Here it is at last - Bulgaria's first full-scale music festival! Announced only a month and a half before its start, Spirit of Burgas 2008 promised over 100 bands on 6 stages in 3 days and a lot of uncertainty.

In the hot and humid Friday afternoon on 15 August, the small streets leading to the Central Beach of Burgas were being increasingly populated, but still not a clue of what to expect. Despite its name, the place was not much popular among the locals (at least, not yet). And wow, the surprise turned out to be a good one! In a park, transformed in less than a month from a desolate place into the perfect arena for the events to come, calamity and beauty went hand in hand.

To us, Jack Daniel's Rock Stage was of utmost importance - not only because it was managed by Tangra Mega Rock, but primarily because of the 24 bands that were to perform there. Mtel's Music Space Stage also promised to be interesting - a lot of yound Bulgarian bands in different music styles, and we play some of them on the radio, too! The Tuborg Dance Arena was moderated by HMSU, Metropolis and Ministry of Sound in the respective days. The Latino Stage promised lots of dancing and live performances as well. The Jacobs 3in1 DJ Stage was the smallest, moderated by Alex Metchev and Velizar. Of course, we cannot do without the Main Stage - the largest in size with the Sisters of Mercy being the headliner on Friday night.

Jack Daniel's Rock Stage was in fact a huge truck, parked next to the central alley. That's exactly where the festival kicked off with Odd Crew a little after 19:00.

The ex-"stuntmen", the wonder-kids with 10 years experience, for the first time revealed their new face, live: 30 minutes of southern rock in the likes of Down and Black Label Society, fitting perfectly the Jack Daniel's atmosphere. Odd Crew had the potential of a headliner, but unfortunatly had drawn the shortest straw to play in front of sparse audience because of the early hour. The festival is just a toddler!

A little before 20:00, Gabana - Tangra Mega Rock's find for 2006 - is already on stage. The boys from Plovdiv town fascinated everyone with their presence - so much that two girls from Finland craved to buy immediately their CD.

At that time, the audience in front of Jack Daniel's Rock Stage had grown in size and outnumbered all other stages. Close to 21:00, under the lights came Sunrise with two backing vocals and Georgi Marholev in front. In contrast to the previous bands, the guys from Burgas included a significant number of cover versions in their setlist (Deep Purple, Free, etc.) which attracted even people walking nearby.

The next band on Jack Daniel's Rock Stage had the not-so-easy task to continue the party, but it was a child's play for Daily Noise Club. They are one of their kind in Bulgaria, playing the slightly metalized rock'n'roll typical for Backyard Babies, The Hellacopters, Gluecifer, etc. They finished with The Cult's "Lil' Devil" as a salute to all their fans.

At the same time, on the Main Stage Gravity Co. proved evidence they are not here by accident. Excellent sound and good performance by their new singer, Nikolay Bakalov.

We go back to the truck now. If there is ever a Slipknot concert in Bulgaria, it definitely should be opened by As Soon As Possible. Boy they were good! Indeed! Realizing that, masses of fans left them with a little grief and without even waving for a good-bye sneaked off to the Main Stage where the Sisters of Mercy were to kick off.

They came out at 23:00 sharp. That was not a tour, only 3 festival dates of the legendary trade mark of Andrew Eldritch. It made their presence in Burgas even more valuable and explained the massive number of Western European faces with original T-shirts throughout the whole festival area. On the stage, somewhere behind, wrapped up in mist and smoke was hidden the personality of Dr. Avalanche (Simon). Andrew, of course, was in the middle, with the young Ben and Chris pulling the strings on his both sides. Half an hour earlier, both of them answered our questions, and to the tricky "How old were you when the last Sisters of Mercy studio album came out - "Vision Thing?" Ben said 11, and the other one proudly took part in the bidding: "Oh, I was already 12!"

The concert ended. A little later, all by himself, Andrew Eldritch was relaxing on the Dance Arena in a Spirit of Burgas T-shirt. He was looking at the full moon and kindly shared that it was the most beautiful place for a festival! If only he was a woman! Only a meter and sixty tall, but glory is not measured that way, right?

At the same time, on the Jack stage, Fault induced a much different experience. Slow, heavy and very cold. To make the effect stronger, the frontman asked the lighting engineer with a calm but unrelenting voice to shut down the lights and leave only the moon. Then his voice went back to vocals which worked like a big wheel... and you slowly realized that it had a spiral drawn in it. Yes, I was hypnotised, you were hyphnotised, he was hypnotised, we were hypnotised... BINGO!

The lack of any grace is Alien Industry's major merit, but definitely not the only one. At the moment Zdravko "ZZ" Minev's band is in an exceptionally balanced line-up, which for the second time in only 5 weeks managed to shake the metal fans both morally and physically. And they came by the hundreds in front of the truck to continue and probably deepen the emotion from the Sisters of Mercy. And they succeeded! In total, the first festival day was a serious success, with over 6000 visitors. And the night was not over yet.

Panican Whyasker became competition to Alien Industry, playing on the Music Space Stage between 1:00 and 2:00. Most of their songs were in English, but they finish with "Show Business". Another excellent performance by Nufri and company which made the audience happy.

Fyeld had the honour to close the first night of Jack Daniel's Rock Stage and play some of their new album which marked their comeback after being absent for a while. They started before 2:00 and put us to their specific metal/hip-hop/electro sound. Then everything ended and the speakers played "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". We had no strength to go to the dance zones and headed off to the hotel, with a little impatience for the second day program to start. We talked that this fantastic festival lacks only one thing - a camping area. Only a few hours later, the promoters told us they were thinking for the same thing, too, and they even had several options for next year.

Meanwhile, we didn't stop whistling with Eric Idol's tember: "Life's a piece of shit. When you look at it... Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true. You'll see it's all a show... Keep 'em laughing as you go Just remember that the last laugh is on you... And always look on the bright side of life... Always look on the right side of life..."

Text: Vassil Varbanov and Danail Tsonkov

Photo: Danail Tsonkov

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