Bilbao’s biggest music festival has gone through the occasional reboot over the first few years of its existence, moving between musical genres as it tries to carve out a niche for itself in the festival circuit.​



During its infancy the line-up was heavily geared towards the hard rock and heavy metal that is so popular throughout northern Spain and particularly the Basque country, with bands such as Iron Maiden, Metallica and Guns N’Roses headlining the three day festival. 

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Clearly still unsure of its identity or audience at this point, looking down the list of bands you would  think they could have decided on the earlier acts by throwing darts at open music magazines, such was the obvious discord between the groups on offer.



While variety is generally not something you should criticise, a festival with only two real stages relies on continuity to maintain interest: paying customers shouldn’t find themselves with a three hour slot to fill between bands they want to see.  Mega-festivals such as Glastonbury which host so many different stages can afford to be creative, but newcomers need to play to their strengths and avoid spreading themselves too thinly in an attempt to appeal to all tastes.



 

After initially starting down the rock route, they seem to have decided on a greater alternative/indie presence for the line-up in recent years, and hitting above their weight as a newcomer with the acts they sign up.



So far the genuinely top-shelf festival bands they have attracted include the now defunct REM and The Police in 2007, with somewhat of a decline since then in getting hold of big hitters until last year when Blondie played support to Coldplay.



This year saw the seventh edition of the festival, and in what seemed a hellish task to improve on Coldplay for A-list festival circuiters, somehow little old BBK outdid itself again to get Radiohead on the bill.



Many instantly paid the advance price of 88 euros for the three day pass upon hearing that name alone, being sure that with Radiohead involved others would follow.  The organisers didn’t disappoint the alt-rock faithful when they announced one of Radiohead’s true predecessors in The Cure as the headliners for the first night.

























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Fans and organisers experienced a scare two weeks before the festival when Radiohead almost cancelled (as they did some other dates), as the stage collapsed at a gig they were due to play in Toronto, killing their long-term drum technician and friend Scott Johnson.  The band released a statement saying they needed time to not only for the emotional effects, but also the practical problems caused by losing equipment which they had toured with for many years, much of it custom made and therefore almost impossible to replace.



Thankfully Radiohead lived up to their reputation as true professionals, playing a long set for festival standards at just under two hours.  The band didn’t seem to let their recent tragedy affect their performance, and Thom Yorke looked as comfortable as he has ever done on stage, no longer the tortured artist but a man happy with his work. 



Some of the numbers making up the crowd were annoyed with the band’s decision to concentrate on their later, much less accessible albums, instead of doing a typical festival-circuit ‘best of’.  Yet fans more familiar with their later work would have been pleased with the setlist, with many of the songs reworked for a live performance, and greater use of live instruments compared to the mostly digitally recorded tracks from their last release The King of Limbs.



It could be argued that the reason they have stayed together for so long is down to doing what they want to, and making it enjoyable for themselves instead of pandering to half interested lite-fans.  But that’s another discussion.

Whatever you thought about their song choices, bowing out to the strains of rock-operetta Paranoid Android offered a great finale and certainly won over some of the doubters.



One of the main draws of the festival is undoubtedly the location, which is perched on the Cobetas hills in the south east of Bilbao.  Some of the campsites offer a fantastic view which stretches as far as the Cantabrian Sea on some sides, but the beautiful setting is not confined to just the outsides of the festival.  Nicely, some of the features of the mountainous basque hillside decorate the festival itself, with a natural vertical rock formation forming a barrier between the first and second stages (which last year The Noisettes’ singer Shingai Shoniwa scaled the rocks to watch and dance for the TV on the Radio performance, an undeniable highlight for the few people attending the gig).



This year the second stage played host to a mass of indie bands that were fronting NME covers during the last decade, including Bloc Party and Mumford and Sons, which mostly pleased the British teenage contingent but failed to offer anything to the rest of us.  It appears that the festival went all out to secure the headline acts, and was probably without much left in the coffers to fill the daytime slots.



