Fluff Fest 2010...

...here we come!
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Fluff Fest 2009 Report

We left early for Fluff, Rokycany Chech Republic, on Saturday, 25th of July 2009. We

couldnʼt be there on friday, which was very sad because I missed some of the bands I

wanted to check out: Dead Vows, To Kill, Kingdom, just to name a few. And we also

missed the Karaoke night, that wouldʼve been fun too. So nevertheless we left early, at

about 8-9 am, but rather too, too late as it turned out. We couldnʼt anticipate that on the

same day, the whole german population will decide to go on vacation. And bring their cars

along with them... Every highway, every direction, everywhere: jammed. We just drove and

listened to the traffic jam reports: “5 km,14 km here, 27 km there...” Ridiculous.. . Since I

was driving blindly, following my little navigation friend, I didnʼt know when exactly weʼll be

stuck in one of those, so we just hoped for the best. Occasionally we drove through some

smaller ones, 2-3 km, stop and goʼs, but right before Chech, some 150km away from the

border, we knew that the next one will be a big one. And indeed it was. In a desperate last

minute move, I drove out of the highway into some secondary roads and hoped for the

best. The best wasnʼt exactly THE Best, because we lost even more time (or we gained

some, canʼt exactly tell) but nevertheless. So yeah, a long story short, after 7 hours drive

we arrived at 4 p.m. at the location. The fest started at 1 p.m. on saturday. The minute we

got out of the car it began to rain and we had hoped it will not. We brought the rain with us,

because it was the first time it rained this weekend. Oh boy, it was going to rain some

more - we didnʼt know that yet.

Prior to Fluff I kept in touch with my hungarian friends Gabi and Lacy, the twin brothers of

evil from Rivers Run Dry (Hun) , and they told me they were going to be at Fluff this year

with their fellow countryman (they havenʼt missed a Fluff since the beginning). The first

thing to do was to call them and see if they kept their promise and reserved us a spot for

our tent. True friends never let you down, and they didnʼt.

This was my first time at Fluff, 2009 was the 10th year anniversary. The first time I heard

about Fluff, I was about 18-19 years old. This was back in 2000, 2001. Ever since then I

had this urge to visit it, but never had the chance to - It always came down to me not

having the opportunity (too young and without money, courage etc.) or the time (studying

makes it pretty hard to go to festivals in foreign countries at the end of july, the exam time).

Or maybe I didnʼt have the will, maybe I was not determined enough. This year I

was...Well not quite, unfortunately, because we still had to miss the friday show, but I am

going to make up for that next year. And that is a promise.

So it rained and we waited in the car for the rain to stop.

At the time we arrived Wait in Vain were already playing. It was really shitty that I had to

miss yet another band I wanted to see, but thatʼs it how it goes. I think another good band

was playing their last show in the party ten: Dakhma from Chech. We had to put up our

tent first and find a place to park, because people were rushing into the festivals location.

So the minute the rain stopped we pulled our tent out and started preparing the spot for it.

And the same exact minute it started to rain again, only this time much heavier than

before. We had to be fast because the tent was half ready and the rain was pouring inside.

When we finished we waited in the car for the rain to stop, which was another 5-10

minutes and then decided to check out the location. Wait in Vain had just finished playing

and a crowd of muddy people were coming from the stage area. Probably to change their

soak wet clothes or bring some umbrellas or whatnot. Well the weather was good on us

and this was the last time it rained this night, but it was pretty muddy. Fluff didnʼt become

the Woodstock of the 2009, but it wasnʼt very pleasant nevertheless.

Ok let me explain how the Fest looks like. So you drive to this city, Rokycany (Czech

pronunciation:[ʻrokitsaniʼ], German: Rokitzan), which is near the german border, near the

town of Pilsen and drive up this hill. The city itself is pretty small, Wikipedia says its 15000

people, looked even smaller than that. I always love open air hardcore festivals near small

cities on Weekends, because you always end up seeing all those tattooed weirdos walking

around, buying food, sight seeing or just doing regular stupid stuff and bringing live to

otherwise forsaken places. But Iʼll get to that later. So on that hill there are some

construction workers doing stuff and you can hardly see that there is a detour to the fest

on the left side unless youʼre smart and decide to just follow the same tattooed weirdos we

saw earlier, who will eventually show you the way. There is a small parking space prior to

the fest location and from then on its only mud and tents and toilets and unfortunately

garbage, more on that later. This is actually a working airfield for small private aircrafts so

there is a big hangar right behind the main stage and a huge herbage field. Actually there

are only two stages, the open air stage and the small party tent stage, which holds up to

500-600 people, but I can swear that for some of the bands there were even more inside.

