Ready for part three in my love song to the Brakrock festival? It is all about the Purple People I met on my second day on festival grounds.
Before going into this festival, I hatched the plan to bring my rainbow pillow (see: Punk in Drublic where I had it signed by Spike of Me First & Fat Mike of NOFX) and have it signed by everyone I met at Brakrock because of the music. Fan, band, merch people, organiser, it didn’t matter. Everyone is part of the music. Midway through day one, I realised I would have to get a second pillow for day two. That’s how many amazing people I met. I connected with some of them, but not with all. So if you see yourself here and we’re not friends on any sort of social, hit me up!
Meet the Purple People of Saturday, August 5th 2023.
On day two I chose to use my press-privileges to get in through the crew exit and walk the grounds before the doors were actually open. This meant I had some time to kill before the bands started, so I decided to venture to the Merch village to get some much anticipated Toy Dolls merch.
Author sidenote: I had already spent too much money on band merch since March, so I had made a promise to myself I would only buy one thing. Seeing as how the Toy Dolls are one of my favourite bands and the one I had missed so many times already, I decided they were the chosen ones. I kept my promise on day one (mostly because I was too frantically running from one stage to another to even find the merch village) and then spectacularly failed to keep my promise at the start of day two.
I got a little sidetracked from my Toy Dolls-merch-mission when I spotted this poster!
1: If you read my ode(s) to The Black Flamingo and all its Purple People, you already met my friend Jo and his venue The Black Flamingo. Jo has a fridge full of stickers and a week earlier he was going over them with me, pointing to the Bearded Punk Records one and told me to check them out.
2: Braca is a band of very Purple brothers who make AMAZING music and who also hang out at that same The Black Flamingo a lot.
Meet the first Purple People of the day! The combination of my enthusiasm, sleep deprivation & and my inability to do too many things at once made me either forget to ask for, write down and/or remember their names. (Trying to A: talk to people, B: write down the stories, C: get the signature and D: get the selfie and E: try and also see the music was a little too much all at once to ask of my neurodivergent self it seems.) There’s too many names on my pillow to extrapolate the info from there, but thanks to Jo I know the person with the Bad Religion shirt is the bassist for Bram Desimpelaere & The High Hopes (possibly Koen) and the other one is Mr Bearded Punk Records who also plays bass for For I Am. (This is where I bought a Bearded Punk records top & failed to keep to my ‘one merch thing’ promise the first time.)
I have yet to discover both bands, though I have plans to see BS & THH in Herentals in September (see flyer). I missed seeing For I Am who played at Brakrock because I got sidetracked from my meticulous planning, which I will explain in a later post. But I’m sure I’ll run into them again on my synchronicitous musical path, one way or another.
This beautiful human being is Koen(raad), the Belgian superfan who was manning the Toy Dolls merch booth. His story is one I connected with a LOT as Polexia the band-aid/journalist, and he is the deepest shade of Purple. He has been a huge fan of The Toy Dolls since he first saw them in 1980. In 1993 he started following them everywhere on tour, just him and his motorbike. He stars in the biography The Toy Dolls: From Fulwell to Fukuoka as ‘the crazy fan’. He’s been doing their merch everywhere they go since 2004 and has been good friends with the band for ages. He considers them family and added that he sees them more than his actual family.
Note to bands reading this: apparently a Belgian is great to have as a merch person since they usually know a bunch of languages! I am a multilingual Belgian (Dutch, English, French with a decent understanding of German & Spanish and notions of Italian!) with a GREAT LOVE for music who is trustworthy and who is looking for a new path in life, preferably one that involves music. Just an FYI! 😉
Koen(raad) was SUPER nice, really interested in my story/blog and tried his best to get me my much hoped for selfie with the band. Alas, it was not meant to be, but I am still hopeful that one day I get to meet The Toy Dolls and loudly shout my admiration at them! Much later in the day, he did point me in the direction of this guy though:
This is Carlo, who is not so much a roadie as someone who does ‘just about anything’ (his words) for The Toys Dolls. He’s also been with them on tour for 32 years. He was super busy doing ‘just about everything’ for the band, so we didn’t have much time to talk. BUT! He made the time to take my rainbow pillow backstage and got it signed by TWO of the Three dolls. The only name I could make out was Tom ‘Tommy Goober’ Blyth, which was pretty sweet since I had loved seeing him with Me First in 2017. So I’m not sure if the other one was Olga or Duncan, but either way I am pretty stoked The Toy Dolls are a part of the rainbow pillow legacy!
