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| The Vines, Melkweg, Amsterdam 10.10.2002 Once again I was reminded of how crap it actually is to live in Holland when I went to see the Vines in Amsterdam. Craig came stumbling unto the stage, and launched right into a drawling, stoned version of Highly Evolved. Most of the songs were off the album and played in the same order as on the album as well, thought they also threw in two or three new songs and a cover version of Miss Jackson by Outkast. Especially the slow songs were sung in the usual I-am-too-stoned-to-perform-but-I’ll-do-it-anyway- fashion that a lot of bands seem to stick to when they’re in Holland. His voice drawled up and down, when hitting long notes wavering out into great howls, and in between songs he spit out some unintelligible nonsense. “Thi aahns caal maaahy jaaaaahn an weehblemenohamastih….” Alright, so his state of mind might have made the songs into caricatures of themselves, but it did provide us with excellent visual entertainment. Craig looked amazing on the stage, with his half closed eyes and surreal facial movements, his hair flopping up and down, bathed in aggressive and very bright lights in fluorescent colours. His body had a fascinating way of motion, hard, but also interesting to describe. It slowly twisted around itself, waving his guitar like a third arm, round and round, his head rubbing against the microphone, before he broke down and rolled over the floor a bit, crawled into the drumkit, bashed something around, rose up again, shuffled towards the mic, cried something, dropped down into a squat, waved from side to side, stood up, hurled the guitar into the air while the crowd quickly recoiled, and suddenly, blazing with rage, broke into the drumkit and the amps, threw down some stuff, rattled around in the smoke and steel a bit, emerged again, a bewildered look on his face, made his way through the chaos, howled some more, climbed unto the amp and almost put his shoe in my face, leaned dangerously far over the edge of the stage, drew back, threw down the mic stand, dropped unto the floor, writhing with some emotion, shook his hair, flexed his thin body, grabbed the mic stand, stood up again, wobbled around a bit, and screamed some more, before throwing the mic stand unto the head of the poor French bloke who was standing before me, and then ran off into the darkness like a wolf after prey. And that was that. Gig over, and we went out into the town with the support band, Longwave, who weren’t even stoned (good on you, guys!). By Hanna Nierstrasz |