Rockin´Santiago

On Sunday myself and two English girls Vicky and Clare, I met at the hostel went to the VL07 music festival in Santiago. We headed over late afternoon and were pleasantly surprised to find a racecourse with 3 stages and plenty of space. Being use to British festivals, where there is never any breathing space it felt kind of odd to be able to wander around. It was also strange to see two huge inflatable beer cans yet very little beer on sale. The queues to all the food and drink stands were huge. It was odd as they obviously had some idea of the number of people to expect but seemed ill prepared. And get this, they DIDN´T put up the prices!
After being squashed in line for 20 minutes Clare and I managed to make our way to the front of the queue (they really don´t know the etiquette of queuing here), the only beverage left was some sort of energy drink. The guy serving behind the bar was crouched on the floor with 3 security guards around him. I´m sure if he had stood up he may have been able to serve people a little faster, but he was apparently terrified of being killed by thirsty teeny boppers.

Vicky and Clare
The only band on the line up we recognised was Keane. None of us are big fans of Keane, but decided we should stay to see them play, they were the headliners taking the stage after midnight. We began sipping our energy drinks.
Although I didn´t know any other bands, they were apparently the best of Latino Rock. Some were pretty good although it´s difficult to get into the music when you don´t understand the lyrics. That is until Attaque 77 do a punk cover of ABBA´s "Give me, give me, give me"! Yes there is a reason no one has done this before, but it did give us a laugh.

Attaque 77 rockin´ABBA.
Finally Keane took to the stage. I always think the lead singer Tom Chaplin is an odd front man. He has an amazing voice, but he seems uncomfortable taking the lead. I always think he´d be better standing still and singing rather than "trying" to bounce about the stage. It´s kind of like Razorlight, it just looks rehearsed. Anyway we soon realised Keane´s songs sound very alike when heard back to back. We´d tried to guess the songs but without much luck. It was strange to hear English voices on stage and Chilean voices singing along. Tom Chaplin was very cheesy, at one point he shouted "Sing from the bottom of your hearts, the choir of Santiago", after we´d picked ourselves off the floor from laughing so hard, we sang along.

Hard to believe, but yes the tiny figures are the members of Keane