Lokeren? Never heard of it? It’s time to face it: small towns make the best festivals. The town is located in Belgium at about 25 miles from Antwerp and 15 miles from Gent (North of Belgium). The festival, named Lokerse Feesten was created in 1975 and bands like Simple Minds, The Cure, Iggy Pop, Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, Mercury Rev among others have trodden the festival’s only stage.
Lokerse Feesten is not like any other festivals: it’s a 10 day festival with an average of 4 concerts per night on only one stage. Every night is different, the line-up is always really varied from pop to punk to hip hop.
It’s 12pm and I still don’t know how I’m going to get to Lokeren. I finally get in touch with one of my friends who is going too. I meet up with him and here we are, driving all the way up to the city of Lokeren. Parking slots are missing since the festival happens to be in the center of the town, but we are lucky and find a place to park pretty close from the backstage entrance: perfect start. It’s already 9pm though and I have to sign a form before I can shoot the show and the Manic Street Preachers are on in 30 minutes. I finally find the production office and trade my signature for a cute green wristband.
First impressions of Lokerse Feesten: the place is awesome. People seem pretty cool. The frontstage area is big, a lot of different spots to catch cool pictures. I take a look around and notice that the crowd is diversified, a lot of oldies are here for the Manic Street Preachers while the younger ones are probably already waiting for their idol, Mr. Pete Doherty, who will take the stage tonight at 11.45pm.
I can’t lie: I’m not a big Manic Street Preachers fan. To be honest, I’ve never really liked them. They sound like a band that used to be good back in the time, but the thing is: they’ve always sounded the same. I try to be impartial, give them a chance. And after a couple minutes I find myself stamping my feet in rhythm. They’re not so bad after all! It doesn’t last though, and after about 40 minutes of what it seems to be their “best of” set I decide to go backstage and watch it from there. That’s when I crossed path with Mr. Doherty, looking uglier than ever which is actually a good thing, I’ve gotten sick of seeing his pretty face all over the place every time I hear about him. Pete Doherty is actually NOT a playboy, he does not wear make up and he loves red wine. His girlfriend is looking pretty hot though, I can’t lie about that.
11:30pm. I review the photos I took of the Manic Street Preachers and I am not happy about them, the lighting is poor and I didn’t catch any nice expressions. It’s going to be harder than I thought.
11:50pm. Pete is on. He hasn’t changed a thing since I saw him, about 2 hours ago. I thought maybe he would put a little bit of make up or try hiding the dark circles under his eyes. Doherty “au naturel”, just him and his guitar. That’s it. No drummer, no electric guitars, no bassists. Pete (or should I say Peter) and his acoustic guitar. The idea that I’m going to get bored crosses my mind but again I decide to be unprejudiced. It takes only one song for the crowd to be enchanted by Peter’s desperate husky voice full of emotions. Peter chains a variety of songs from the Libertines to his solo albums without a word or maybe just a thank you here or there, and also dares covering “Our On The Weekend” and “The Needle and the Damage Done” by Neil Young (Pete will later on admit that Harvest is his favorite album of all times, calling it “the perfect album when you feel depressed”).
I’m not really sure how that happened but a book is now lying on stage. Pete picks it up: it’s Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil, a famous volume of French poetry that deals with themes relating to eroticism, decadence and drugs). He tried to read it out loud but his French is definitely not understandable, and Lokeren is in a Dutch speaking area of Belgium anyway.
An hour has passed and it seems like Peter is just repeating himself. I’m not enchanted by his voice anymore, even though I’m still amazing by his guitarist skills. He just doesn’t seem to be living it anymore, like if he were playing while watching TV. But the crowd seems to like it so I assume it’s just me having a problem getting into it. Peter finishes his set in front of a satisfied crowd. The night is over, and Pete’s hanging out in the press area a red bottle of wine in his hands. A bunch of people ask him for autographs and pictures despites the mean bodyguard hanging around yelling at anyone holding a camera.
It’s already 3am when I hit the road back to where I’m staying. So, Lokerse Feesten, is it worth it? Hell yeah! I think it wouldn’t hurt if they headlined a little bit more bands, even if it has to be local bands because when there are only two bands playing you don’t really have time to just chill out, and that’s something we all wanna do in a festival right?
