Karl's Corner - 08/20/2005

08/20/05 a farmer's life is a tough'un

...MB '05 Tour: Day 73: Hohenfelden, Germany - Highfield Festival

Today we started the day in the small quaint ex-Eastern Germany city of Erfurt, which is known for being one of the OG Martin Luther's main hangouts back in the days o' the 99 Theses (not Jay-Z's 99 Problems). The central part of the city retains a lot of medieval/renaissance era architecture and such, including some seriously cool looking old school churches. So walking around was a must. But first came breakfast with the Foo Fighters, who arrived in town the same day, as they were headlining tonight's Highfield Festival. We had seen them breifly at the Munich hotel, but here was a chance to catch up for a while over eggs and cereal. Needless to say, everyone is very excited about the upcoming tour together in the fall.

On to Hohenfelden, which was about 30 minutes drive out into the country, situated on a pretty forest lined lake. We parked the bus and checked out the scene. The Highfield Festival only has one stage, so it was pretty simple. As with most of these Europe festivals, theres countless cars parked all over fields, and then countless tents of the fans who camp out for the 3 days of the festival to check out all the acts. ("A relaxed athmosphere, a dreamlike location right on the waterfront of the Hohenfelden Reservoir and a superb alternative line up: the HIGHFIELD FESTIVAL is the biggest Independent-Rock-Festival of East of Germany.")

I wonder how many songs I've heard at festivals that ill never be able to identify - having only heard the bass lines and some muffled echoed vocals from backstage and in the bus. Its weird how the mind simply filters it out when not actually checking a band out on stage. But at festivals, they are always there, just beyond the audio threshold where you can make out the song, or even the band. Low thumping, mysterious echoed singing in an unknown language, and then the breaks between songs, filled with the roar of the crowd..

Todays line up was pretty stellar. After Weezer, the final 2 acts were The Queens Of The Stone Age and finally The Foo Fighters! Weezer had a pretty good time on stage tonight, stuffing lots of goodies from their recently expanded bag of tricks into their 1 hour set allotment. The crowd was similar to the Frequency Festival crowd in that they went utterly CRAZY, moshing and crowd surfing thoughout the whole set. Germany knows how to rock. And they were rewarded with the Weez/Queens/Foo trifecta!

large size picture link: here, more: 1.

The current tour merchandise can be seen here.
(updated 7/10/05).