boom festival 1998

I knew, as soon as I sat my foot at last year's festival really, that I would definitely be back if Boom was to be an annual event. Therefor, we booked our flight tickets well in time - to be certain we got seats. Call it what you want, but one might dispute that throwing Boom festival at the same time as the 'highlight weekend' of 1998 year's Expo in Lissabon is bad organizing. Nevermind now though, there were surprisingly few cars travelling from Algarve towards Lisbon on the Friday afternoon so why am I complaining? =:)

Arriving to Algarve on Tuesday morning, we were looking forward to a few days on the beach and some rest before the big event of this year was to take place. The weather here in Sweden have been totally awful since last summer (ok, give and take a few days) and it was such a pleasure walking around in bikini without freezing. We did in fact spend more or less all those days before the festival on the beach. Portugal is a beautiful country, and has not yet been overflooded with tourists, thus people still remains very friendly and nice towards the tourists who *have* found their way there.

As I'm here, I'd like to thank the little crowd of people who made Wednesday night such a blast : Johan . Karin . Rasmus . Pernilla . George & Andreas. What we did? First, we had a few drinks in mine & George's apartment (two-bedroom, 4 minutes from the beach, pool and pets such as cockroaches and a cat without tail) and then we walked to a very nice Indian restaurant for a binge. After plenty of food and several bottles of wine we returned to our place, more drinks, and finally we ended up in a cosy little place called Alabastro.

Not exactly trancemusic, but somewhat house, and we also explored the vinyl in the shelves in the little recordshop next door. I ended up in another club, IRS, while the others went back home. I'm not going to get into details about my partynight, but rest assured that I had a swell time and managed to get thrown in a pool . loose my drinkcard thus having to pay a fine . work behind the bar . get the manager to buy me drinks plus get invited to an afterparty with another Swedish girl and some cute bartenders. =:) You only live once, right ?!

Anyways, on to the festival on Friday morning. Me, George & Andreas had hired a nice little Opel Corsa and I was the designated driver both up to the festival and back home to the hotel in Albufeira on Monday. Not an appealing thought, but that's life. It took us 3,5 hours but we didn't make a lot of stops on the way (just for a refill of petrol) and we also missed one exit as we got closer to Lisbon and had to take an extra drive in Setubal. And yes, it was equally hot in the car this time...but after experiencing such bad weather for a long time (I'm talking about the Swedish weather now) - we didn't really mind.

We got totally excited getting closer to the festival as we now recognized the area and knew more or less how far we had to go before we reached it.

...and arriving was such fun ...

As we showed our tickets and got our bracelets in the entrance, a guy came up and asked if we were Swedish and weren't we here last year too? That's good memory for you! (or maybe we had done something to make this guy remember us ... what do you think?)

We parked the car, took most of our stuff and went to put our tents up and find the others that we'd arranged to meet up with. They'd put their tents in a spot very close to where we put them last year, but as the camping area and festival area didn't look exactly like it did last year, we were now rather in the outskirts of the festie than in the center - like last year. This year they'd also put the tents in one area and the caravans/vans in another. I still think that was no good, I never even went to the caravan area thus missing out on lots of nice peeps. =:)

Thew (American who creamed the organizers majorly last year and came to work with video graphix/projections as 'neuronautic institute' this year) was the first listie I ran into, and we took a stroll to look up Marita, Timo, Matt'n'Rem but without success. I did however meet Sylvie *hi!!!* and we had a nice little chat in the sun. As it was burning hot and the drive had made me even hotter I went to have a shower. It was, despite nothing but icecold water, lovely! and standing there buttnaked with peeps walking around just outside (with full ability to peek) didn't bother me. We did have a laugh about it later on, Marita couldn't believe that peeps took showers in their bathing suits and bikinis. =:)

At 5pm we had a listmeeting (from the 604 mailinglist) in the chill out and that was great! Not only were there lots of people *hi all!* but it was also a surprisingly pleasant crowd of peeps! I haven't been active on the 604-list for ages, so I can't remember all of the names of the peeps we met in the chill out but I do remember Marita, Timo, the Norwegian party animals, Monbaza, Matt'n'Rem of Boom Records, Sam as in Sam's Chaishop, René, Jason Creak, Thew and Ben'n'Dom. *So* nice to meet you all !

The chill out had also undergone a facial, and it was totally awesome compared to last years' chill out. (which chill out? haha) Lots of plastic wraps to lie or sit on and a whole bunch of pillows in various sizes plus nice decorations, some cool tunes and a trippy tunnel that you had to go through to get there which at nighttime was lit up by blacklights and some fluoro decos.