It was ridiculous. The party tent was fun, but there are tons of other stuff that were also

interesting, besides the bands. The first thing to notice is the huge army tent where the

independent movies were shown. They had a schedule with the movies they were showing

on each day, most of which I had already seen, but it was still fun to see them again after

all those years. Then there were the Distros, Merch and Zines. Huge, huge variety of

distros selling everything that you can think of, Vinyls, CDs, Zines, Books, Buttons, TShirts,

Cloth Bags (very popular, dunno why...) just about everything one can imagine to

find at a hardcore show. I think the biggest sell out were those D.I.Y. cloth bags with bands

logos and drawings. Almost every girl had one, and a good amount of the guys too. As far

as I understood, the space at the far back opposite the main stage was deserved for the

merch of the bands that played on the day and the other area was for the Distros. There

was a great amount of Distros and D.I.Y Shops outside the fences, right in front the

entrance and on the sides of the main festival area. The fences kept everything closed and

served as a checkpoint. To summarize it, it was huge for a d.i.y. hardcore fest. Someone

will argue that it is too much, but I am far too old to get into this subject or demurs about

sell outs and such. The distros and shops were always part of the hardcore subculture and

theyʼre doing a good amount of work and devoting a huge amount of their time to this,

traveling all the different places so you have to give them credit for that and there is

absolutely nothing wrong with doing what you love, even for living. There are two things I

forgot to mention. The first is the free books and zines library, which is pretty much a small

tent with tons of zines, which you can borrow, read and then give back. That simple. There

were 2-3 huge piles of those and I read a couple of zines in between bands. I promised I

would send a copy of my zine Sunrise & Sunsets for Fluff next year. This is also the place where I met a friend

of mine from Bulgaria, whom I didnʼt know was going to be at fluff. Actually we met on

stage before Trial, but thats another story altogether. And last but not least, the huge

catering service. All vegan, or if I missed something, at least vegetarian. Besides the

meals, there were pancakes and ice and cakes and beverages and tea and coffee, and

beer, and, and... I think at least about a dozen of things one can choose from. And when I

think of all the restless people cooking for us hungry festival goers, all the people pouring

in beverages, I really felt sorry for them the whole time, especially for the guy on the vegan

soy BBQ.

Food was delicious, the huge queues on the other hand, not! You had to wait for about 30

minutes for the simplest of meals which meant you had to sacrifice a band, or part of their

set, to do so. Pretty shitty and I sure hope they can do something about it as the fest gets

even bigger and bigger. An estimated 2000 attended this yearʼs one and I guess there will

be even more next year. But even though 2000 sounds like a huge number for a hardcore

fest, it really had this familiar feel to it. Everyone was very friendly and cheerful and you

really felt that youʼre amongst a bunch of friends and family even though you only knew a

dozen of them. And even though you had these different types of people gathered

together, sxe, old school youth crew whatever, drunks, punks, crusties, moshers with the

ʻcoolʼ baseball hats etc. it was still very friendly. I always recall something Jim from

Champion and I discussed during the interview I did with them back in 2005. Even if youʼre

on the other side of the world and you meet a guy in a hardcore shirt you could just go to

him/her and say “Hey, I really like that band, whatʼs your name” and itʼs like you were

friends forever. This is what kept me in the hardcore scene for so long and even the fact

that it changed so much over the years is still the predominant feel inside the scene. This

is how I got to know Gabi and Lacy. In the beginning we were just exchanging emails (very

rarely actually) and zines, me doing the old zine and they doing xResistancex, so after

about 5 years of back and fort communication, Trial, Bane Comeback Kid and FC Five

were all going to play in Budapest on the same week so he, without even meeting me

even once, organized a place for me to stay for the whole week. So this is how true

friendships in this scene arise.

