Sziget Festival 2014 Recap
When the calendar hits August, it can only mean one thing: it’s time for Sziget Festival! One of the islands of River Danube in the heart of Budapest provides the place for the event that attracts hundred thousands of music lovers from all around the world each year, and Dora headed out for the first day to check out The 1975 and punk legends Blink 182.
Being the first warm-up day at Sziget, there wasn’t much to see yet. Bits and pieces of construction works were still on going and the non-music related programming was due to start in the upcoming days, with the line-up mainly focusing on the Main Stage. That’s also where the not so much fun part of the journey began with wasting mere two hours sorting out tickets, queuing for the special payment cards, and getting through security.
Once again, we only seen the second half of Ivan & The Parazol‘s early set, which is a shame. Obviously not much has changed since their time at VOLT festival last month, but it was still fun to dance around to this year’s official festival-anthem, ‘Together’.
The 1975 took the stage later on. After the third song, it became kind of worrying that no one on stage would speak a word because they always seem that cool. Ha! Finally, singer Matt Healy broke the silence to appreciate being there and people coming out to see them, while casually sipping a bottle of red wine – it better be a finer Hungarian type. Aside from the amazing performance, it seemed too early for the band to play in this country, because they are only just starting to sink into the popular scene here. A more familiar crowd (like the UK one) would have responded with more enthusiasm to the songs and their existence. The second half of the set with the big hits, however, absolutely made up for the mellow start. Not to mention, it’s still hard to imagine how Adam Hann is able to play the guitar and synth at the same time.
The downtime in between concerts gave us the opportunity to look around, and admire the great design installations all around the festival. Artists and organizers clearly put a lot of effort into creating a unique environment. Thanks to the huge territory, something new was always there waiting to be discovered, so we ended up running back to the Main Stage…
Blink 182 were already a few songs into their set. Both new tracks and the classics made it onto the set list, providing great entertainment for new and old fans alike. Sure a lot of us relived being a 00’s teenager all over again when hearing ‘First Date’ and ‘All The Small Things’ to name a few. Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus have made us laugh hard with their hilarious on-stage sexually referenced banter (spiced up with a Justin Bieber song threat), while Travis Barker totally killed it on drums. It was worth the wait for Hungary to finally welcome the band in the country, and hopefully they’ll return soon.
With the final chords of Blink’s last song, our Sziget festival day came to an end as well. Work calls!
