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Marillion + Lech Janerka, Carmina 06 |
Wianki Festival 24 June 2006 |
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This awesome review was written and submitted by 4Chords, a dedicated prog rock fan from Poland. Check out his MySpace page at www.myspace.com/4ctmam. Many thanks to 4Chords for this review!! |
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INTRODUCTION Gosh, I don't know where to start... Perhaps some background information first. Last night Marillion (probably the bast band in the world ) played what was billed as their only live performance this year (not exactly true, an acoustic trio version of the band played at the Baja Prog festival in March) in Krakow. Needles to say, I went to see them. Their performance was the main part of a free (I need to stress this: FREE) festival called Wianki. Now the reason, why I stressed it is because it meant that huge crowds would come, and that's exactly what happened. 95% of the people not only didn't know who Marillion were, but they probably didn't even know why they were there. They were moving constantly from one side to another without any reason. Awful. |
| THE STAGE And now, for the best part. Some bright mind had this fantastic idea of putting the stage on one side of the river Wisla and the audience on the other side. So the stage was about 130-150 meters away from the audience. Can you imagine that? It could only happen in Poland... Ah well, what can you do... We managed to hear a bit of Marillion's rehearsal in the early afternoon, they played a bit of Separated Out and some fun covers (Dancing In The Street, Proud Mary and maybe something else as well). The sound was far from good. |
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THE BORING BIT The weather was awful for most of the day, about 30-32C, rather steady air and very bright sun. I hate that, I'm kind of allergic to the sun so I was having a hard time. But I must say the drive from Wroclaw (where I live) to Krakow went extremely smoothly. We left at 9.15 AM and it only took 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is not bad, considering it would take up to five hours on a train. Anyway, my dad was driving and TT (a close friend and drummer of my band) and Cinu (a close long term friend) were also there with us. We met with some more friends (including Igor the Beast, whom I hadn't seen for some time then - check out his space - and TT's ex Ania) in Krakow. |
| After a nice pizza and some beer, we went for a walk around town and had a lovely time, but the heat and sun were no good to me. We found a nice place to shelter though and had some cool drinks. I also bought some food at a near by store to regain some strength. I should point out that I always get travel sick, so I didn't have any breakfast and had to take strong medicine before the journey. So at that point I really needed refuelling. Finally it got a bit cooler in the evening which was a true blessing for me. | |
| PRE-SHOW AND LECH JANERKA We got back to the bank of the river around 6PM. Already huge crowds were there and lots of police as well as the 'city guard,' which is like the police but they don't have as many rights. I always hum the Marillion song Accidental Man, whenever I see them, as it does sound a bit like The Police, but it's not The Police really. Anyway, we managed to find a nice place on a little wall, that you could sit and later stand on. The moment you stood on the wall you could kind of forget about the masses going back and forth. The first performance of the evening was Lech Janerka, a singer-songwriter (and bass player) who actually was born in Wroclaw and lived there for a long time. He started around 8.30 PM and I must say I found his set rather boring. But his guitarist did some excellent work (sometimes sounded almost like Adrian Belew!) and I enjoyed the song Rower (Bike) which is a really cynical yet funny comment about the Polish involvement in the war in Iraq. The sad thing was that not only you could not really see anything because of the distance, but also the sound was really bad. Hissy, distorted and the bass frequencies were almost non existent. There were some screens by the sides of the stage of you could at least see some close-ups though. However, because of the speed of sound, the picture was around 0.7 sec ahead of the sound. |
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| Anyway, during Janerka's set the audience were given some kind of sticks that you could break, bend and join. Now, the moment you broke them, two substances that were inside would mix and the thing would then shine with a nice green light in the dark for a couple of hours. People would put them on their hands (in a halo fashion :) or arms (I did so). Strange idea but somehow worked as the performers could at least see that there actually was an audience on the other side. By the time Janerka finished his set, it got dark. | |
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MARILLION (FINALLY) Marillion started, as planned, on 9.30 PM. The set list of the 75-80 minutes performance was as follows:
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| Unfortunately, the sound didn't
get any better for their set. All the fans were in the lucky
position that they actually knew the songs though, so for
instance even if the bass disappeared completely and the harmony
was somewhat lost, you could still actually hear it in your
hand. The front desk was placed on a barge in front of the
stage, so the sound man didn't really have an idea what the
sound was like on the other side of the river. The guys seemed to be enjoying themselves though. Steve Hogarth was absolutely brilliant, he somehow managed to maintain contact with the distant audience and even spoke quite a few words in Polish. Actually, both him and Steve Rothery saved the show, their singing and playing (respectively) were spot on. And that's not to say that Ian Mosley, Pete Trewavas and Mark Kelly were playing badly, it's just that their instruments were somehow muffled in the mix most of the time so it was down to the both Steves to somehow get the songs across the river. The set was quite surprising, it comprised mostly of shorter and rather catchy songs, but not only. Out Of This World was very moving and so was Neverland. I was very happy to hear three songs that I hadn't heard live before (Separated Out, Beautiful, Accidental Man). For me Accidental Man was probably the highlight of the show, not only because of the previously mentioned humming joke, but also because I simply love that track. The encores were brilliant as well. H wore a T-shirt with our national symbol (a white eagle) and 'Polska' written on it for the encores, which did please the crowd. Moreover, he actually walked to the very edge of the soundboard barge to sing the final song Cover My Eyes which was a very nice and energetic end of the short, but really good set. |
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BACK HOME The final event of the evening was a stage show called Carmina '06. We didn't stay for this show as we were all feeling pretty tired at that point and desperate to get back home as soon as possible. We only grabbed a quick snack and got to the car. We got back to Wroclaw within the astonishing 2 hours. There was almost no traffic and the conditions were absolutely great. Looking back I really feel a strong urge to kill the person responsible for the idea of putting the stage on the other side of the river. I'm sure the show would have been much more enjoyable if it took place somewhere more audience-friendly and if perhaps it wasn't free. I'm sure even very cheap tickets would scare at least 70% of the people off. I mean, I like the idea that people who don't know Marillion were exposed to their music. The problem is that most of those people didn't seem to care at all. |
| Anyway, before I'm through, I'd only like to say big thanks to Cinek, TT, Igor and his friend, Ania and Kasia, Stiopa and his charming wife. And very special thanks to my Dad. | |
Overheard before the show:
- So who's playing?
- First Janerka and then this Ma... something...
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