
All pics are mine except the ones with:
©A: these are Anneke's
©einslive: these are from einslive.de
©mujuk: these are from mujuk.de
©nme: from nme.com


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