Rock out with your **** out

With the car packed I headed off, not knowing where the hell I was going and with a roadmap that predates David Livingstone’s great trek through the African continent I had little hope of reaching my final destination.

Gouda is a two hour drive from Hermanus. On the way you travel through Botrivier, then on to the N2 to Viliersdorp where you flirt with the water’s edge at the Theewaterkloof dam. Then it is off to Worcester and on a traveling alliteration you head into Wolseley. From there on all the major signs points you in the direction of Ceres, but at yet another t-junction you turn left and continue down a winding road, narrowly missing Tulbagh and with the needle of the compass firmly stuck on North West you are nearing your final destination.

A few kilometers outside of Gouda I ran into the first signs of the Rock the River music festival in the form of a colourful banner and an equally colourful placard telling you to slow down.

I am early and there are only three other cars queuing at the gate. After a brief search of my vehicle I get tagged with an orange armband and shown directions to the campsite.

Rock the River is a popular music event, attracting scores of people from all walks of life, that has been held successfully over New Years the last two years. 2011 gives rise to the Eater edition, known as the Easter Beast, of this festival and the organizers are positive that it will attract an equal amount of interest from the rock community. By the Saturday afternoon there were no less than 2000 people attending the festival.

With a line-up as long as some of our dear country’s most beloved politician’s rap sheets and with some of the most prominent acts (Van Coke Kartel, Taxi Violence, 7^th Son, Heroes Wear Red, Obsessie Met Als, PH Fat, We Shall Embrace to name but a few) to grace the stage I knew that it was going to take vast amounts of discipline, which I generally lack, to get everything done that I intended to accomplish this particular weekend.

There is only one way to approach festivals, if not everything in life, and that is with an all or nothing attitude. Go at it as hard as you can. There is no sense in merely leaning against boundaries, leaving slight indentations against their borders when in actual fact you should be constantly trying to break through them. Maybe I have just grown too accustomed to a life of excess and pushing things to the edge that I find this maxim somewhat soothing and that it has added new found meaning to my daily existence.

Besides the entertainment on the main stage, there is also a smaller stage erected a few hundred meters along the Berg River, hidden from general view and revealed slowly only by yellow signs placed at strategic points along the way. This stage is aptly dubbed Exile Island. It was specifically erected for the battle of the bands contest that was to stretch over the course of the Friday and Saturday. Later on the stage and dance area would erupt in full dub step party mode.

There was also a comedy club, for those who preferred to laugh themselves in stitches rather than take on the gesticulating crowd in front of the main stage. Various food and merchandise stalls were also erected at the back of the main stage for those famished and curious souls. There was even an Easter egg hunt on the Saturday.

However, we found ourselves on Exile Island early on the Friday afternoon, waiting for the up and coming bands to start their performances.

The talent was reasonable, with the majority of the acts playing bland renditions of outdated rock tunes or hard “slay all before you” death metal with demonic vocals and raging guitars. Gavin Coetzee was most probably, to my sensitive ears, the only act to show some musical knowledge and authenticity, with his blend of gipsy and blues music.

It is hard to believe that after only seeing one performance certain people can develop an infatuation with somebody, but this is exactly what happened when I stood talking to Gavin after his performance at the bar. Out of nowhere a girl broke in to our conversation and claimed to be his biggest fan. By the looks of it, she wasn’t joking.

We remained at the main stage for the remainder of the day and evening, soaking up the festive atmosphere and enjoying performances by bands such as 7^th Son whom had the crowd on their feet with their reggae showmanship.

As usual, Van Coke Kartel steals the limelight with their usual energetic performance. A few acts follow these legends of the South African music industry, but none of them are able to capture the crowd’s attention as flawlessly as VCK.

It is getting late and the beer that has been flowing since midday is starting to have an impact on the majority of people still awake. People are wandering aimlessly around suffering through drunken instance after drunken instance, looking for something more to do and finding little in the form of entertainment. The music at Exile Island however is still paying non-stop, a pulsating musical throb from the darkness. I decide against what seemed like a long and excruciating walk to the island fortress, rather opting to head in the general direction where I think we left our tent and hoping that I would find some much needed rest.

I awoke in my car early the next morning, unbelievably stiff from an uncomfortable sleeping arrangement and battling with a severe headache. I was not the only one to have accomplished this feat it seemed as I saw my neighbors crawling from their slumber and clawing at reality through a similar fatal hangover. They grumbled slightly, the only signs that they were alive and with inhuman guttural growling cursed into the cold morning air.

