Belgrade, Serbia

An Exit festival recap

Published: July 11, 2006

By popular demand from La Lara, here come my impressions of this year’s Exit festival.
Ticket price was a bit higher this year, and the line up was very poor in my opinion, so i was afraid that it wasn’t going to be as fun as the last years. Was it due to better organization, due to the fact that we managed to find extremely cheap place to stay, but i was thoroughly wrong about that – it was more fun and in the same way, more relaxed than last years, when it was more hectic and tense. Maybe we just got more experience from last years so now we could use it to our advantage, i don’t know?
Anyway, the festival started great – first, there were Cardigans with their mellow popish sound, which was ok, but nothing special. Later i saw on their site that they said this was the best gig they played in 2006. – i don’t know if thety played any concerts this year at all since the crowd was very mild too. But ok.
Then, all hell broke lose when Franz Ferdinand came to the stage – definetely the best gig this year. I read somewhere before the festival that they were proclaimed the best concert band this year, and all i can say is that they deserve it – guys can really play. I don’t know if i could have called myself their fan before the concert, but now i’m definitely bought. Highly recommended if you happen to be near the place they are about to rock.
After that it was your typical festival wandring around aimlessly from stage to stage. And there are a lot of stages at the Exit, most of them small, but here are some worth mentioning – metal stage if you wanted to feel some really high energy music and have your ears ring for days later. Fusion stage with performers mostly from these areas, but somehow Susane Vega and Dog Eat Dog got to play there too. Btw, Dog Eat Dog were really reallly good, plus they seemed to be really thrilled to be in Serbia. For most of the foreign performers it’s their first time here, but these guys seemed very eager to play here from before and it showed – the crowd responded with nonstop slam dancing and pogos – also one of the highlights of the festival in my book.
Second day – Morrissey with a quite mild performance, but then again, maybe it’s the way it should be, i am not really a fan so i wouldn’t know really. HIM played before him, and you could really hear a lot of goth/metal/dark teenage girls going wild, so that was also interesting as a fenomenon in a way
Kelis was supposed to play, but she cancelled and was replaced poorly with Dizzee Rascal, total waste of money, if you ask me.
Goldie kind of saved the day from complete boredom by playing nonstop from 3-6 AM.
Third day was quite good with Billy Idol, who still looks like he’s 25 years old, and surprisingly enough rocks the same way – all the way, full power for two hours nonstop, this was the longest rock act ever on Exit. Billy is admitingly quite full of himself, but he wears it quite good (unlike Morrissey, imho).
Stage wandering got us to “future shock” stage where you could at any given time see unknown, moslty experimental bands playing in front of five to ten people, but there were some quite good and odd things to see there.
On the fourth and last day i was quite tired so i think you should check the recap on Reluctant Dragon if you really want to know more details about Pet Shop Boys’ and Scissor Sisters’ performances. Plus, i am really not a fan of these bands, so i didn’t really try to enjoy that much.
Like i said, the organization of the festival really improved, so the moving about the fortress was easier than last years. I have to notice that the high ticket price maybe stopped a lot of people from going to the festival this year, maybe that also had something to do with moving about.
I should also mentiont the Dance Arena, packed with 25 thousand people at all times and playing all the way until at least 8 AM every morning – good choice if you cannot sleep yet.
So there you go – and now lets hear your highs and lows of the festival this year?

(i will post some pics and hopefully videos later)

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