This lovely person handled the lost and found. Our friend had lost his phone front stage during Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Scouring the festival grounds at the end of day one didn’t prove to be very successful, so we hit up the lost and found on day two and LO AND BEHOLD, they had the phone. Another testament to what a GREAT festival Brakrock is, full of the Purple-est of people. Standing front stage, I saw a lot of wallets & phones pass to the front. People there are so nice and purple at Brakrock, their immediate instinct when finding stuff is to try and return it to the owners, instead of pocketing it for themselves. Faith in humanity restored!
I got distracted by something SHINY going on at the Wood Stage next door, so I didn’t note down their name, but I am still very thankful they believed us when we couldn’t prove beyond a doubt it was our friend’s phone. (We could no longer call it, since he had already blocked his sim, but we were sure it was his because of the background and the missed calls from the night before.)
These are the merch people, friends and lovers of the something SHINY on the Wood Stage. I will go into detail about the actual band, but suffice it to say The Lucky Trolls were SO great, I ran from the Wood stage back to the Merch Village to try and catch up with them for a selfie and YELL at them how great they were.
This is where I sinned against my promise of the ‘one merch item’ the second time, but I will forever treasure my lucky sweater! Had a nice chat with them, assuring them I knew they weren’t IN the band but they were also important to my story about the music and that I most definitely wanted their signature on the pillow and picture for the blog.
This is my shirt-twin Sven, half Belgian, half Dutch but full of good taste in music and bandshirts! Amyl & The Sniffers YAS! ❤
At this point in the day, I was SO overstimulated from all the AMAZING music, people and experiences, I forgot to take pictures or ask names and it’s becoming much more of a blur to piece this story together. The above picture is at the merch table for The Venomous Pinks. I think my smile here makes it abundantly clear what I thought of that band, though I plan to use many words to explain in detail later. This is the third and last time I would break my own promise about the merch. I regret NOTHING!
Front stage waiting for The Venomous Pinks, I met Boris, a Frenchie who had their own two bands, one was called ‘Stories…’ and the other ‘Rocking Bitch’. (I would link them, but I sadly can’t seem to find them on the net.) He came up to ask me what I was writing down because he had spotted me a day earlier writing industriously during both Public Serpents & Good Riddance. Sadly, I lost him to the crowd before connecting and getting the picture, but if you are reading this and know Boris who is French & has two bands and a ginger beard, connect with me!
A little while later I sat across from this person at the Jen Razavi set and I just had to get a picture because they were also front row rocking out to The Venomous Pink. Again, I was way too overstimulated to connect properly, but I feel we should be friends, so find me! 😃
Before that very same Jen Razavi set I also met with Paul, aka Zombie Teeth. Paul is a talented photographer from the UK, whose pictures I will use to liven up some of my band write ups (YES, I am ALMOST ready to talk about the actual bands and music at Brakrock!).
Not only that, but he’s also a great graphic designer and did some artwork for The Venomous Pinks, Bad Cop / Bad Cop AND he’s on the Bassists Against Racists team. That last one is a Non-Profit who release cool shirt designs featuring a specific bassist each month and donate the proceeds to charity. Fuck yea, if that isn’t purple, I don’t even know what is. We didn’t get a pic, but I’m pretty sure our paths will cross in the future and I’ll rectify the situation then! Meanwhile, check out his amazing artwork.
THANKS SO MUCH to all the amazing people I met, talked to and admired from afar. You helped make this experience so memorable I will probably keep annoying people with stories from that one festival in 2023 for YEARS to come!
In the next part I will (finally) follow some of the Purple People towards the music! ❤
Brakrock – Kasteel ter Elst – Duffel – August 4th & 5th 2023
Follow Brakrock
DownSideUp 