Features
A Family Day Out
The kids lost their heads over Tokio Hotel and the adults nodded theirs to Crowded House, and once again the Belgian media went into rapture over what Live Nation is producing on the Werchter Festival Park this summer.
"Werchter Boutique claimed gloriously and with thick letters, its place on the festival calendar," crowed Het Nieuwsblad, as if trying to match the superlatives that De Standaard and Het Belang van Limburg had heaped on Rock Werchter a week earlier.
This time the newspapers were drooling over what Het Nieuwsblad described as "a venturesome undertaking of Herman Schueremans to bring together young and older at the festival park."
"He succeeded with a great deal of verve," the leading Flanders daily concluded.
Other papers joined in the praise and Schueremans became the most popular media figure of the week in Belgium, let alone being its most popular politician.
The July 13 event, a new one-day festival offering something for the whole family, attracted 34,000.
More than 4,000 were kids aged between 3 and 12, who spent at least some part of their time romping around the Pyramid Marquee – a specially built cross between an amusement park and adventure playground.
The other acts making sure everyone had fun in the sun included Santana, James Blunt and top reggae/ska band Doe Maar, one of the most successful pop bands in Dutch history.