I found my friends still sleeping in a similar state of decay and it soon dawned on me that the inevitable question of “What happened last night?” wasn’t even worth asking. Peering through the wreckage of that specific hangover then I had little hope of seeing through the day, but remembering my mantra from the previous day of going at things hard, we set off to the main stage once more. Chaos of the sun is on and serving up a healthy dose of in your face, balls to the wall music. Their set closes with the vocalist/ lead guitarist in full hillbilly attire of dungarees and straw hat, screaming into the microphone “if you want, I’ll kick your f@*^king head in” over and over again to an ever increasing amount of people in front of the stage.

We searched for some shade in order to escape from the sweltering heat that consumed the festival. We found some at the edge of the river and made ourselves comfortable in the cool atmosphere for what was going to be an all day stay amongst the brush.

Day gradually turned into night as an endless procession of artist made their way on to the main stage to entertain the crowd on the open grass expanses. There was something missing though as I could see numerous bored faces, some even looking as though they would pack their bags immediately and head back home. The artist on stage displayed a similar notion. It was understandable. On more than one occasion the sound would vanish, as if magically into thin air and the act on stage would be left standing miming into a mute microphone. The problem was solved to a degree and Taxi Violence ploughed through the rest of their set with less energy than I am used to seeing from them. PH Fat was the last of the big acts on stage and caused a minor resurgence amongst the people. We left and headed for Exile Island where it was time to experiment with our lives in the midst of the dubstep crowd.

Already from a distance one could feel the hypnotic rhythm reaching for you and trying to pull you into the heart of the madness.

This must be close to the sound made by two universes colliding and recorded by an advanced sound medium which portrays reality through digital interface. It is the most vicious, dramatically insane onslaught of sounds ever to enter my consciousness. I am at once absorbed by the insanity and subsequently start diving head first into the thick bass beats and plethora of computerized sounds. I dance with abandonment, my body writhing with previously unknown content, until I am exhausted and soaked with sweat. Defeated and unable to continue I retreat to the outskirts of the mob of dancing people. The music continues unabated. Not once stopping to consider my now deprived state of body and mind.

I gather my two friends, my partners in crime that are equally exhausted, and once more we head off into the night, searching, continuously searching for that next trigger that will pollute our senses and leave us dancing in the wake of hypperreality.

We find it in the form of a desolate road that ran all the way up to the edge of the dark horizon. Anything, if not everything seems like a good idea at two in the morning and we set off on our quest to find the heart of Gouda. We laugh as we stumble through the dust and at times stop to admire the progress we had made. Eventually after what felt like hours and the music now just a faint murmur in the distance, we come across some buildings, dark and lifeless. Could this be Gouda the lost city of our minds? Could we have succeeded in our quest so easily?

But it was not to be as the buildings grew in stature and personality and turned out to be nothing more than a cow shed and horse stable.

Disappointed we decided to walk back to the campsite. It was at this exact moment that my friend decided it would be a terrific idea to bombard the cow shed with random objects. Amongst a clatter of stones on the tin roof, we now ran towards the beaming lights in the distance. We reached safety out of breath and legs burning. It was time it seemed to call it a night.

In the tent there was no sleep to be found only endless restless hours of rolling around and trying to escape the exhaustion. At dawn I had still not managed to catch any one of the forty winks that people always go on about.

The Sunday morning my feelings of the previous night were reflected by a vast majority of people muttering under their breathes that they want to go home. I ran into the festival manager on my to the shower which in this case was a simple tap on the edge of the campsite. He explained that due to an empty generator, not enough sound was supplied to the main stage. It made sense then in hindsight that a guitar or vocals would then just cut out and cause great frustration amongst fans and artist alike.

With that tit bit of information in my back pocket it was time to head back.

The drive home turned into a four hour long excursion, crawling across now familiar territory and stopping at regular intervals to make sure I was not being followed, by whom I am not entirely sure, but anything suddenly seemed plausible.

It is exactly for this reason that I have fallen in love with festivals. In the aftermath of such fun filled weekends, the return to your daily life becomes slightly more bearable. You have gained experiences and friends, you have stories to tell that to ordinary people sound like fantasy and then you haven’t even tried to tell them about the really weird things that happened. It is this fictional detachment from the rest of the world for a couple of days that gives one the sense that there is more to what we see en feel on a daily basis. It is with this notion of anything being possible that I advance towards the great bash being held at the end of the year. I just hope that someone will at least remember to fill the generators before the event starts…