6+1 scattered thoughts straight from the tower of Plateia Nerou

One of the rookies of the Release Athens team, George Michalopoulos, documents his experience from the backstage of the festival and captures the feeling of watching endless concerts a little higher than usual.

We’re moments away from announcing the first acts of Release Athens 2023. The sixth edition of the festival will hopefully be the best so far, with great acts from every music spectrum of the last five decades, even better organization and several surprises that will enhance what we consider a complete “festival experience”.

Since the last song of the -now legendary- performance of Slipknot at the end of last July, a detailed record of what we saw and heard during the twelve days of Release Athens 2022 has been made, so there is no point in us doing something similar. But we asked the festival’s new content editor to describe what “life” behind the scenes feels like.

At the beginning of last January, when I started working at Release Athens as content editor (in short, I became part of the team that produces all of the written content you see at the festival’s media channels), the truth was that I didn’t know what to expect. Although I’ve been working in the music industry for the last two decades, I haven’t done anything like this and didn’t know what to expect. Not only during the period prior to the actual event, but especially during the 12 days when the doors were open to the public and some of my music heroes arrived backstage at Plateia Nerou.

What follows is a pretty spontaneous record of what I thought, experienced or felt while watching the dozens of bands that performed at Release Athens 2022, having the privilege of being in the best spot in Plateia Nerou: in the tower above the sound engineers and cameramen.

1) 35 months of silence

The main slogan of Release Athens 2022 was absolutely fitting in my case as it had been almost three years since the last concert I had attended. I think I was as happy as the first -only- black-clad fans who passed the festival entrance and ran to take their place in front of the stage. I watched them leave last, rather unaffected by the headliners’ antics. 35 months was a long time. Let it never happen again.

2) Tea with Cave, chatting with the Pet Shop Boys, working out with Neil Fallon

What a myth. Even if I had the appropriate access pass, the right bracelet and the right job, the hope of being able to write a book in twenty years about all the awesome and terrible things my eyes have seen was out of the window. The behind-the-scenes organization and security was beyond my imagination and I will have nothing to tell my grandchildren. Of course, the truth is that there are so many people working there that if we all took a picture with Dani Filth there would be nothing left of his makeup. Anyway, I can confirm that Neil Fallon of Clutch did indeed stretch in the courtyard just before he took the stage by storm while Iggy, Liam and Sleaford Mods were a happy bunch telling jokes and sharing a glass of champagne. Of course, that’s what I’ve been told since I wasn’t allowed anywhere them, so I don’t know if that counts. And if that wasn’t enough, I also missed the stagediving of Elin Larsson of the Blues Pills. What a disaster!

3) Like Clockwork

Expanding on the previous thought, let’s talk about, perhaps, the biggest “issue” I encountered at Release Athens 2022. As a person who both talks a lot and writes long reads with ease, I realized pretty soon that the team I was working with were doing this job from the very first version of the festival and things were running like clockwork. Best thing I could do was to stay out of their way, do what was necessary and do it quickly. By the time I had written three lines about the possibility of a storm visiting the venue, the rest of the team had worked out how many raincoats we would need to hand out, how to do it and how long it would take. The storm didn’t come after all, and I – needless to say – am already preparing several crisis management posts.

4) #monometalre

Full Disclosure: although I’ve been devoted to several music genres over the years, heavy metal was never one them. I have a few classic metal albums that I love, I’ve seen a few of these bands live but that’s about it. Suddenly, I was listening all the bands that would step their foot on the stage of Plateia Nerou and driven by a somewhat excessive-not really necessary- professionalism, I found myself reading a dozen or so books that went in depth into the careers of most of the metal names we saw this summer at Release Athens. But what ended up being the biggest revelation were the concerts themselves and the incredible metalheads who seem to come from some other musical planet and possess a consistency that you definitely don’t find in the Greek audience. When at the Pet Shop Boys Day you could see people coming until 9pm (less than 90 minutes before their headline slot), the Slipknot crowd had already filled Plateia Nerou, almost six hours before their show. Finally, nothing but respect to the Sabaton fans. You deservedly earn a place in the aforementioned book that I will write.

5) Highlights

I think the greatest moments of this year’s festival have already been sufficiently documented, so let me add some more personal ones. The sensational performance of “O Children” by the Bad Seeds that we didn’t know we needed. The new, updated version of “It’s A Sin” that sounded like a new release without losing any of its original magic. The whole Sepultura show (yes, I know “no cavalera=no sepultura”, it was after all, along with #monometalre, the two most common comments we received). The Stooges’ “T.V. Eye” bomb that Iggy played at the beginning of his set, a track I’ve never had the luck to hear at the several Iggy Pop show I’ve attended the last twenty years. Finally, “Thumamai Ena Spiti”, permanently absent from the setlists of both Trypes and Yannis Aggelakas’ later solo career, was a great surprise.

6) New day, new party

Last but not least, the two biggest changes I’ve noticed in the whole “music festival experience” now that I find myself working in the industry. First, in order to be able to organize the content we would put out during the concerts, I knew almost by heart every song we would hear and in what order, which turned every concert into something completely different. Bright exception to this: Clutch with a separate setlist at each stop on their tour. It may have made life a little difficult for us, but the group has a die-hard fan of the great Americans who recognized the songs from the first note. And second, a terrible sense of alienation I felt when I saw a big hit missing from the list, as if every concert should be a New Year’s Eve party. On the other hand, the happy faces at the end of each night and the impeccable view from the tower that facilitated the work provided unparalleled satisfaction.

7) Release 2023: Let The Countdown Begin

The announcements for Release Athens 2023 are right around the corner but from the little I know it’s going to be epic #monometalre.