After the meeting, I went to Banco de Boom (!) to get some Boom dollars and some food. You bought Boom dollars in the Boom bank (currency 100 Boom dollar = 100 Escudos) and then you used the Boom$ to buy food and drinks. If you wanted to buy clothes or anything in the many market stands, you paid with real money. I guess this was to keep the money in one place instead of messing it up all over the big festival area, where they btw had lots of bars and food stands. Also an improvement from last years' festie, and we appreciated it mucho! This year you could get hot meals, sandwiches, fruit juices, pancakes, salads, soups, hot dogs, milkshakes... You name it, it was there !

Not only Neuronautic Institute provided us with some trippy video- & graphic projection stuff, Photon from Copenhagen (Denmark) were also there and these two worked very well together. The quality of the images, colors and such, were not good enough (according to Thew that is!) but it looked quite alright to me. Well done, guys!

First night's music was just okey, or at least until the surprise dj Ali Baba got behind the decks and played an amazing set. What a kid! Apparently, he grew up in Goa and started to learn the basics of mixing at the age of 8 (!) so he knew his thing despite only being 14 years old. Wow! I thought the music was great, but after glancing up in the spaceship and barely seeing anything but his blonde hair I really took off. He showed the big guys how it's done, that's for sure! =:) Other sets the first night that I enjoyed to the full were most of Monbaza's set, Adam's set (especially the Delta track he played!) and also most of Quirk's set.

The morning slowly turned into day and looking back, this was (to me) the most full-on morning. People hadn't been partying a lot yet, and they went totally wild. The one sprinkler we enjoyed last year had now become several ones, spread out all over the dancearea. Not until the sun came up to the full did they go off, and that was appreciated.

I stayed on until noon, and when the dj stopped playing, the crowd went nuts. No way could they turn it off now! Some loud protests, whistling, a crowd that stayed put on the dance floor and Diogo caved in and allowed the dj to go on. I distinctly recall a guy shouting "How many are we in this festival? How many want to continue and who want to quit?" =:)

I don't know what time it was when I finally left the dance floor, but the music was still playing then. I went back to the tent, had a shower and slept until 7 in the evening. Another shower and some walking around, talking to peeps. At 8pm, Swedish pride David started to play and the only ones there to support him were Danes and Swedes. He played an ok set, not as minimalistic as I'd hoped but rather very psy- & goatrancy. He usually plays what I'd call "techno" and he can make your whole day if he's playing in the morning but this time, it wasn't exciting enough to keep me dancing. I went back to the camping area and somehow ended up in my tent and fell asleep again.

I must have been exhausted because when I came to, it was 1pm next day. My friends had tried to wake me up during the night, but when I'm sleeping then I'm *really* sleeping. =:) Oh, and peeps made sure I understood what a great night I'd missed. Ok, I know. I f**king came to see Pleidians, didn't I! 'Nuff about that now, though, no use wasting energy on it as it has happened.

Me, Andreas & René had a pleasant afternoon in the chillout just relaxing and talking to peeps. I was well rested when the music of the last night started and we stayed on in the dancearea until next day - more or less. Matt Boom played a very nice set, as did both Ollie, Space Tribe and Max. Especially Max, in my opinion ... wow! Despite it being the third (and last) day, there was still a lot of energy floating around and making it a special morning. Not as special as the first one, though...

We gathered strength and had showers and started to say bye bye to peeps around 1pm. The music was still playing, yes, and I wish that I could have stayed on until it finished but we had to get back to Albufeira to return the car and stuff.

Bye bye to those of you I never saw or had the chance to say it to in person!

Individual regards and lots of hugs goes to

:: organizers including *everybody* who worked with Boom in someway
:: travelpeeps George . Frank & Anette . Andreas . Johan & Karin .
. Rasmus & Pernilla
:: all the partypeeps from Denmark but especially Tanja & Carsten .
. Anna & Mette . Johannes & Mikkel & Sascha . Søren & Oliver
:: all 604 listies but *especially* Timo & Marita . Jason C . Thew & Sylvie .
. Denis & Co . Matt'n'Rem . Ben & Dom . Maarten a k a Dj Aorta
:: Lella & husband (from *Portugal* and not Israel as I wrote last year)
:: René, Hans, Juliette and all you others from Amsterdam
:: Sofie & Linn
:: David & Annika
:: Fredrik & girlfriend
:: the guys in Photon
:: Mark A & girlfriend
:: DJ Domino
:: Ollie & wife
:: Ritchie & Tim from 'down under'
:: Jimmy & the guys from Gothenburg
:: the cute Jason I mistook for Jason C last year
:: Alison
:: peeps I talked to / smiled at / shared water with / all you who
I've forgotten to mention here ... leaves very few, I must add =:)


Comparing Boom 1998 with Boom 1997 ...
it was so much better organized this year but I think that the first Boom was very special and I doubt another Boom will ever feel like that one. I also think the music was better last year, and the crowd seemed a whole lot older last year as well! All in all they were both very excellent parties, and I plan to go back next time there's a Boom. Yep, you can definitely count me in. =:)

Dust & Glow

* Chrissie *