Leopoldsburg ‘Pukkelpop’, Belgium, August 28 1999

Set list:

By Valerie Haroune (This is courtesy of the chairpage!)

Pukkelpop took place in Kiewit-Hasselt Belgium, not far from the Netherlands. I came all the way from France for this event.

silverchair shared Pukkelpop’s main stage with The Living End, Luscious Jackson, Dog Eat Dog, Biohazard, Kula Shaker, John Spencer Blues Explosion, The Offspring and Orbital. silverchair were on at 04:30 for a fifty minute set. I managed to be in the first row during most of the gigs and I was in the first row during silverchair’s show as well. There was some girl kind of crying ‘out of emotion’ right behind me, but she’s not worth mentioning.

silverchair started off with Israel’s Son and played the end pretty slowly. Daniel was chewing gum during most of the set but it didn’t prevent him from singing. He kept having ‘psychopath looks’ on his face, making faces and everything. Some people even thought he was doing drugs!

Everybody was really into the music and knew the lyrics to all the songs. After a few songs Daniel started talking. I had never seen him that joyful, he was very talkative and kept joking. ‘We love Belgium and we like your chocolate’ and asking ‘who was camping here?’. He threw his pick to the crowd and then made us repeat ‘We are camping and we like it’. He also talked about him wandering the streets and some guy talking to him. He had Ben hit the drums when he started talking about this guy. He just sounded like some comic like Jerry Seinfeld.

There was a lot of moshing and crowd surfing and for once the security guts were really nice, taking pictures of the band for some people in the audience. After Pure Massacre, Daniel took a breath to tell us something but nothing came out of his mouth so everybody started laughing along with Daniel and Daniel said ‘I’m enjoying tranquillity’. He also thanked the eight bands playing the main stage for letting them play it. He said they had to ask them personally and they all said yes. Then he told us how he wanted us to participate to the show by moving physically, but not now because the next two tracks were ‘kind of mellow’. Then they started Ana’s Song and Miss You Love. Right after Miss You Love was The Door and Madman, which really got the crowd moving. In the middle of The Door Daniel said ‘Sam Holloway on the organ’. Then Sam looked at Ben and put out his tongue at him. There was also the ‘Can I get a hallelujah’ part and the ‘Who believes in Jesus and who believes in Satan’ part. Well, Satan definitely won over Jesus.

There was some cable hanging from the top of the stage and Daniel looked at it, then put it in his mouth and started playing Freak. Everybody sang along ‘body and soul, I’m a freak’. After Freak, Daniel had us chant ‘We are the youth’ at least 15 times. After Anthem For The Year 2000, silverchair left the stage without a word and that was it. The set was short but it was the most talkative band of the whole festival. Pukkelpop was my fourth time seeing silverchair and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing them again.