SWEDEN ROCK FESTIVAL 2000
9 - 11 of June
Friday, 9th of June
I started my trip early in the morning with taking the ferry from my island (Gotland) to Oskarshamn, Sweden. Then I travelled by car for a couple of hours with a few stops here and there. I arrived to Norje, where the festival was going to take place. I walked around for a while, and went to see the first band, Bai Bang. A Swedish band, with kind of melodic metal. Quite OK actually.
Then I went to see 2 bands on the "demo-stage" - Debase (Pantera-like) and Unchained (80's metal). The last band this day was a band from Denmark, called The Midnight Blues. And they played blues of course. They were really good and had a quite big audience. They played a lot of covers that the audience could sing a long with.
When I walked out from the festival area, I saw Craig Goldy & girlfriend, but I didn't stop them. Went to sleep in my car.
Saturday, 10th of June:
Woke up early because the people around me started to make "noise". Ate some breakfast and read about the bands in the festival-guide. Went to see Evergrey, a Swedish metal band. OK, but I just heard a couple of songs.
Then the old band Demon started to play. They seemed to have fun on stage, and were OK too, with a vocalist looking totally mad. At this show I met and old "friend" from my island, Olle Blom, who is really into this old rock.
Went to see some songs by Freak Kitchen before I had to go see Union with former Motley Crue-singer John Corabi and old Kiss-guitarrist Bruce Kulick I did like their show, even though I did not recognize so many of their songs.
After this I saw some songs by Street Legal and Molly Hatchet. Nothing special. Saw some songs with Meldrum, John Norum's wife's (or girlfriend) band.
Then it was time for Saxon. They played some tracks from their latest album Metalhead, and a lot of old "classics". I had thought that they would be better, so I was a bit disappointed. OK show anyway.
Some of the tracks he played: Brutal Planet, Gimme, Take It Like A Woman, Teenage Frankenstein, Wicked Young Man, Blow Me A Kiss, I Love The Dead, Poison, Schools Out, 18, Under My Wheels, Only Women Bleed, Dead Babies, Elected
After Alice, it was time for our own Swedish guitar-hero, Yngwie Malmsteen, He has some good songs and a good band, but too many boring solos and the sound was not good at all. I left the show after about an hour, because I wanted a good place for Dio!
I was looking for Egon in front of the stage, but couldn't find him. Took a place at the center, second row. Saw Tapio and said Hello. Spoke to some of the people beside me, Jocke, Kajsa and her friend.
Intro
Sunset Superman
Invisible
Drum solo
Stand Up And Shout
One Night In The City
All The Fools Sailed Away
Discovery
Magica Theme
Lord Of The Last Day
Fever Dreams
Eriel
Guitarsolo
Challis
Otherworld
Magica - Reprise
Holy Diver
Rainbow In The Dark
Mob Rules
The Last In Line
Man On The Silver Mountain/Long Live Rock ‘n ‘Roll/Man
On The Silver Mountain
Don't Talk To Strangers
We Rock
The show lasted for about 100 minutes. Dio performed really great. Everybody seemed to enjoy being at SRF. I guess Chuck was the biggest surprise, he seemed to like it a lot, and did a lot of "own" stuff. Cool that Ronnie and the guys gives him the space, even though he is not a permanent Dio-member! It was awesome to hear the stuff from Magica live. And a lot of classics were included in the set too, so everybody got what they wanted.
During the show, I found out that the guy beside me at the front-row (yes, I managed to get that place a few songs into the show), was Anders Medegård (known from the We-Rock mailing-list). I left the show with Anders, Jocke and the 2 girls. Suddenly we met Egon Lundberg and Jonas Ohlsson. We said Hi, and then Egon, Jocke and me left to go backstage to meet Dio! But the guards wouldn't let us in, even though we had backstage-passes with AAA(Access All Areas) on. Then I called Tapio, and he came out and helped us in. Thanks Tapio!