Food drinks and distros are cool, but that is not the main point of the fest (to me it isnʼt),

this is just the spice and the main dish are the bands. I will try to recall all the bands we

saw and explain what type of music they play as good as possible, but donʼt get crazy if I

miss some of them. The first band we managed to see was CELESTE from France on the

main stage. They play this chaotic, metalic dark hardcore type of music. Since they are on

Denovali, a german label, you can pretty much get the idea of their music if you know the

label. To check them out go to http://www.myspace.com/unhiverdeplus. They were not bad

live, but I guess nothing special, or it was just too early and we were too hyped of all the

other stuff at the fest. I like their music, donʼt get me wrong, but probably not so much their

live performance. I saw them a couple of months later at Fall of Efrafaʼs last Euro show,

and boy, did they put one hell of a laser-smoke show that night. You can hit it up on

youtube, it was insane. I guess this is a typical non-festival-small show-no-stage type of

band so maybe this is the reason I didn't quite like them at Fluff. So we decided to check

out Outrage from US in the party tent. It was pretty full, as I already explained earlier. A

little too full. There were some circle pits and sing a longs. They play this fast paced “post

old-school straight edge”, I dunno what to call it, style. I never was that good at giving

names and shapes to music, but I guess you got the idea. Angry singing, circle pits, singa-

longs, up-tempo riffs. They come from Massachusetts and I guess this type of hardcore

must be pretty dominant with Bane, Have Heart, Verse etc. being the big names in that

small state. You can check them out here: http://www.myspace.com/outragenb I can

imagine them getting even bigger in the coming years. Next on the main stage were

ZANN, never heard of them, although they came from Germany, probably never played in

my area. I really liked their performance. They are really dark, emotional,melodic, chaotic

at points, with growling singing. Very nice mix and great on stage, I was very positively

surprised. From what I understood they have anarchist background and sing in german.

What was also noticeable was the huge crowd behind the band and on the sides of the

stage. I knew that from the videos on youtube and old fluff videos I had on my computer,

but it was the first time I saw it live. Why were all those people on stage? Well I guess

everybody has their own reasons, being close to the band, show support, friends,

photographers etc. What made this possible is more important. There were no bouncers or

security whatsoever, none, zero, null. Only the organizers and volunteers were helping

keeping the amount of people on stage reasonable, everybody was welcome. Something

which was not always as easy, reference: Trial and Have Heart, more on that later. So

anyways, ZANN were really good, check them out here http://www.myspace.com/zann.

Next, Fall of Efrafa from the UK. A very nice band, with amazing lyrics based on the

fantasy novel Watership Down by Richard Adams, which pretty much tells the story of

a bunch of anthropomorphized rabbits. Efrafa, a warren in the book, is taken by the

band as a metaphor for mankind and modern society in general. A really dark,

misanthropic music. They disbanded in the winter 2009 after releasing their 3rd album

of their trilogy. I must say I was one of the lucky few who attended one of their final

sold out shows and had the opportunity to see them once again live. Fluff is a good

place to try and be on stage and see the band as close as you can so I decided to try

my luck and get on and see if I can shoot some nice pictures and also experience their

live performance up-close. So I did, got some stills that turned out not so bad, but

unfortunately the ISO on the film was too low for the lighting. Shot with a fisheye.

Their performance is very emotional, from what I saw live, they start their sets slow

and use some of the intros from the cds. Great performance, Fall of Efrafa was for

many one of the highlight on saturday. For more info go to http://www.myspace.com/

fallofefrafa or http://www.fallofefrafa.com and check a great video of one of their live

performances. Next were Victims from Sweden, but I didn’t like them at all, although i

used to like this trashy kind of music. That said, I think they had very nice support

from the crowd and probably split the crowd, half of fluff were dancing and the other

half hiding from the rain. They win the contest for the hugest circle pit on a hardcore

show, hands down. There was no one playing in the party tent, we decided to try our

luck and get some food, after all we left at about 8-9 a.m. and it was already 8.30

p.m. The queue was not the longest one, but it still took about 25 minutes if not more

for our turn to come. I can’t remember what we ate, I think something with soy and a

veggie burger, but we ate fast and had little time to line up in front for Trial, the final

band on Saturday. I even tried to get on stage, and although I was too late and there

was a huge crowd gathered there I found a small spot. I just wanted to take some

pictures and get the hell out of there, I don’t like to be on stage that much, prefer to

be down and feel the vibe. There were some people trying to keep the crowd on stage

from demolishing everything but they didn’t quite succeed. The first and last time I

saw Trial was at their epic reunion show in the winter of 2005. It was an amazing

festival, amazing week I spent in Hungary which I will never forget. I really hoped

that their performance will be at least as good and they didn’t disappoint me at all.

