среда, 24 июня 2015 г.

Greenfest - 21.06.15

Three days ago the annual festival "Greenfest" took place at the Petrovsky stadium in Saint Petersburg. That was the tenth time the festival had been held, and (probably in honor of that anniversary) the organizers invited the most starry groups for the whole history of the "Greenfest".

Let's look through the festival lineup step by step.

The opening act was performed by the Russian band "Jack Action". I intentionally decided to skip their performance as the whole concert was too long even without it, but I've heard sounds of their songs while going to the stadium. Anyway, my friends told me that I haven't missed anything interesting. When the first band had already finished their performance, I was still in the queue watching how "non-progressive" men (i.e. those who bought an ordinary ticket but not the electronic one) are entering the festival venue without any need to wait because there were separate entrances for e-ticket and ordinary ticket holders, and the latter group was much less than the former one. Nice to see so many people who understand that many things are easy to do without going out from home, not nice at all to see how the organizers treat them.

Ten minutes before "Poets of the Fall" performance I managed to squeeze my way through a crowd of spectators (luckily, not too thick at that time) to where my friends were standing. I wasn't familiar with Finnish band works well enough, so I've heard most of them as if for the first time (probably even without "as if" part). To reproduce my impressions, I should share with you my notion about Poets' songs. I subdivide them into two groups: lyric songs like "Sleep" or "Where Do We Draw the Line" and the other ones with a lot of drum sounds. I enjoyed the first ones and didn't hear much sound other than the drumming while listening to the second ones. Quite familiar impression thanks to club concerts. In contrast to them, my ears didn't suffer so much from the loud noises in the open air. It is a perfect difference but I still can't understand the purpose of making the drums sound so loud as if they are the dominant part of the music. The last thing I'd like to say about the Poets' performance refers to the emotions on their faces. Thanks to the great operators' work, all of us have an opportunity to see the musicians' faces in all details on the huge screens on both sides of the stage. Marko Saaresto proposed us to "get ready to be mesmerized" (wow, the new word in my vocabulary learnt during the concert :) ) just before switching from "too-much-drumming-for-me" songs to the famous "Sleep, sugar", but in my opinion the most mesmerizing part of their performance was the face of the guitarist Olli Tukiainen. It reflected indescribable emotions!

The next band to come to the stage was the Icelandic "GusGus". I don't like the electronic music, that's why I can't say anything exciting about their performance. Just some notes:

  • Sometimes their songs reminded me of "The Sisters of Mercy" compositions, and the latter band, as I see it, has something in common with Russian "Piknik". But don't try to apply transitivity to these analogies: in my view, "GusGus" and "Piknik" have nothing similar :)
  • It's hard to comprehend why Icelanders were invited to the show where all the other participants, including the headliners, are too different from them, but it is evident why they appeared on the stage just between "Poets of the Fall" and "Muse". Otherwise, a lot of spectators (for example, myself) would come only to these two groups. 

The crowd became more and more thick. And, finally... one of the greatest live bands of all time, British "Muse" walked out on the stage. They are not frequent visitors to Saint Petersburg: their previous performance in our city took place for about four years ago, so that was a great luck to watch them live. "Punctual" british men occured to be the only band who didn't observe the time that evening. They were late for as much as a quarter of an hour. Quite agonizing suspense... And they were the only band whose arrival to the stage wasn't specially announced. So the "Drill Sergeant" appearance on the screens was all of a sudden, but soon his shouting voice was completely lost in the crowd buzz.

After an hour and a half of their performance I came to the conclusion that from the esthetic point of view their show looks much better if you enjoy it sitting in comfort at home and watching the good quality show recording. For example, check this one. But from the emotional point, there is nothing comparable to being just in front of the great show within a crowd of many thousands of Muse lovers. That's one of the reasons why now, several days after the festival, I can say that I was happy to attend it.

A lot of Muse fans don't like their new album "Drones". I was agree with them before the show, but I tend to disagree with them now. Actually, I changed my opinion after just a couple of songs. So... if you love "Muse" but dislike their last album, that means that you just haven't jumped to the accompaniement of their songs (or you jumped not briskly enough) ;)

The operators' work this time was beyond me. I have never seen such impressive combining of the real-time videostream with the elaborate effects.

I wouldn't have noticed one of them but our company consisted of attentive people ;) The effect, I'm talking about, revealed itself as follows: at some moment Matthew Bellamy's guitar was burning blue. At the same moment he was shown on the screen but the instrument in his hands wasn't glowing. It's interesting whether it was done intentionally or not.

If I visited the show without the company, I wouldn't notice one more interesting effect: you needed only to bend over a bit, and the sound suddenly would become dull. Although the effect seems to be easy explicable, I have never encountered it before.

Some of the videos accompanying the songs reminded me of the above-mentioned "Piknik" by their mystique filling. And watching the video for the "Knights of Cydonia" (attention to the screen on the right around 2:00) I recalled the landscapes we created in the OpenGL study group at school 5.5 years ago. Curiously enough, almost half of our company visited that study group :)

There was a lot of causes for smiling that evening. For instance, going out of the stadium we noticed that someone took one of those big black balloons, which were released near the end of the concert (see the photo), with himself (or herself). Just wondering, how to carry such a souvenir home and what to do with it there :)


Another case is connected with the quadrocopter which shot the concert flying above the stadium. We got used to its frequent appearances above us so much that the seagull flying over us provoked the joke about "the gull which is a quadrocopter at heart"

More than four hours of standing in the crowd and jumping together with it, night passages from Petrovsky stadium to Chkalovskaya metro station and from Ozerki station to my house (for about 5.5 kilometers in total) made me feel much more tired than I may be even after my habitual 10 km jogging. Thus, I came to the conclusion about the necessity of doing a warm up before going to a concert as well as I always do it before jogging :)

The impressions of the evening didn't end up with the end of the concert. Achievement "to be in time to interchange the underground line approximately one minute before it becomes impossible" unlocked :)

Being already in the underground, we noticed that the Greenfest attribute in my hands lost the little finger, thus turning from the sign of the horns into another symbolic gesture.


Such attributes serve as useless but funny identification signs. You return home carrying this huge green glove and see another people with the same thing. These people are unfamiliar to you but now not completely unfamiliar: at least you know where they were just an hour ago, and they know the same about you. So you are not so faceless to each other as unfamiliar people usually are.

Well, it was the fascinating evening. I was very happy to be in the company of those of my friends, whom I see too seldom, and to become acquainted with some of their friends as well. All of you are great, thank you for those several hours! :)

3 комментария:

  1. Этот комментарий был удален автором.

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  2. I'm pleased this time with the genre you chose: you're describing your impressions directly, and it's very honest and leads naturally to clear and delicious sentences. Leads, but not in a minute. :)

    >The opening act was performed by the Russian band "Jack Action"
    What did the band do: opened, acted or performed? :)

    > their previous performance in our city took place for about four years ago
    They hadn't been in Saint Petersburg for about four years, right?

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    1. I hope it's never late to thank :)
      Thank you for your comment. I hope you'll notice less and less clutter and other things which shouldn't be present in writing as time goes by.

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