Both of the first two bands we’re review­ing from Szi­get Fest­ival are for­eign — Kispál és a Borz were Hun­garian, Ska-P are Span­ish. As with Kispál, this meant that a lot of the pat­ter and banter was lost on me, unfor­tu­nately. Ska-P are a very polit­ic­ally vocal band, and this is reflec­ted in their per­form­ance — the set ran the gamut from their pro-drug hit “Can­nabis”, to their anti-Zionist “Inti­fada”, and covered animal rights as well, with rather graphic imagery to really bring their point home; the two screens either side of the stage were play­ing video foot­age of bull­fights and air­strikes through­out the respect­ive songs. The crowd loved every second of it, and the band seemed to enjoy it too — Pulpul actu­ally ended the con­cert pran­cing around the stage in his under­pants, while another band mem­ber decided to expose him­self from under­neath his kilt.

The gig itself was fant­astic, the band were feed­ing off the energy of the crowd, and music­ally, they hit all the right notes, if you’ll excuse the pun. The fest­ival was a bril­liant oppor­tun­ity to see a band per­form that I was rather scared I’d missed — in 2005, around the time I first heard Can­nabis and fell in love with Ska-P, the band went on indef­in­ite hiatus, which, as we all know is more often than not a code phrase for “break­ing up”. I had resigned myself to the prob­ab­il­ity that I would never see them live, but, luck­ily, two years later, they re-united. After this gig, I’m not dis­ap­poin­ted that they did.