There were only a few people backstage. Egon and me met Chuck Garrick and shook his hand and said thanks for a great performance. Then he had to leave, but said he would be back soon. After that I said Hi to Simon Wright, who signed my Magica CD, and a CD with John Norum that he played on. I spoke a few words with him. I asked about their following tour-dates, and he told me that Dio would come back to Europe before Christmas! Simon seemed to be a very nice guy, and easy to talk with. I also got an autograph from Michelle Meldrum (John Norum's wife/girlfriend).
After that I had the oppurtunity to meet Ronnie. I shook his hand, and got his autograph, and a picture of him and me (unfortunately not with my camera ... but Tapio should have a copy ...). After that we had to leave because Tapio's friend, Mattias, was waiting in the car for us, and Jonas was supposed to sleep in the same cabin as me, Egon, Tapio and Mattias too. Unfortunately we couldn't find him anywhere. Hope you found a good place to sleep anyway Jonas!
Sunday, 11th of June:
Here are the bands I saw the last on Sweden Rock Festival:
Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush
Edguy
King’s X
Running Wild
Armored Saint
King Diamond
Stratovarius
John Norum
We also had a Dio-meeting, Tapio Keihänen, Egon Lundberg, Anders Medegård, Daniel Reichberg and 3 other that I don't know the names on.
All in all: A great first day, with Alice Cooper and Dio as highlights, and a not so great second day, with Edguy and Armored Saint as highlights (I think).
SWEDEN ROCK FESTIVAL 1999
My review from Sweden Rock Festival in Norje in the south of Sweden on the 11 - 12th of June.
I started my trip to Norje on Thursday the 10th. I took my car (alone) on the ferry from Gotland to Oskarshamn. The trip took about 4 hours. Then I drove about 20 kilometres, before I stopped and slept in my car. The next day I drove the remaining kilometres to Norje. I parked my car and called Egon (known from WeRock mailing list), who was already there. We decided that we should meet a couple of minutes later and have something to eat.
After a few minutes a gang of 4 people approached the "meeting point", I had only seen Egon on a videotape, so I wasn't sure it was him, but we asked each other if we were the right people, and yes it was. Egon came with his 3 friends from Piteå, Fredrik, Björn and Krister. We went for something to eat and spoke a bit, and got to know each other a little better.
The first band I went to see was Entombed. They played for about an hour, but I didn't think the gig was anything special.
The next show was much better - Hammerfall (who recorded Man On The Silver Mountain on the Dio tribute). They play a very German-inspired kind of metal, but it sounded really good. Their music is very good on a festival too, because it is very easy to sing along with.
After that I went to the tent stage to see another swedish band - Freak Kitchen. I wasn't familiar with all of their songs, but they are a cool live band.
Next was Mercyful Fate, I stood very far from the stage, and after a while it started raining, so me, Egon and Björn went to a beer tent to find some shelter from the rain. I am not very fond of Mercyful Fate and their vocalist King Diamond anyway so it wasn't a big loss.
The rain stopped and we went to see Michael Shenker Group. Nothing special. I didn't recognize so many songs.
After that the festival really started to rock! Manowar! I had seen a lot of people that day wearing Manowar t-shirts, and the crowd was bigger than on any of the other bands previously that day. They started to play their viking-inspired metal, and it was kind of fun to hear and see them live. But Manowar is always Manowar so they had to bring a girl up on the stage to show her breast, and a guy to play the guitar. And they also came in on motorcycles to do the encore ...
Next on was Motorhead. Full speed all the way with Lemmy's very special "voice". Good rock music, but all songs sounds the same.
Finally Scorpions went on the stage to headline on the Friday. They started with Loving You Sunday Morning, and some new songs, but after that the show started to rock a bit better with songs like Bad Boys Running Wild, Blackout, Big City Nights, Rock You Like A Hurricane and the ballads Holiday, Still Loving You and Wind Of Change. The show was pretty good, but didn't reach the high level I thought it was going to do.
After Scorpions I went to Egon's tent just to find Egon sleeping, so I went to my car to sleep.
