The Szegedi Ifjúsági Napok, or SZIN for short, is a yearly festival held in our hometown of Szeged, Hungary. In recent years a few notable international stars played there, but at core it was still a very local attraction. When Laci got contacted that there was an open spot on the Rock Klub stage in 2013, naturally we were thrilled for the opportunity and the chance to play for a new, bigger crowd.
I don't remember much from the time before the actual gig, but we prepared a list of 23 songs we were to play, but life would not have it.
See, when we were offered the chance to play, we did not have a time slot set, only a day. We decided we'd go as the last act on that day, so we would not have to worry about another band following us on stage. This turned out to be a rather bad decision.
The band playing before us was some three-piece-punk band that had their fair share of troubles on stage. I don't remember their name or the music they played, but I remember that the guitarist managed to break at least three strings while on stage, so he had to replace them, dragging their performance along.
Now I realise we should have been more pushy about us starting on time, but we figured, since we were the last act on that day, that time would not be an issue, we'd just play until the end of our set.
Boy, were we wrong.
The crowd turned out to be much smaller than expected, mostly consisting of our usual audience plus some people that walked to the stage, which was in a dark corner of the festival area, far away from beer tents and the like.
All was pretty dandy during the main part of the show. However, when the encore started the audio technician stopped us and told us we need to stop because it's too late and people will start complaining.
At 11 PM.
At a festival.
Fuck that.
It was rock 'n roll, baby, we continued to play. Halfway through the second encore song (a cover of Tomahawk's excellent God Hates a Coward) they cut the power from the external speakers, but we continued to play on our amps. Fuck you, SZIN!
In the end we did not play our last planned song, a cover of Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, as there was no point without amplified vocals.
All in all we were kinda disappointed by the way the whole thing was handled, and the lack of an actual crowd, but at least we could say we played at SZIN, however fucked up the whole situation was in the end.
Setlist
August 23rd, 2013
Isolation
(Joy Division cover)
Mental sushi
Breathe
(The Prodigy cover)
Twisted leech
Numbskull
Love song
Whatever
(Godsmack cover)
This divinity within me
Hunger for the itch
A stroke of luck
My black song
Propane bliss
I Am Mine
(Pearl Jam cover)
In love again
Blindfolded
Creep
(Radiohead cover)
Die Laughing
(Therapy? cover)
Hurt
(Nine Inch Nails cover)
Disregard, destroy, defy
Grinder
Encore #1: Scotty Doesn't Know
(Lustra cover)
Encore #2: God Hates a Coward
(Tomahawk cover)