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Milhões de Festa 2012: chronicles & day 0

It’s over, Milhões de Festa 2012 is already past. From now on I’ll spend the days missing all the fun in the last weekend (I’ve already done all the sleeping I didn’t during the festival, so that’s what’s really left). And by “fun” I mean the concerts all the crazy stuff you did so you can brag to your friends at some coffee’s esplanade. This article here won’t have more than a few shows of 19th July, differences to the past editions, novelties, complains, praises, histories, et cetera. Yes, you’re still reading Bolachas.org, not VICE. Let’s do a list! Mssng Milhões de Festa.

River Cávado

- To start, this edition managed to bring more people to the festival, which I saw as a surprise. I went camping (all) the four days, and soon as I arrived it was already hard to find a grass area to pack your tent (I hadn’t bring a fine mattress, so this was vital to me), but I managed to get one. As for the attendance during the concerts… I think it was the same!, so no problem there;

- It was tough to pick up the bracelets, kinda. At the day zero they in fact located the picking point at the camping site, but it took a long time (luckily I arrived moments before they started doing line and got my credential in minutes). The next day, it moved like past years to the box office, which is in the festival site, thus making the campers walk a little extra with all the bags and stuff;

- For the maintenance, some changes in terms of number: less box offices for the ticket, less bathhouses (however by the 2nd day of festival they increased the available ones) and a little colder water compared by a perfect one last year (still aceptable), urinals in the festival site (finally), but the most important: the offer in food improved! The Taina Stage offered a great variety of food not only for the day zero but for the rest of the days, same as the main stages (welcome back, sandes de leitão);

- The delays in concerts. I mean, this is unacceptable at some point: the first day, Throes + The Shine played over an hour late, and so as the following concerts. The second day also got to delay a lot, forcing Hoy! to cancel the show, since it was fucking late! The third day got better, but still forget punctual concerts.

- The poor amount of Vini sangria (fruit wine, close translation), as by the middle of the night there were no more stock, at least for the last 2 nights.

- The Taina Stage, but I’ll talk about it later on.

Clichéd photo #1

Now the concerts. After I packed my tent (you could do this if you arrived earlier than 5 o’clock) and joined some buddies for a late lunch, there I was wandering through Barcelos to find the Municipal Market, with relativity ease (thanks, Google Maps). It all began with The Glockenwise, and this time you could say they took the meaning “shitless rockers” a little too serious: the show was totally unpluged, acoustic guitars, only a snare drum and no micros. This right there in the middle of the stalls with fruit and fish, with that awful smell and a strong sunny day. Ergo, totally worth it the attending and showing Glockenwise are capable of moving out of the tag of “surfer rock ‘n’roll band for girls”. Great start.

Right next was time for Kaïl, and oh boy it went loud. And I’m sure about this because I spent the concert some meters away nearby a coffee, pardon my unprofessionalism (well, Bolachas doesn’t pay me, so I guess all in all I’m unprofessional). Nevertheless, I did see a bit of the soundcheck and the passersby could not keep moving without noticing all that, so another well-succeeded performance.

The following one wasn’t a problem for my heavy drinking for the day, in the middle of a square, with a fountain in the middle and esplanades for the assistance, although there were already a lot of people watching and therefore I couldn’t see all the time what Aspen was doing to perform such a thick stoner rock. Whatever that was, they managed to fill Apoio’s Square full of distortion and lingering death drums (funny that the drummer was the same guy from Glockenwise who did the job sooner with only a snare), there were quality.

I’d love to see Cálculo doing some rhymes but a dinner was being appointed and so I missed the first of three or four hip hop acts of MdF, I think (the other ones were, well, you wait till I write about it). Just for this lack of hip hop bands it would be worth it to check this bro and see what kind of format and things he would do. Being from Barcelos and the concert free, I guess public wasn’t a problem, so Milhões wins this bet too.

Clichéd photo #2

After dinner it was time to check Taina Stage, the new stage for this Milhões, and what can I say? Well I say “let this stage live for the next edition”, because we have a perfectly good alternative for people not very keen on swimming, it’s not so far away from everything and the place also works for the stage, a plateau just meters away from the bridge over the Cávado river. It’s a win, but not for this night (remembering that the following days it worked in daylight). Besides the place got a little too crowded, the illumination went down some three times after The Glockenwise concert (this time pretty faithful to their sound), I actually missed to know if GNOD were playing, because I think it was somebody else(?) putting music (maybe Ana or Pedro Santos) to a low volume. Taking that into account I went drinking with some friends, meeting other people’s friends, rocking in Xano’s Bar and by the end of the night playing football with an empty water bottle with a Glockenwise member. And got pretty wasted. This is Milhões de Festa! Living life.

Some metalhead we’ve met in the camping © Amílcar Rodrigues

PS: If you speak portuguese and you are desperate to read something about the concerts, then follow Bolachas.org on Twitter so you can ready the tweets I sent while in the festival.

PS2: Let’s go VICE and get personal, so I would like to thank a few people for providing such a nice weekend to me in a even nicer festival, so thank you beloved friends (you all know who you are), thank you new friends (add me on facebook, send me a mail or something), thank you Valpaços camping neighbors who offered us some homemade wine, thank you crowdsurfing Spiderman teddy, thank you metalheads of the acoustic guitars, friends with the guy who shouts “DISPÁRA E MATA O GALO”, thank you lady from the upper bar in the hockey pavilion for the kindness and electricity (first 2nd greatest bar in the world), thank you garbage men for making me laugh with the best prank in life, thank you Shangaan Electro for the dancing, thank you Bro-X for the lyrics, thank you Unicornibot for the stage, thank you Throes + The Shine for the sweat, thank you India, thank you terror, thank you disillusionment, thank you Barcelos and thank you Milhões. See you next year.

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Photos by SMF except where noted

bernardo@bolachas.org