They began their set with the Intro from “Are these our lives?” LP, which is always

very powerful to hear live. It is also cool to see people stage-diving to classical music.

The Intro is about minute and a half long and it usually slides into “Reflections”. That

is where all hell brakes lose. People going nuts, stage-diving, singing along, piling up.

I think for the first minutes of the song Greg didn’t get to sing a single word and at

some point even lost his mic in the crowd. Next song was “One Step Away” and the

madness continued. I must admit I am getting pretty old for the intense stage-divings

and just watched the show on the side. One thing that always accompanied Trial’s live

performances were Greg’s speeches and although they were not that long as in

Budapest, and he obviously didn’t prepare them as much as on the reunion shows, he

still used some of the time between songs to address issues. One of the things that

really stroke a chord was when he mentioned a hotline helping raped and abused

women or people in need that some people in USA started sometime ago and asked

the crowd if such thing existed in Chech, and urged them to start one if there wasn’t

any. The words “If there is none, start one” really made me think. We love to talk

about all those things that are wrong, write about them and even if we’re aware of the

problems we sometimes forget that what the world really needs is direct actions.

Direct actions in everything we do. I know that personal choice is also a direct action,

but sometimes there has to be something more to be done... He also addressed the

people that got robbed the night before saturday, something ZANN talked about

earlier that day, something I was not aware of at the moment. Apparently some tents

got robbed and there was an attempt at stealing a car. I am not quite sure if it was

the locals or the people at the fest, I really can’t and don’t want to imagine if it’s the

later, but that was not nice at all, especially, because on the next night a tent of our

friends from hungary, some 5 meters away from ours, also got robbed. If someone

from the organizers reads this, I would suggest that they fence the whole place and

not only the stage area and make some checkpoints as exits, so if next year someone

gets robbed, then we can surely do the math and see that it was someone from the

fest doing it. I can’t imagine people going over fences without notice, although a

possibility. But at least a fence would slow them down and make them think twice,

before trying it. Either way if it turns out that hardcore kids are stealing from other

hardcore kids at a festival like Fluff, I would surely have to reconsider the foundations

in the scene I talked about earlier. So anyways, Trial’s show was very nice, only

problem was the constantly torn up cable. They had to change 3 microphone cables,

because shit was too intense and people were ripping them all the time. At some point

the sound guy, obviously very angry, told Greg, that he gives him one last spare

cable. Trial asked for no encores as they had only this set prepared and suggested

that we all go to the D.I.S.C.O. tent right after the show instead. And so we did. I

think they played War By Other Means last and as expected it was 200 people on

stage. If you don’t believe me, go hit youtube and check it out for yourselves. A truly

passionate performance.

We went at the party tent right after Trial, but I guess it was too early and there were

hardly people inside. We were too exhausted from the long drive and the whole

tension so we decided to go to bed and save our strengths for the second day. There

was an OPEN AIR CINEMA scheduled a little later, and even some bands playing the

arty tent, but we missed that. I am not even sure if it took place at all, because it

started to rain or rather pour again. It’s really sad that we missed so much of

saturday, but we were too damn tired and couldn’t stand up anymore

I woke up pretty early on sunday, about 7-8 am and I don’t know why. I really

wanted to sleep some more, but that routine I was in has set my biological clock to 8

am. That wasn’t all too bad because I found time to read Evasion, a book I bought the

day before. I remember reading it a long time ago, along with the other CrimethInc.

stuff like Days of War, Nights of Love and Inside Front, but never got to the end of it. It

was fun to read it once again after all those years. I remember how i read that book

in my late teenage years and thinking and questioning the topics of the book. I really

admired CrimethInc. for what they were doing at that time, and I guess I still am

today. I loved Catharsis and when I first saw them live it was an amazing experience.

