10/5/13

Live review: Appelpop, Tiel, 14 September 2013

A few weeks ago I went to Appelpop to see Balthazar, Kensington and Soul Sister Dance Revolution. Unfortunately, I had to leave early that night, so I couldn't see Madness' performance.
Appelpop is a free festival which mainly hosts Dutch and Belgian artists, but they're trying to get more international acts to perform on the festival.
I went to Tiel by train (from Arnhem), which is the easiest way of transport. The trains were quite full though on the way to the festival site, partly because lots of people went there by train because the weather wasn't that good, partly because quite a lot of people went to Tiel for the "Fruitcorso".
Once we arrived in Tiel, we had to walk through the city to get to the festival site, because there were no buses due to the Fruitcorso.

We, my cousin and some friends of her, and I, bought ourselves some food at the kiosk outside the site, because they had told me that the food was quite expensive on the festival site.
Once we entered, we immediately went to the Main Stage, to watch Kensington's performance.
Kensington won the 3FM awards last year, an important Dutch music award.
I really loved their performance, and the audience was quite excited. They also played a cover of Ben Howard's "Keep Your Head Up", which I really liked.
Right after Kensington's performance, we went to see Balthazar for the second time this year (I had already seen them at Best Kept Secret last summer), and again, I was stunned by their great performance.
Although it rained, quite a lot of people gathered in front of the Brunotti Stage, to see Balthazar, one of the best Belgian rock/alternative acts at the moment.
They played songs from "Applause" and "Rats", the same set as they had played at Best Kept Secret.
Balthazar played for about fifty minutes.

By the time the performance ended, the weather had gotten a lot better, and we decided to eat some fries (some of us had some coins left, and it would take quite a long time to change them for money, so we decided to buy something of the remaining coins).
The last performance we watched was Soul Sister Dance Revolution's. The performance wasn't bad at all, but it was not as good as I had expected it to be.
After their performance we decided to leave. Unfortunately we missed Birth Of Joy's, John Coffey's, and Madness' performance, and the first train home...
My cousin and I decided to take the next train back home, which would arrive fifty minutes later. But, the journey had been worth waiting for; we got on a completely empty train home!

I really liked Appelpop, and I'll certainly go there again next year!

Here are some songs that had been played on the festival: