KAVARNA ROCK 2012

13, 14 and 15 July, Кavarna - Bulgaria

words by Stefan Yordanov - Stiff, photo: Krasena Angelova

This year Kavarna Rock is something like the Bulgarian Rocklahoma, you know, the American festival known for gathering all those bands that you seem to have dorgotten over the years, bands like Trixter or Faster Pussycat for instance.

Of course is not a glam or hair metal festival, it's still pretty much the same festival you know, but more intimate and kind of more retro. There are much less entertainment in the festival area, less places to have beer or snacks, but there's the same feeling in the air and you can still see a lot of familiar faces in the crowd.

There's a general sense of Kavarna Rock becoming an event where people use to meet each and every year rather than a musical festival. But it's not like the crowd doesn't care about the music at all and that is why the audience is obviously decreased in numbers.

It's clear that the majority of Bulgarian fans are not aware or do not care about platinum has beens like Dokken or American heavy metal pioneers like Lizzy Borden.




Here's my diary of what happened in Kavarna for the last three days.

Friday

Michael Schenker plays different places with different line-ups and what we get in Europe is Francis and Herman ex- Scorpions plus Doogie White (now permanently in Tank). Unsurprisingly his set mostly consists of Scorpions songs, but even the most famous UFO classics like 'Lights Out' and 'Doctor, Doctor' do not seem to provoke any feedback from the 500 people watching the gig.






Most of the people stay outside the stadium chatting, drinking beer and having snacks.

Glenn Hughes takes the stage at sunset and the crowd is much bigger now.

Despite the impression the he plays in Bulgaria on daily basis, this is one all-killer-and-no-filler-set.

Great rhythm section, powerful vocals and impeccable sound tonight. The bluesy feel bounds perfectly all these songs from different periods and bands into one very well structured set list.



Dio Disciples is a tribute band and IMO they do not fit the headline spot at all. It' s quite clear since the beginning, since the ex-Priest singer Tim Owens is trying to copy Ronnie Dio's drive but then, he's never had a vocal identity after all.

Toby Jepson of Little Angels is the real deal tonight. He has the right voice and doesn't try to keep it that close to originals although he's singing from the bottom of his pair of pipes.

The playlist was selected from the strongest Ronnie era with Rainbow ('Kill The King', 'Catch The Rainbow/Stargazer', 'Man On The Silver Mountain'), Black Sabbath ('Children Of The Sea', 'Neon Knights', 'Heaven And Hell') and Dio of course (all the best stuff from 1983 to 1985), but I still have my suspicions about Dio Disciples being capable of bearing the role of a headliner.




Saturday

The second day starts the same way yesterday did, but the audience is smaller.



Seb Bach and Big Noize is just the next tribute band in this festival and now I really think that one of the contract conditions of the artists going on stage is to perform a Dio cover version.

The rest of the set could be summed in three Ozzy songs- the opener 'Crazy Train', 'Shot In The Dark' and 'Killer Of Giants' from 'The Ultimate Sin' (1986), ignored by Ozzy himself for a long time now.

Of course Seb paid tribute to his own ex-band Skid Row with 'Youth Gone Wild'.
 


Dokken is in bad shape.

When 'Kiss Of Death' breaks out in the beginning it soon becomes clear that the Don is tired can not nail the high parts of his own songs, thus his voice is low and this ruins almost every classic like 'Just Got Lucky', 'Tooth And Nail', 'The Hunter' и ' Into The Fire'.

He called Seb to help him out with 'Alone Again', but all these long  interpretations of 'The End' by The Doors in the middle of 'Too High To Fly', confessions of his drug abuse and Jim Morrison talking to him plus this little moment of 'Alright Now' by Free and blabbering about living in 1987 are too much for many of the people in the crowd and they seem boring.



Stryper are much tighter and move what's left to be moved, but it is a couple of songs later wen we remember that these fuys have only 2 songs.

The rest of it was covers again.
 
It was Priest and Queen and 'Heaven And Hell', which I have heard at least two times by now and I now officially can't stand and won't be playing in the next 20 years.

The end of their set was predictable, it was - 'Soldiers Under Command'. 


 
Sunday

Renegade start their performance with only a few people in front of the stage.

There are songs from Bulgarian classic rock acts such as The Crickets and Impusle but Ahat is already a classic band.





I can't say much about about Rhapsody Of Fire. It's just not my kind of  music and the same goes for Kamelot.





The new guy is good, but I have never watched them with Roy Khan and have not followed them since Khan left Conception to join them, but the people here seem to enjoy these bands sets much more than they did when Dokken or Stryper played.
 
Lizzy Borden is an underground shock metal from the 80s and for me personally it's the coolest thing on the festival, but that's me, I love all things low budget- horror, blood drinking, naked girls, axes and and people wearing rapist masks like it's the worst circus of horrors of all times. Fantastic!



I don't know how many of the people in the crowd really understand what they see, but Lizzy gives a good run for his money. He's doing his best -  'Eyes Of A Stranger', 'Me Against The World' and even the self-titled track from his solo album 'Master Of Disguise'. At the end everything turns into one big theme park of horrors and the band waves us goodbye with the Steppenwolf classic 'Born To Be Wild'.

Kavarna Rock is a great place to see awesome bands  and line-ups with extremely cool musicians this year but it's more of a collectable event now. Shall it keep it this way remains to be seen next time.