Friends had a spare ticket to the Riverside festival in Aarburg, to go see Adam and the Metal Hawks and Status Quo.
I didn’t know I’d seen AMH clips on Facebook, he’s the guy that got a shout out from Jack Black. It looked like a fun time ahead.
The venue was really cool. The festival is paired with an Oldtimers’ Route 66 festival – think rockabilly, classic cars, pinups, tophat & tails, big moustaches and epic beards.
The AMH show had a good energy. The beer, for a Swiss festival, was very reasonably priced.
After the act, we had a bit of food (goot burger, decent price) and went to walk along the river, waiting for the headline show.
This is when we realized that this was probably the most Swiss festival ever. The air was already rich with the smell of melted cheese, but then we noticed that the festival ground was right next to a dairy farm. The cows, if anything, were incredibly not bothered.
Then it was time for the Quo. This time, along with the smell of raclette, the air had a distinct tinge of cannabis. Bit surreal.
The main stage area was packed. I don’t generally mind crowds, but even my urge to kill was rising, with people always jostling you to go back and forth – being polite about it, but still annoying.
Mira and Emo went up in the ferris wheel and took a picture of the crowd. Amusingly, you can spot Gino and I.
The show was really good. I only knew a couple of songs going in (In the army now, Rocking all over the world), but Katy had commented that all the songs kind of sound the same so I should enjoy it. One or two songs didn’t quite age well and aren’t really PC anymore (The Oriental, I’m looking at you). For gray-haired old dudes, they still put on a great show. I really enjoyed it.