For seasoned festival goers, one thing that will either draw you in or put you off is the attitude of the crowd.  Love it or loathe it, this is a very chilled out festival, with most of the crowd happy to stand back and watch the music while casually chatting to a friend or sipping from their pint.  Moshpits, crowdsurfing, and various other words I have generally omitted from my vocabulary since my teenage years are not to be found at BBK Live; while mojito, shuttle bus and vouchers have unexpectedly taken their place in my festival lexicon. 



The one exception came in the form of pop-punk (an oxymoron in my eyes) band Sum-41 inexplicably finding their way to the festival to churn out their skater-park anthems: embarrassing if it were 2001; plain excruciating in 2012.



Unfortunately this year saw many complaints provoked by the many organisational blunders.  Some were unhealthy (hour-long queues to collect tickets in 35 degree sunshine), some uncomfortable (the underequipped number of toilets and showers) and others plain annoying (sound problems for The Cure and Garbage), and while one of them alone may have been acceptable, the number of niggly problems did cause some general irritability.  This also highlights the other side of promoting your event through social networks; not only does it help you get in touch with your audience, but it also helps them to get together to complain en masse.



Fans waiting to see The Cure had to wait for an hour while the techies on stage did everything they could to get the keyboards to work, but were rewarded for their patience when singer Robert Smith took to the stage armed with his acoustic to play three unplugged songs.  The crowd were assured of the rarity of what they were seeing when Smith confessed it had been many years since he had last played without any support.



Once the keyboards were working, the band delivered a mammoth three hour set of singles and albums tracks alike, displaying an incredible work ethic to play for so long for a festival gig.  For most of the crowd there was a mid-set lull while they appeased the faithful with little-known album tracks, then they went off-stage for a two minute break before blasting through a barnstorming encore of tracks including shoegazer anthem Boys Don’t Cry, jazz-tinged The Lovecats, Friday I’m in Love and their minimalist classic Close To Me.



For the last night Garbage took to the stage in front of a noticeably depleted Bilbao crowd, yet despite the low numbers and yet more technical difficulties the group managed to quickly whip-up the hardcore with their unique brand of electronic grunge.  They opened the set with Automatic Systematic Habit, the first track from their well-received new album, showing that this tour is not just a cash-in on the back of old hits.  Not to say they didn’t play the old hits, of course, but they were fit in around newer songs rather than filling out the entire encore.  Queer and Stupid Girl were played early on, while they did finish their encore with crowd favourite Only Happy When it Rains.





























 







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Singer Shirley Manson told the crowd that during one song they couldn’t hear their monitors (unnoticable by the crowd), while during another song the reverse happened where the band could hear themselves perfectly but the PA had cut out.  This left the rather awkward moment of the group really going for it onstage to the sound of silence, and the crowd trying to communicate to the band what had happened.



Manson was seen gesticulating towards the sound engineers with a finger across the throat as she left the stage, but whatever anger she was feeling was controlled while she was performing, dominating the stage with a diva’s confidence and sexual pomp.  While she has clearly aged, her physical onstage performance didn’t betray her 45 years for one second.



Despite the organisational errors, coming from a long history of English festivals makes you fairly happy if you’re lucky enough to not endure a torrential storm, so I for one was not too aggrieved by the technical problems of this year’s BBK Live.  Its six years make it a relative newcomer to the festival scene, so we can hope these problems will be ironed out over the next couple of editions, along with some added coherency with the style of bands booked.



The guarantee of some triple-A headliners, cheap ticket prices and a truly beautiful setting make BBK Live a winner, whose reputation must only be improving in the European festival circuit.



Pros:
Good weather (not too hot, not too cold)
Great location
Headliner Acts
Ticket Prices (especially if bought in advance)

Cons:
Sound problems
Organisational blunders
Weak daytime lineup