Since I have succesfully returned from the almost five day trip to the Rock for People festival in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, I decided to make a short summary of what I think about stuff I experienced. Overall, I am very satisfied, and I don’t regret going there. I might compare it with the Pohoda festival a bit, since it's the most similar festival I went to last year (going this year too in a week). Oh and the photos are pretty bad, well whatever. I went there to enjoy myself and not to take artistic photos.

General stuff

The fun started right at the drive from Brno to Prague, where we had to pick up the last member, Honza, of our party. We got stopped by an accident, and had to wait around 30 minutes till they cleaned it up.

We arrived at around 10pm, and had to build the tent while it was dark. It was a bit sketchy, but it didn't fall down. But a good thing was that we missed the rain that was there some hours before we came. We checked out the area of the camping town, had some welcome beers, walked around the festival park (wasn't much to do on day 0) and went to sleep later at night. This is how we slept, 4 people in my tent, but pretty comfortable actually. Big tent is big. Lele's Winnie the Pooh pillow in the shot.

First day filled up pretty nicely and one could go through the crowds like this often. The only bad thing was large beer queues, which was fixed later when more sellers built their tents. We roamed around, checking out the stages, drinking beer, eating gyros, was fun.

What else to say generally. The organisation was nice, people were friendly, the music was enjoyable. I said I'll compare it to Pohoda. The tent town was chaotic and didn't have enough sinks with water - at mornings they were packed. Also, more beer and food outside of the main area would be nice - you didn't need to stand in a large line to get something to eat and drink in the morning at Pohoda. Anyway, more on the music now - let's review some bands I've seen, since I had some nice experiences too.

Biggest surprise: Hadouken!

I didn't know anything about this band, but I was very happy I went to see them. I really liked the performance and the tracks. I will definitely check them out on Pohoda too.

Best music: Arctic Monkeys

I'm not really a rocker, but I really enjoyed the Arctic Monkeys. Many people were disappointed, saying that it wasn't what they expected. Since I didn't know what to expect, I was enjoying it well. Their concert was very nicely done, simple stage and little talking, but the music was outstanding.

Best show: Ska-P / Underworld

I can't decide on this. Ska-P, although they spoke and sang in spanish, made the crowd go really wild. The frontman changed outfits to fit the themes of the songs (here some uncle Sam costume with a grim reaper scythe), they used the visuals well, and had great intermissions between the tracks (if only I could understand whatever the singer tried to say).

But Underworld... Let me say a bit more about them in the next paragraph.

Best stage: Underworld

The last day, the last performance on the large stages, the ultimate finish. Underworld pulled over the largest crowd on the whole festival, and they didn't disappoint. They totally wiped out all of the other headliners in how to do a show. First it was going slowly, you could only see Karl Hyde in his glittering coat and the other guys working on their computers (like 6 large monitors and lots of machines around them, really scifi) and nice custom visuals on a large curtain behind them. Hyde had a camera on his microphone, and as he was running around, the VJ sent the shots on the curtain in various ways. Really nice. But then it was time for Born Slippy, and the stage released a set of large baloons in the public, that bounced around (see the video here). On King of Snake, the stage transformed to a snake nest - colourful large snake-like baloons spread out around it and lighted up. The effects went on and on, and made the show really worthwile. And also, finally something that doesn't have guitars. There were too many guitars everywhere on this festival (not that I don't like guitars).

Too bad I can't really say anything more about everything, it was a lot and also I missed a lot. But this is what I saw and experienced. Funny moment was also on the last day, after the Gogol Bordello concert, some of the band members came to the nearby Semtex tent where we were resting, and went "Who wants to make out? It's sexy time!". Since the tent was mostly empty and the girls didn't really catch the drift, they disappointedly left.

Next up, Pohoda 2009. I hope it will be even better than this!