
Number of bands: 82
Number of visitors: 7500
BANDS
PERIOD REFERENCES
All of last year’s “positives” will be used this year as well (a second music scene at the swimming pool, an internet café or a 20% discount on train fares, which is again provided by the Official Carrier of the festival – Czech Railways). There are also common and less common festival attractions and services (in cooperation with Riff Raff), such as bungee jumping, paintball, piercings, tattoos, henna body painting, a tea room with hookahs, vegetarian specialties, hair cutting and dyeing, and film screenings. The sidelines program was created in collaboration with Big Beng! and Rock & Pop, as well as with those of you who participated in our “Make Your Festival” contest.
Reviews
Rock For People – J. Špulák (Big Beng!) July 2000
Nobody thought about the prestigious award from domestic music academics in the form of the Grammy statuette, on which Petr Fořt from Ameba hangs his jacket, a few hours before the start of one of the biggest (if not the biggest) festivals in our country. The organizers dealt with ‘minor hiccups’, such as the stage being too low (so it was supported by wooden prisms to the required eighty meters above the ground), the delay in getting it up and running, and the ticket strips on the hands of the spectators, whose color, although matching this year’s yellow, was practically printed with the print from Rock For People 1997 or from this year’s Noc plná hvězd in Třinec. After all, the relatively dense concentration of spectators in the tent city the day before the event, as well as their unceasing onslaught at the main entrance, where the queue never shortened to less than thirty meters throughout the first day, was also a solution.
The sixth annual Rock For People festival entered its second act. If in the distant past ,it was a local affair for central Bohemia, this year it has earned a reputation as the most advanced festival in the country, which is why it has had to change its face. And so the stage was bigger than last year, the three days played were the same as last year, the sound was twice as strong and the foreign guests had their work cut out for them to match the extraordinary performances of the battered domestic bands.
American arrogance
If we were to objectively list the disappointments of this year’s edition, the fingers of our left hand would suffice. The refreshment stalls offered a narrow range of mainly food. When someone declared that being three days short of a sausage and mustard was no honey, it was alarming and, minus a bit of hyperbole, true. In the future, we will probably have to consider increasing the audience area (but I don’t know in which direction). Last year, it could accommodate tents. This year they were moved to the newly created tent city and yet there was no movement in the area. It is true, however, that it was dominated by a massive bungee jump, and with that removed, a thousand visitors could still fit into the area just fine.
But the biggest outrage came from the band, which was supposed to be the main star and delight the tired skeletons with a bit of ‘funny’ spectacle. The Bloodhound Gang arrived as obnoxious American trolls whose domain is sex and arrogance. I’ll preface that they enjoyed the latter more. As soon as they arrived they attacked the organisers for using the band’s logo on festival t-shirts. For this, they demanded compensation in the form of fifty backstage passes to be handed out to girls hungry for intercourse of any kind. Of course, they got nothing, and with that, the threats of an international lawsuit for misuse of the logo died down (doesn’t make sense though, what about their logo then, if not on the materials of the event where the band is playing?) But the highlights came only on stage. After the opening Fire Water Burn and the second Boom (it still looked like a really good shenanigans) the band’s equipment failed, so there was a half-hour break. The Americans filled it with contests like ‘whoever gets naked gets a t-shirt’ or ‘whoever eats thirty real American hot dogs gets a hundred dollars’. Imagine what thirty hot dogs will do to your stomach and believe that nobody won a hundred dollars. Instead, a couple of the bachelors got naked (the girls didn’t) – for a t-shirt. That’s what I call a bargain. But people weren’t too keen on the band’s habadeur, and when lead singer Jimmy Pop was promoted, he got a cup to the noggin. The problem was that these stupidities were gustily cheered on by the translating Czech promoter Martin Fořt, who reveled in approximating the arrogance that reigned on stage.
The atmosphere of The Bloodhound Gang’s concert went down steeply as the band made up more embarrassing contests and let people know that they would do as they wished or else they wouldn’t give a shit. Therefore, the cups landed on the stage more and more often, and their capacity increased even as The Bloodhound Gang began to play. Well, more like to be embarrassed, because the three-quarter hour performance was as bad as the presentation of the musicians as people. Guitarist Lupus Thunder played like his hiccupping grandmother was dying, Evil bassist Jarred Hasselhoff threw his arms to the heavens to prove his perfection more than he caught a beat, Jimmy Pop and DJ Q-Ball sang nothing at all, i.e. were fake, and the mood fell flat. It only lifted when the band finished their parody of N’Sync in the form of The Bad Touch. She left, no one applauded and the American Dream was left in the air. The musicians then left the venue without saying goodbye, angry that the Czech audience didn’t understand them. But the bands on the small stage were more interesting than The Bloodhound Gang.