We are walking from the main stage to the “tent stage,” a distance of maybe 200 yards. Two young men in their early-to-mid-twenties sidle up beside us, one next to Denise, the other to my right. In other circumstances the invasion might make us apprehensive but here, now, we are merely curious.
They speed up a little so that they can turn to face us. Denise’s man/boy has a short reddish beard that will reach its full potential in a few years. Mine has a crew cut. Both are sporting contagious smiles that are illegal in Poland, although Colorado would sanction them.
“Have you guys been to a lot of music festivals?”
We stop to answer Beard’s question. “Quite a lot,” I say. “We’ve been going to them since 1996.”
“That’s amazing,” Crew Cut says. His affectionate grin may be supported by more than one substance.
“You guys are great!” Beard exclaims.
I now realize Beard and Crew Cut think they have found unicorns: Old people who like modern music. They will tell their friends about us. We will be the conversational equivalent of two cats caught enjoying a stroll through the dog pound.
We converse with Beard and Crew Cut. They are from Lithuania. We tell them we are from Colorado. We do not say that for income tax purposes we also are from South Dakota. We presume these young Lithuanians are not interested in the tax advantages of South Dakota residency.
“You are a lucky man,” Crew Cut says. Beard agrees. “Your wife is beautiful.”
Denise and I know when we are being patronized. On the other hand, this happens to be our anniversary, and I am feeling especially lucky.
“She also is exceedingly intelligent,” I say, “and a fun lover.” I watch their reaction as I say “fun lover.”
Beard and Crew Cut initially display surprise at the old man’s reference to physical pleasure. Then they laugh and Crew Cut slaps me on the back and they prance ahead, clearly happy that I have given their story a punch line.
We are in an abandoned airfield outside Gdynia, Poland, very near the Baltic Sea, attending the “Open’er Music Festival.” The Lithuanians inspire me to inspect the thousands of other music lovers milling about the field. I gradually realize that Denise and I are not merely unusual. We are the oldest people here, by far. We are unicorns.
* * * *
How we came to be here is the subject of an earlier blog. To recap, the festival organizers refused even to tell us the cost of VIP tickets unless we first justified our claim to be important. I replied with an essay mocking that assignment. To our great surprise, the organizers deigned to take our money in exchange for two VIP passes.
Had we not purchased the VIP passes we would have had to either drive to the general admittance parking, which would have involved a horrendous traffic jam, followed by a long walk; or crowded onto one of the many shuttle busses, and then endured a horrendous traffic jam, followed by a long walk. With the VIP pass we could take an Uber to a private road leading to the airfield. Once at the private road we meet a driver who will escort us (in a SUV) to the festival. No waiting, no traffic jam, no stress. It didn’t always work out that way, but that will be the subject of a different tale, one involving three Ukrainian Uber drivers.
* * * *
Now at the festival, we see wide throngs of people squeezing through just a few narrow entrances. The bottleneck is made much worse by a mandatory inspection of backpacks and purses. Everybody is carrying one or the other. But those are the entrances to our left. Straight ahead is the VIP entrance. There we see only one bored guard who barely glances inside our bags.
The VIP building offers free drinks, including up to 18 mixed drinks (over four days) and all the beer we can consume. They serve a buffet dinner at 7:00 p.m. They will stow our bags. My only complaint is that a guard won’t let us take our complimentary cocktails off the VIP grounds. This inspires me to read the VIP rules. From them I deduce that we are allowed to remove drinks if we first place them in capacious jacket pockets, and the guards don’t see us do it. This loophole arises from an ambiguity in the rules. You see, they all are written in Polish, making them very ambiguous, and therefore subject to interpretation.
On the first day we see One Republic, a group formed in Colorado Springs, where Denise and I lived from 1996 to 2019 (I moved there in 1985). The lead singer, Ryan Tedder, was hands down the best vocalist of the festival.
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Dan, I hope you are not going to review each and every festival performance.” I am disappointed because I could go on and on. For the sake of brevity, however, I will mention only three performances.
After watching Lizzo, which left me disappointed (that was one of the three mentions), I tell Denise that I want to see Christine and the Queens. Not being a headliner, Christine will perform at the “tent stage.” This is part of the attraction. The lesser known acts allow for a more intimate performance. The music tends not to be amplified to distortion levels. And, finally, there is a very positive vibe one gets from “discovering” a “new” artist.
Denise responds by telling me that Christine is a transexual, and that the Queens almost certainly are men. Denise tells me this because she has somehow gotten the impression that I enjoy looking at pretty women. The truth is that I have eyes only for Denise. I sometimes inadvertently see other pretty women, but I know better than to enjoy the sight.
I am disappointed to learn that anyone, least of all my own dear wife, might think I will be less inclined to see Christine if I know that she was born male. I have never enjoyed Bud Light, but if it didn’t taste like disagreeable water, as do all those light pilsners, I would drink it by the gallon. I am that open-minded!
We are able to get within fifty feet of the stage, which is pretty good. The stage is dark and empty except for some white gothic statues. It looks a bit surreal, like a Salvador Dali painting.
Christine comes out. There are no queens. Turns out, hers is a solo act. Her name is Christine and the Queens. We should have done more research.
Music plays from off stage. I do not know whether it is recorded or live. Christine appears through fog and colored lights. She is wearing dark slacks and an unbuttoned vest with no shirt. Mandarin orange-sized breasts give the vest some curves. She is built a bit like a young Mick Jagger, with narrow hips and no fat, but with a more muscular, athletic, tone. And breasts.
Christine sings and, as she does, her arms and body move to the operatic music as though they are liquid, like she is inside a lava lamp, and she is the lava. I cannot understand a word she is singing but it does not matter. The voice is beautiful and the dance is captivating. I am hypnotized.
After the first song Christine takes off her vest. I remind myself that she started life as a dude. I must not enjoy looking at her breasts. They are, quite objectively, very nice breasts, but I am a creature of my times and I refuse to enjoy the sight of man boobs, no matter the surgeon’s skill. This does not mean, however, that I cannot enjoy watching the artist move. I remain hypnotized. I have never seen any other singer move with such grace. Not even close.
Later I learn that Christine was not born a male. She has a uterus, but identifies as nonbinary and uses all pronouns. This makes no difference to me. Even if I knew she was born female I still would not have enjoyed looking at her half-naked body. Denise was right beside me and she would have known, she can be psychic like that, and she was carrying very heavy binoculars. I would not want to be hit with them again.
Kaleo is the third and final group that I will mention. Kaleo is an Icelandic band, although they have been based in Austin, Texas, since 2015, after making a splash at the South by Southwest festival. Their genre is a blues/rock sound that would have found a comfortable home in the 1970’s and every decade since then. I would do the group an injustice if I said that they sound like some other band, because more than anything else they sound like Kaleo, but I would be surprised if I learned that they had never heard of the Allman Brothers.
Denise and I have been listening to Kaleo for a number of years. They have only three albums, but we found that if we ask Pandora or Spotify to play “Kaleo radio” we will enjoy nearly every song that is played and, in the process, sample many new bands.
I digress. I choose to end this essay with Kaleo because their performance connects my generation to today’s kids. The festival twenty-somethings tended to pose for selfies with Lizzo or Lamar playing in the background, but at the Kaleo stage they were moving and clapping and swaying to the music, immersed in the moment; rocking, as they say, out. As were we.
One final word. If you give a listen to Kaleo and like what you hear, try tapping into a band called Boom Boom Boom. These guys aren’t together anymore and their music is hard to find, but they put out three of the best albums ever. You can find their first record, Elevator Music (so called because it was financed by a day job repairing elevators), at this link.