I am staying in a great little hostel near the Westbanhof (West city train station). My ticket from Santa Lucia Station to Vienna came right here. I guess that I was lucky. After spending the day in the city, I went back to Ruthenhauer Hostel, met some of my roommates and found out about a three day free concert. Billy Idol is playing for free. I know the name Billy Idol as a performer, but I really can't think of one tune that he has done. Nevertheless we hopped on the Underground and made our way to Donauisola, a several mile long island in the middle of the Danube. I had heard that 3,000,000 people would be there, whether that was over 3 days or a one time count is difficult to tell. I don't know what 3 million people looks like, but if the size of the crowd at that time was 3,000,000 I can believe it, especially on the second night, where at time the slowly moving crowd stopped several times in a crush of people, literally body to body.
It took me about five minutes to completely lose my accompanying hostel mates- just as well- I am sure that we do not share the same musical tastes. Early on the route are the more accoustic venues and rap artists on small stages. Country music is obviously popular here by the size and enthusiasm of the crowd for a couple of hayseeds from rural Austria. I 've taken some movies of some of the acts but I first must reduce the size of the files and then see if I actually got any audio.
Many of the stages seemed like pure spectical, flashy light show with less than first class rock and roll. I am always immediately attracted to bands with horns. I went over the one stage and heard about the worst assemblage of horn players. The slide trombone could barely pop out one ugly note on his break. The trumpet play had about one decent note and the sax player was all over the place, never worried about what key he was in. I vote these guys "worst band" but I probably won't ever hear from them. But who knows?
The high point for me was a loud tight eastern European sounding group, with some klezmer and Russian songs thrown in. The trumpet player announcer assured the crowd (in some of the few English words that I heard) that all of these tunes sounded traditional but they were completely original. As the Austrian crowd was screaming, dancing and rocking with the band, I thought that there was some irony in the enthusiasm showed especially for some of the characteristically klezmer sounding tunes. I bought the CD at the end of the set and to my surprize the name of the band was "The Amsterdam Klezmer Band". On the cover of the CD was a sketchy drawing of a banjo player, an accordion and a bass player. But this was not the same band. I wonder if this was the beginnings of the band. All players were top notch- an accordion player, slide trombone, tenor sax, trumpet and bass. I highly recommend that you hear this band.
On the second night the crowd at times was overwhelmingly dense. I will mention two bands and again I am mostly at a loss for names. Perhaps someone out there with more knowledge of the contemporary music scene can tell me. The stage was enormous and the waiting crowd thick, several smokers made the wait even more unpleasant as I tried to push myself into smokeless refuge out of range. I pushed into the audience just as the previous act was finishing and then listened to a polished woman MC stir up the crowd. During ten minutes I watched Austrian ad's on giant TV screen, obviously sponsors of the event. This crowd on the whole was closer to middle age with lots of children intersperced. The band began with a crashing big sound. The singer, slick in a white suit, belted out a tune that obviously everyone in the audience knew- Gloria (or Glory Hallahluia), not the Leonard Cohen song. The music for me was a bit too smooth and techno for my taste. But the full impact of the sound was impressive- loud - with the regular tom tom beat vibrating my chest, the synthesizer sounding like a full ochestra and the singers harmonies clear and clean. - I rate these guys slick but impressive.
The other band was American. The singer spoke not one word of German to the audience, which I think is shameful. The crowd was enormous, enthusiastic and quite a bit younger than the previous group. The singer's image was projected on an enormous screen, but also I had a pretty good view of him and his group. I found them particularly underwhelming. A nerdish looking singer songwritter in black glasses (a younger version of Elvis Costello) playing guitar with a rock band back up and two pretty good female back up singers. The announcer called them something like "Wheata?" "weete?" Anyway the younger set was pleased.
Just one more thing. There were many stands selling food and drink. By far the one I thought the best in every way was group of fruit cocktails- maybe 20 to 30 different cocktails presented in very large glass pitchers. The presentation attracted attention immediately. All had some kind of fruit with a mixture of ingredients. I actually watch the woman make one of them: Lots of friut, fruit juice, syrup, sugar and vodka. I had the cherry one- delicious and also one with these red fruit that look a little like cranberries, also delicious.
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