I woke up a couple of hours before the first band was supposed to start playing, so I drove to Sölvesborg to buy a camera. I wanted to have some pictures from the Dio show and from the festival in general. I also bought a couple of newspapers to read about the festival.
When I came back to the festival area, I looked Egon up, and we went to meet Tapio! We found some Dio fans from Åland waiting there too. After a while Tapio arrived, and we introduced us, and started to talk. I didn't say much, but it was fun to meet the famous Tapio. A while later we went to get Egon's backstage pass, that he had got from the fan-club (I hadn't thought about that myself unfortunately ...). Egon got the pass and was of course very happy. U deserved it Egon!
I went to see the end of the show with Budgie. They were pretty good, and ended with Breadfan (known for being covered by Metallica).
After that I went to see Gamma Ray, a band that I think is quite good. They made a good show, even though Kai had some problems with his voice. They played a lot of their own "classics" and Helloween's Ride The Sky and Pet Shop Boys' It's A Sin!
Next up was two bands I wanted to see - Dare and U.D.O. (from Accept). I chose Dare, but only stayed to see about 3 songs. They were good but I wanted to have a good place for Dio! I met Egon in the second row, and we waited for Dio to start playing. The crowd got bigger and bigger. There were about 17.500 people in the crowd on the day Dio played! No other band on the festival had so much people!
Dio started with the well-known intro from Inferno. Then they started to play Evilution, but with a longer intro than usual I think. It was the first show with Craig Goldie on guitar and he sounded very good. After a while I was in the front-row (not in the center though, TeRRy!). I looked back a few times and noticed that Egon was gone. It was very cool to see Dio as close as possible and hearing the crowd sing along a lot. It was very nice to hear Rock 'n' Roll Children and King Of Rock And Roll again. I didn't stay in the front row for the whole concert, I gave my space to a girl, and took a few steps back. When Dio left the stage, the crowd started to shout so loud, that Dio couldn't ignore us (I know he wouldn't do such a thing anyway), and came out to do the encore. If there had been more time, I am sure that they would have come out more time to do some more songs. This must be the first show ever there they didn't play We Rock!
The setlist was the following:
Intro (same as on Inferno)
Evilution
Straight Through The Heart
Don't Talk To Strangers
Holy Diver
Drum solo
Heaven And Hell
Mob Rules
Rock 'n' Roll Children
Stargazer/guitar solo
I speed At Night
King Of Rock And Roll
The Last In Line
ENCORE:
Neon Knights
Rainbow In The Dark
Man On The Silver Mountain/Long Live Rock 'n' Roll
The band on this concert was: Ronnie James Dio - vocals, Craig Goldy - guitars, Larry Dennison - bass, Simon Wright - drums and Scott Warren - keyboards.
It was a great show, and a definate highlight of the festival.
After Dio, David Lee Roth was playing, but Egon was going to the backstage-area so I tried to join him and Fredrik. I came inside the first part of the backstage-area but then the guards told me that me and Fredrik had to stay there, so we left Egon and waited and hoped if we could find a way to get inside. While we waited we saw some well-known people that we stopped and took our pictures with. I got pictures of me with John Norum, Burke Shelley (from Budgie) and Larry "Bones" Dennison. After that we went away from the backstage-area to see Deep Purple. They started with a few lines from Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town. The played songs like Lazy, Woman From Tokyo, Strange Kind Of Woman, Smoke On The Water, Perfect Strangers, Speed King, Highway Star. They were really good, with long solos in every song. I really liked their guitar-player Steve Morse. He seems to fit the band perfect!
When Deep Purple were finished, I went to Egon's tent to talk for a while. Egon was of course very excited after meeting Ronnie, and was also invited to join Deep Purple at their backstage-party! I said goodbye and goodnight and went to sleep in my car.
I started my trip home the next day. I made a stop on the way home to get my photos developed. It had been a great festival and I recommend you to come there if you have the possibility!
Click here to see some pictures from the show!
