On the second day, the Kalorama was filled to bursting at the seams. How many heads would there be this Friday night at Parque da Bela Vista, in Lisbon, to see one of the few bands that emerged in the last 20 years (the only one?) capable of filling a new festival with this fervour? Would it be forty thousand, the maximum capacity that this smaller venue apparently allows, given its format at Rock in Rio?
If there were 40,000, it seemed more. Anyone looking at the place where Arctic Monkeys kicked off their tenth concert in Portugal, the third since a trio of songs from 2013 (“RU Mine?”, “Why do you only call me when you’re high” and “Do I Wanna You Know?”) swelled the band even more and made it almost frighteningly large, through a sea of people. So much so that the stage didn’t look much different, even from a sold-out concert at the festival that has a house at this same address and reportedly has double the capacity and can hold up to nearly 80,000 people.
The clock had not yet marked the penultimate hour hand, and at the opposite end of the stage we could already see an incessant race, people quickened their pace and in some cases ran in search of a piece of land that would allow them to see, although very far, far away, the figures of the greatest rock stars of this time on stage.
For many it was an inglorious mission: neither to the right nor to the left, with blinded eyes, they had no choice but to resign themselves to a concert seen on a giant screen. I really needed to have arrived earlier. Perhaps the placement of a liquor sales structure so close to the stage, right in the center of the venue, did not make the task any easier either, as it may have stolen precious space and accentuated the impression of a space even more crowded than the one sold. -The output capacity would already suppose.
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Source: Observadora
