Golden Email #30 - Pol'and'Rock



What is Pol'and'Rock's secret behind creating the best festival concerts in Europe? Here are a couple of things that make the most visited rock festival in Europe that you've never heard about, stand out from the rest:

The light rig
I have nothing else to say except that the light rig at Pol'and'Rock 2024 and 2025 is from another world. I will spend most of this post trash-talking other festivals, but I can't really blame festivals for not having a light rig as good as Pol'and'Rock. Because how could they even come close? I didn't even know you could make something like this before I saw it. The standard level of festival lighting was okay, and then Pol'and'Rock raised it, and now looking at a "normal" festival with a "normal" light rig feels ridiculous. Pay hundreds of dollars to see some white/yellow lamps hanging from a ceiling, when this exists?





See the absolute limits of the light rig from The Warning's show in 2024. I watched this while having a fever and had to turn the computer off because my eyes hurt from the blinking lights.

The stage, the ceiling height and the drummer placement
Another thing that makes Pol'and'Rock stand out from other festivals is that the view of the stage isn't 90% scaffolding, boxes filled with cables and equipment, and crew standing anxiously along the walls. Most other festival stages look like they're made of the stuff you use to build the stage, like if they put up scaffolding and stuff but then never built the actual stage and just left the scaffolding.

So my message to music festivals in general is: We don't want to see steel bars and heavy cable boxes, we want to see cool things, and we want to see the band! And please don't push the drummer into a tight corner or right at the back wall! At Pol'and'Rock, the drummer has their righteously earned place in the middle of the stage, free from distractions, cables, walls and boxes. The filmed shots of the drummer look good, and it makes the drummer look cool and important, and not just an afterthought that had to be compromised into whatever place on the stage was left for that big drum kit. It helps that the Pol'and'Rock stage is very wide and very deep, and the high ceiling height also adds to the look of the drummer and makes every filmed frame of the stage look composed:




(from HANABIE's live show)

There are "no" famous bands
There are some semi-famous international acts performing at Pol'and'Rock every year, but not nearly as many as at other big festivals. It's mostly Polish bands. The focus at Pol'and'Rock isn't on watching famous people perform, or to give an aging rock audience the things they've seen before and are familiar with (the rock genre is moving so slow that the same band that were cool 20 years ago are still considered to be the cool bands to headline at festivals, see Slipknot and Parkway Drive. They're today's AC/DC and Metallica, but I don't know if the rock world has realized that yet). The focus is on creating a great show and for the audience to have a good time.

The fact that I'd rather watch a weird Polish metal band that I just think is okay and nothing more, perform on Pol'and'Rock instead of watching my favorite bands perform on famous festivals elsewhere, says something about what's important in music and showmanship. Good music is important, but famous musicians aren't.

Flapjack are not famous. They're from Poland. (You can only choose one?)

Poland, and Europe, vs USA?
Americans seem to think a concert is about going to watch a famous person play a song through a speaker (where they probably haven't even bothered to remove the vocals to get a clean instrumental backing track) and barely performing to it, and then posting about it online (that's why all the smartphones in the audience). It's not _only_ the "new generation" that causes smartphones to take over the festival and concert audience view, because the new generation in Poland doesn't seem to care about all that. I think Europe in general has been way less damaged by the internet and social media during the last years compared to America, maybe we took the Covid "lockdowns" better or something. It could also be that people in Poland are just chill.

The festival is free, which probably adds to the non-commercial feeling of it all. But I can see this festival being just as good as a paid festival too. Maybe it would be a little less special, but still just as good?





They get better while others get stale
Compare Pol'and'Rock 2019 to 2025 - better stage, better lighting, better filming, better editing. They've evolved, while other festivals still do things like a festival "should" do (= copy what worked in the 90s without adding anything relevant and new).
Pol'and'Rock 2019 looks like other festivals at the time, with an impressive audience and vibe. Good but not better than anything else. But Pol'and'Rock 2025 has evolved so much while other festivals haven't that you clearly see how superior it is. Eventually, when the mainstream has become so uninteresting and uninterested to change, the people working to create great things (Pol'and'Rock) get their recognition (by kbrecordzz).

Prophets of Rage 2019 live show

The filming and editing of the festival is one aspect where this festival evolves while others stand still. Just the fact that the live clips only have inspired me to write all of this, is a testament to it. I'm out of things to say now, so go watch some clips and see it for yourself.

And look at the big freaking displays:


(also from the HANABIE live show)

Cover image, other screenshots and videos are by KręciołaTV.

/kbrecordzz, 2026-02-17