Iggy Pop opened the fires of the Venoge Festival on its brand new ground on Wednesday evening. He packed the public, even watered by a light rain.
From a distance, Iggy Pop looks like a bronze statue. He looks supple, sinewy and tanned, with a long muscular torso. In recent years, everything has loosened up a bit. The 75-year-old still sports blonde hair, which falls slick to his shoulder. And we can only guess his ocean blue eyes.
Iggy Pop launches the concert in front of several thousand people with a little delay. At the second track, he throws his black leather on the ground. The codes are respected: the “Iguana” is back.
The last time we saw Iggy Pop in French-speaking Switzerland, he was dragged off stage during a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2018. Broken tooth and bruised back after an accidental fall, “the Iguana” saluted in a half -coma, while his musicians continued to plate the chords of “Real Wild Child”.
Wednesday night at the Venoge Festival, Iggy Pop delivered his show and came out unscathed. With him on stage, seven young musicians, including a woman on the guitar, the only one and brass instruments.
The shadow of David Bowie
When he swings “I wanna be your dog”, “Lust for life” and “The passenger”, part of the crowd is paralyzed. These mythical songs awaken a part of the collective memory and the shadow of the Stooges and David Bowie floats in the air.
Iggy Pop also plays with his age: he lies down on the stage. We wonder if this is part of the show or if he felt unwell. He gets up: we breathe.
His whole attitude is a challenge to death. With the song “Death trip”, he has fun with her and calls to live all the more intensely. Fist raised, he strides up and down the stage. He harangues the crowd and thanks them with “Fucking thank you!”.
Almost an hour and a half later, it ends on “Search and Destroy”. We would like more, but the technicians are already entering the set to prepare the stage for the Australian group Pendulum.
The biggest cash of the Venoge Festival
Arrived on Sunday and installed in a hotel on the Riviera, Iggy Pop, the biggest stamp of the 2022 edition of the Venoge Festival, will leave quickly enough to continue its European tour. He continues with concerts in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria and the United States.
Before him, The last Internationale, a New York rock group committed to ecological and political issues – with the magnetic Delila Paz on vocals – and Seasick Steve, an American blues musician wearing the colors of “Peace and Love”, followed one another on the big stage.
The Venoge Festival lasts until Sunday with around fifty groups on three stages. Every day has its own style: rock on Wednesday, 1980s on Thursday with Alphaville, Madness, Kool & the Gang and Kid Creole, electro on Friday with Bob Sinclar, Don Diablo and Kungs and French song on Saturday with Calogero, Hoshi, Julien Clerc and even Klon.
The new pitch at Penthaz, four times larger than the previous one, can accommodate 9,500 per evening compared to 6,000 at Penthalaz. It is located a stone’s throw from the Research and Archiving Center of the Cinémathèque suisse. The Festival had to change places, because the inhabitants close to the demonstration had complained about the noise.
Not “a second Paleo”
26 years old, Venoge Festival began as a free village festival before taking a more professional turn in its 20th edition. “We don’t dream of becoming bigger,” says its boss and programmer, Greg Fischer, to Keystone-ATS. “Our goal is not to become a second Paleo,” adds spokesperson Gilles Wenger.
But the organizing committee, voluntary until now, could in the future be paid. “Given the size of the event, it is not excluded that this will change,” noted Greg Fischer.
After two years of shutdown linked to the pandemic, the artists, eager to go on tour again, were relatively easy to book, he continues: “on the other hand, it was very complicated on the infrastructure side”.
In question, the boom in demonstrations, which have resumed and the lack of staff, who left the event sector with the pandemic. “To finish setting up the big stage, we had to wait for the missing elements from Paléo and Gurten”.
Volunteers are not lacking, even if some registrations were made at the last minute. Nearly 450 of them work each evening, to which are added some 150 technicians (sound, light, etc.) and others, who are paid.
For their part, festival-goers must take their marks on the new ground. This seems to be the case since Sunday is already “sold out” and Friday is about to be. Some of them, however, express a certain nostalgia: they liked their smaller and less expensive festival.
This article has been published automatically. Source: ats