This was one of the first foreign bands to come and play to Bulgaria, and such an

influential band it was. At that time, the dawn of the new millennium, mostly bands

like Endstand, Catharsis, Children of Fall and the likes came and dared to play in our

god forsaken place. No borders, no authorities stopped them from doing so. Truly

great bands, musically, lyrically and inspirationally. So I took the time and read

through the book. A book that makes me think of how my life could’ve turned out,

and why it turned out to be the way it is now. Little by little did all the hungarian

friends started getting up and getting ready to go to the artificial lake, aka swimming

pool in Rokycany. This was also the time when some of them found out that they got

robbed, only money taken: cameras, ipods and other stuff left untouched. Pretty

weird. But before that, all the kids had to go and eat something. And this is when the

weird factor comes into place. Imagine this little ghost village like town, filled up with

all those 2000 hungry tattooed weirdos I told you about earlier? Now imagine that

same bunch going on a crusade for food, in their thousands. Amazing! Everywhere

you went, a shop, a supermarket, a restaurant, every place filled up. The funny thing

was, this 15000 people small town had at least about 5-6 big, major foreign , mostly

german, supermarkets. All opened on sundays. And mostly all of them gathered at

about 50 m from each other. Insane! I don’t know if this is normal on all sundays, but

on this particular sunday you could hardly see any locals, or at least we didn’t see

any. In front of all the supermarkets there were huge crowds of people hanging out,

eating, chatting, whatever-hanging-out and there were no shops opened. No

restaurants opened, except for one, which was, yes, full to the top. Imagine the

opportunity those locals missed, when they decided that 2000 tourists was not

enough to have their shops opened on a single sunday in the year. The next funny

thing was that the cash machines in the centre began to go flat broke. We could

hardly find one with cash in it for a while. So we went to the supermarket and bought

some food with the small amounts of Korunas that we had and had breakfast with the

other hungarian guys. After that, they went to the lake. As it turned out later, most of

the people from the fest did that too. There are some videos on the tube, fluff fest

invading the Lake of Rokycany. Well, I come from a city situated on a sea, so small

artificial lakes don’t mean that much to me, so we decided to spend our time more

reasonably and have some sightseeing around Rokycany and see what the town looks

like. The only place I’ve been to in Chech was Prague, so I wanted to see how a little

province town looks like. Well, I must say it was pretty neat, I liked some of the

architecture, the church, the small chapel and some of the buildings on the main

square and the town hall. The city is a pretty mix of Aristocratic Baroque like (in a

way) buildings, small village houses, which reminded me awful lot the village houses

that we have back in Bulgaria. They looked almost the same, but I must say a little

preppier, nice and neat. I think that the people of Rokycany are not exactly the

richest ones, from my impressions, but they kept their houses very orderly. Well,

there was also a part of the city where you can see that Chech, or rather

Chechoslovakia, was under a Communist regime for a while, the 1970’s style houses,

the old rusty railway station, which was probably built by the same guy that did the

hotel on the main square. This is something that also reminded me of Bulgaria, but at

least the Chechs kept some of their architecture intact.

Rokycany was pretty small, so after finding no restaurants and sightseeing

everything that was to be sightsee-ed, we decided to check out Plzeň. Plzeň, as you

can surely read on wikipedia, is a city in western Bohemia, very near to the german border,

the fourth most populous city in Chech with about 170 000 people. Not that much, but still

the fourth in Chech. It is about 20km west of Rokycany. I didnʼt know what to expect. I

have heard of Pilsener, the beer, I knew that Skoda had factories there, but that pretty

much was it. I was surprised when we pulled out and walked onto the main square. Pilsen

started to remind me a little of Prague, it was a really nice city and if I didnʼt know I was in

Pilsen and the city had only under 200 000 people population, I surely couldʼve mistaken it

for Prague or at least wouldʼve thought that it is much bigger than that. I was really

impressed by the architecture and the buildings and how everything was organized. We

didnʼt have much time for Pilsen, as we had to go back to Rokycany for the show, but it

was very relaxing to check out the city and even relax in the sun. Yes, the weather was

merciful on us and it was a lovely afternoon to walk in a foreign place and explore.

Something I always loved.

We rushed to go back to Fluff, because saturday was great, but sunday had some great

bands lined up waiting for us. I was really excited about Have Heart. Theyʼre a truly

amazing band and whatʼs best, they are very honest in what they do. I had the chance to

see them twice already and do an interview with Pat Flynn, their singer, which you can

read here (soon). I am sure that, when you read those lines, you will see what I have meant by

honest and amazing. I think we got there just on time to see Shipwreck A.D. As it turned

out they were on tour with Have Heart and Rise and Fall. So other interesting thing is the

singer mentions the fact that this is their last show in Europe and that they are disbanding.

