Gurten Festival 2001

Insights of an ageing hero

As the St. Gallen Open Air has finally started their seven good years the Gurten Festial seems to have no choice but to put up with seven bad years - at least weatherwise. Last year it rained for a week in advance and the three concert days not only stayed in memory because of the good music but also for a permanent downpour. As I managed to survive the inclement weather thanks to competently wrapping myself in layers and layers of waterproofs I was not overly worried about another substandard forecast.
After only one year I did not yet dare to call myself a seasoned concert goer but years of scouts camps and the survival of last year's deluge made me confident to again master the onslaught of the elements.

Whereever I had announced my intention of attending the festival I could count on snide remarks about the rather unfavourable forecast. The greater the admiration when I seemed unperturbed by such prophecy. Since nobody asked for details I felt no need to admit that we did not intend to try to weather the weekend in a thin and permeable tent but instead had plans of a short walk to a friend's parent's house where warm and dry beds were beckoning. I enjoyed this undeserved respect devoid of an justification with no bad conscience whatsoever.

We had not counted on the tricks of the weather, though. It seems that while the forces that are in charge of such matters have not the power to actually render our means of protection ineffective they still manage to trick us to neutralise our preventive steps on a logistical level.

Friday was sunny and dry - as announced - and the only brief shower was hardly noticed by the audience which was intensively listening to the band playing on the stage in the big tent. Saturday topped this by not only being sunny but nice and warm as well. After a late and extensive brunch we decided to laze around in the parental garden before strolling back to the festival grounds in the late afternoon. The forecast again proved to be surprisingly reliable: There were various short periods of rain which - complying with our expectations - could be withstood thanks to our raincoats and not even necessitated our waterproof overpants. In an eerie manner the clouds sank low enough to drift across the grounds in sppoky shrouds of fog that looked as if ghouls of days past tried to catch a few bars of Mötley Crew or maybe hoped for a cure by Die Ärzte (the doctors)...

Sunday consistently confomred to the forecast as well. They must employ a poet at the weather service. According to them we were in for "enduring precipitation with increasing intensity" which would be topped by "a zone of strong rain interspersed with the occasional thunderstorm" towards the evening.

After a rather late but plentyful brunch we decided in wise foresight to not expose ourselves to the adverse conditions unnecessarily as our only valid reason for attending the festival on sunday was the big head liner Manu Chao. We therefore appreciated the hospitality in a dry and heated living room before leaving for the train station where we locked up our non-rain gear and then caught the tram towards the entrance of the festival grounds. Wisely we decided to take along the water proof overpants and hats which we planned to don once we reached the grounds.

Thus had the basis to our downfall been laid. The weather cruelly exploited our naivity by not raining for the time being which made us lull ourselves in false security. We decided to wait putting on our waterproofs until it was sure that the rain would start again to avoid looking like Michelin Man himself for longer than absolutely necessary.

This drove us to scorn the young and brave heroes who had braved the weather during the last 48 hours on the grounds amidst swamp like conditions with nothing but a crappy tent and now gave up and left soaked to the skin with even more fervour as weaklings. It is the privilege of the ageing hero to make fun of the young, unwise heroes in the same breath as one deprives them of the right to heroeship if they decide to call it quits.

With subtle cruelty the weather gods let the rain increase. So slowly at first that we did not feel it justified the hassle of looking for dry ground to don the rainpants but eventually making the rain strong enough to soak our jeans to a degree where the overpants would have only served to keep the moisture inside - discounting the impossibility of getting the overpants over our mudplastered boots in any case. So we ended up carrying our gear which was to help us prove to the failed young heroes that the wisdom of age allows to withstand the most inclement conditions in an ironically unused state. Instead of boasting about our foresight we had no choice but to wallow in admiration of our own heroism - somehow forgetting our dry nights.

The previous year's weather had the advantage of soaking the whole grounds for a week in preparation for the biggest mudpool in history and although this year's rain had no chance of equalling the preceeding chaos it nonetheless managed to produce enough mud to coat boots, pants and even heads and toes artfully. Whoever did not yet look like a mudwraith had the chance to catch up during Manu Chao's concert as it would have not been worth the concentration of watching the stage as the clouds hung so low that the only indication of the stage being there were the dim lights which one could gess at in the fog. I never even saw Manu Chao but I believe that I might have caught a glimpse of one of his band members briefly. habe.

The papers have already confirmed that Manu Chao managed - not unlike the sirens in Ulysses - to steer thousands of listeners onto the muddy cliffs or to at least have them wallow in the mud fearless of the cleansing that was sure to follow. The audience happily listened to the summer tunes in the novemberlike climate.

The question I asked myself at the end was when the young, naive heroes would learn that instead of spending a whole weekend to get thoroughly soaked two hours would do the job nicely. Admittedly the happily-wet faces after two hours of Manu Chao cannot compete with the grumpily frustrated faces of a full weekend's suffering.

Urs Beeli, Zürich, 2001-08-19