Marc Gärtner

The Queensday Festival is an extremely nice event that takes place annually in Venlo, The Netherlands, just a few kilometers behind the German border. This year they celebrate the 10th anniversary and on this occasion they invited a big headliner: The Bouncing Souls. Beyond the conveniently located town the festival also has a great venue and a great atmosphere. Theres always a few hundred people mixed from all scenes of rock/punk/hardcore, theres three stages (one open air) and an interesting line-up each year. Tickets were a ridiculous 6€! A real insiders tip!
First I made a detour through the Ruhr area to get Berni. In the face of the the fact that its a Friday before a holiday this wasn’t a good idea. The whole region is a giant traffic jam, I even took a completely different route in order to avoid the worst traffic. As we arrive at the parking lot I meet the first friend already. And it continues like that. A lot of hands to shake.
First band I got to see were the Real Danger, melodic pop-punk that not only reminds of the Descendents musically, the singer has quite some optic features of Milo. They also do a Screeching Weasel cover and the audience really enjoys them. A real good start of the night.
After that the Dead Elvis the playing outside. It’s one guy in an Elvis costume with a zombie mask who is doing some one-man-band rockabilly and blues. The trash factor here is really high, but doesn’t enthuse me. Especially cause its open air in sunlight. Inside the next band are Banner Pilot. The four guys from Minneapolis have recently released their second album on Fat Wreck and are now touring Europe for the first time. A little bit of Dillinger 4 and Lawrence arms with ruff vocals and melancholy lyrics. I like them. The Italian guy (whose name I forgot but I’ve met him on the recent tour) standing in the front row is singing along to every song! Respect! Meanwhile on the open air stage the Accelerators are getting ready to play the final show of their two month long tour. Today all people that went on tour with them are here. (1 bass player, 1 drummer, 3 guitar players, 4 drivers), and without the technical difficulties this would have even been more fun. At the end of the night we took a photo with all 10 of us. In front of the Bouncing Souls Nightliner…
I was smart enough to forget to bring money with me. I could buy three drink tickets and loose one of them. I’m lucky cause they offer you give you a new drink if you return 20 empty cups. I do that twice. And Paul bought me a drink too. Thanks!
Only from afar I hear a little of Shaking Godspeed. A trio with drums, guitar and organ. At times the guitar sound reminds me of the White Stripes, but its getting too hippie over time. Relatively early at about 21:30 the Bouncing Souls enter the stage and the hall is packed! With some luck I get a place on the side elevated on a box so I can see everything just fine. The first song is the opening track of the new album and the hall starts dancing immediately, the hands are up in the air and the first crowd surfers start flying. It pretty much stays like this for the entire show. Every once in a while Greg gets the audience to help him singing. It doesn’t take long and it’s getting really hot in the room. Lots of fun!
Final act for me was the Kepi & Friends set on the small stage upstairs. His backing band consists of Greg of the Bouncing Souls on guitar and Gregs wife Shanti on bass. Both switch to the ukulele in between. Kepi is a born entertainer and his little rocknroll songs about monsters and zombies are unplugged as great as amplified. The audience is singing along, Ivo of the Apers fame, is playing the ‘drums’ (some eggshakers), and its a great time. Shanti gets to sing two songs as well. A worthy end of the night. Can’t wait for next year! The only downside of the near border location is that you get checked by German police searching for drugs. Not that we had any. But the officers were nice. And since our story was “we went to Venlo to some punkrockfestival” – I would have searched us too. Ha!

Here’s a great video of Kepis performance:

And some photos. Theres more in the Gallery:

The tourplan listed Turino for today. But that show got canceled the day before! (who does something like that?) But we hoped on a show of the Fake Problems (US) and The Real Danger (Holland) tour that was also happening. Hey – finally playing with some good bands! So we went to Catiglione della Stiviere, near Brescia and the Lago del Gado, where we were the day before. As the drive was really short again we got there way too early – even though some one way roads forced us to reroute a couple of times. The venue is an old building right in the middle of the town, with a big square outside with some statues and a fountain. We’re also sleeping here. For everybody who ever played Counter Strike: Everything just looks like the Italy map!

Eventually the vans from the Fake Problems and the Real Danger show up so all the parking spaces next to the square are taken by tour busses and weird punkrockers run around. We’re setting up, and with the merch from three bands plus a distro we get our own Hot Topic in the corner. Everybody is getting pasta in a big room upstairs. I didn’t really understand what the venue was about. There was a room for the concert, a bar, a courtyard with a tent and a container for the toilet, upstairs were large rooms, including a dancing room, with mirrored walls. So its a bar and a community-youth-center all together. The entrance was kinda high, but you didn’t just pay for the night, you became a club member for a year. So there were also a bunch of people there not for the show but just because they were club members.

Show was fine. The concert room is small, with an arched ceiling. 5 people in the first row are enough to block the view and make the room looking crowded. All three bands rock out and were having fun. Afterwards we actually sleep in the dancing room. We’re the last ones to get up the next day. Well, the Real Danger / Fake Problems tour is just going on for a few days, they still have energy left. Pretty much everybody gets breakfast at the Cafe across the street. Then we get on our way to Austria.