I am not a huge fan of theirs, but they play nice. They play fast and hard, have a

somewhat similar style with Have Heart, being from Boston is normal I guess. They have

some mosh and down beat parts and some really well thought out lyrics as well. There

werenʼt many people in front of the stage, but the band gave everything on their last

european tour and show. What I was just wondering the whole time is how the guitarist,

wearing a hat and a jacket and long jeans, was not sweating like an animal in the

afternoon heat, but hey, who am I to judge other people...So next thing they mention is that

this is going to be Have Hearts last show in Europe also. I didnʼt see that coming. I am not

quite sure when they decided that, couldʼve been right on that tour, but they never

mentioned it anywhere or I missed it. I wasnʼt aware and this came as a big surprise. I

really liked the band, because it brought something fresh into the scene. I donʼt know what

the other kids found in it, but to me, it was always about their sincerity. I am 28 years old

now, and as I kid I never thought I would see a band grow in the scene, a band which I will

come to like very much and then disband in the same lifespan. I first noticed the band

around 2004 after their debut EP “What Counts”, but I got into them when their full-length

“The Things We Carry” came out. Their brake up was a real blow and another reason for

me to await their performance even more eagerly. I have to mention that I noticed they

didnʼt have merch table, but I thought it was because they had sold out everything. I guess

it was because they didnʼt want to be out, probably knowing what will happen when kids

start asking questions etc. Either way, they didnʼt have merch and this was kind of

surprising, as they were sort of headlining on sunday, but that also gives a perspective

about the band and their emotions and motivations for being a band.

Shipwreck A.D. finished their set and it was time for Death is Not Glamourous from Oslo,

Norway on the main stage and Mondo Gecko from Israel inside the small tent. We

checked out both bands, but they were not exactly what I expected so we hang out at the

Distros and the Library area. We met with Mitko once again, asked him about his long and

exhausting journey from Bulgaria. He told us that he used some trains and buses and that

it was a pretty long ride. It reminded me how I used to travel for 40-50 hours just to see

some bands, because unfortunately a European tour for most of them, or their booking

agencies back then, excluded anything east of Hungary. But that is another story all

together. He also told us he and some other people were preparing a fluff 2009 zine, in

which everybody could contribute with something: a poem, column, anything, and then be

printed out and given for free at the end of the fest, which was a cool idea.

We went to check out the other bands, and as far as I can remember, next on the main

stage were Rise and Fall from Belgium. I really liked them from the first time I saw them

few years ago. I think it was on their tour with Bane, and I have seen them 2-3 times ever

since. I enjoyed their performance, but they are really great when in a small club. I kind of

missed that feeling seeing them on a huge open air stage. But theyʼre always an amazing

band live. The next two bands were An Albatross from the States and Ratos de Porao from

Brazil. An Albatross is a pretty wacky bunch of, from what they seemed on stage, total

lunatics. There are 5 of them: guitar, bass drums, vocals and some organ synthesizers.

Music is total, grind chaos, the singer makes the most ridiculous Jim Morrison meets Brian

D (Catharsis) poses, climbs everywhere he can find and makes even more ridiculous

poses at the same time. All in a fun matter I guess. Ratos de Porao is an old trash,

crossover band from Brazil. They have been around for about 30 years, but have never

caught my attention. I didnʼt like them at all so we went to check out and meet with Gabi,

Lacy and the other Hungarians. They were all hanging out in the distro area. We talked

about the fest, how we saw fluff in those two days and he told me how this is his 10 year in

a row. He has been there since the beginning, each and every year. From what I

understood, it used to be a pretty small fest, 150-200 people the most, so there were

complains about it getting too huge and mainstream. I canʼt disagree more. I mean, I donʼt

know how that fest used to be, but what I saw was a very well organized festival, with

some positive and cheerfully tempered people. Gabi also told me a funny Fluff story, about

him and his brother who used to share the same veggie burger, because they were flat

broke and hitchhiked just to be at the festival. Which we of course kind of laughed about,

but I guess it wasnʼt very funny at that time. Those were the times:)

Since I had to be back home early on the next morning and we had another 700 km of

driving ahead of us, we had to leave right after the last band so we took the chance to say

goodbye to each other, and line up for Have Heart. I was very eager to see them for the

last time. I donʼt know what this band meant to those kids that sing along so passionately,

but I sure know what this band meant to me. To me this band was a breath of fresh air in a

scene that was suffocating of bullshit, of dishonest bands coming off the conveyer line,

sounding the same and donʼt meaning a word they write about. Have Heart, and their

singer, meant every line, because it was all personal. Wether it will be about the scene,

sxe, or family, love relations, you could just see that it strikes a chord every time he sings

each line. It was and still is pretty strange to see a man stand up on that stage and sing

words so personal to him, about him, about his father and see the crowd singing back. Is

it really meaning something to them, and are they portraying themselves into these songs,

or are they just singing along for the sake of it? Did this band make them open up their

hearts and those lines theyʼre singing along so passionately, makes them free some

feelings that were being deeply hidden inside of them? This is one of the main topics in

that very interview with Have Heart, so if you have a moment check it out.

Have Heart were playing their last show in Europe ever and they were about to make a

mark of it. As far as I can remember they started their set with “The Same Son” and

“Bostons”, songs reflecting on the topics I just mentioned. The crowd went absolutely

insane and I must admit, there were stage dives from left to right, from back to front and I

think it was even more intense than the night before, when Trial hit the stage at the same

time. In between songs, Pat was reflecting on the past, thanking bands like Bane and Rise

and Fall, Shipwreck A.D. Verse, for being with them and helping them become what they

are now, pushing it to the limits of their ability. He also expressed his feelings about being

in the band for the last 7 years, touring the world twice and you could really feel how

sincere he was about all of this. When you think about it, this is the best time to call it quits.

I mean what more can a hardcore band want - they toured the whole world, twice! At some

point or another theyʼre bound to start repeating themselves and the best time for breaking

up is when youʼre on the top. Few bands caught the right moment, but I guess Have Heart

were dead-on. They asked for no encores and promised to be making no reunions,

something only time will tell. “Watch me Rise” was their final song in Europe and again

hundreds of bodies stormed the stage and built a huge pile-on. As the song goes, “Iʼd

rather die on my feet than live on my knees”, an amazing end to an amazing band, playing

their last show on the (US?) Edge Day, 18 October 2009.

We had to leave right after so we missed the Goodbye afterparty. We didn’t leave with

mixed feelings though, it was a very nice fest and although there were things I

disliked (the garbage and the robbery part) Fluff was an amazing fest. I can really

compare it to the Louvre or the great night of museums in Amsterdam (n8.nl). So what has

Fluff, a small hardcore fest in Europe so common with the “Grand Louvre”, the worlds most

popular national museum, you might ask? Or with some museums in Amsterdam for that

matter? Well itʼs simple, imagine you only have a sunday morning to check all of the louvre

and you must check everything at the same time, with thousands of tourists getting in your

way on the first sunday of the month, when admission is free. Forget it, it is impossible!

You need at least a day just to walk this place without stopping. Or imagine you have

about 7 hours to check out 42 museums and their special, amazing, one of a time, only to

see once in a year, scheduled programs with tens of thousands other museum lovers in a

crazy city like Amsterdam? No chance! The same it is with Fluff, because there are so

much things going on at the same time, so many people there, so many friends, you just

canʼt have enough of it, but you really want to. Should I see this band, or should I see that

one, should I watch a movie, should I read a book, a zine, check out the distros, the merch

tables, should I eat a delicious veggie burger with ice cream and a pancake, but sacrifice a

band because there are 100 people on the queue? There is always something going on at

fluff and there is always something that you might miss. But that is what makes it so

special. Of course the garbage that people leave behind them is nothing special and I

really canʼt understand where those idiots come from. I thought that hardcore thought them

something, but I guess I was wrong and even on a fest like this you can find such idiots. I

am not worshipping the festival, I am just saying that Fluff had this history of being political

and still is and people spreading different messages like environmentalists, anarchists,

anti-nazis etc. and yet, at the same time a huge pile of garbage is left over. People

smoking and throwing their cigarette leftovers on the ground, just makes me wonder what

theyʼre doing there in the first place. So if we assume that nothing is perfect in this world,

Fluff Fest is as perfect as it can be and I am looking forward to being there next year,

Fluff Fest 2010 here we come. It will be a blast, for sure!