Recipe for a Moldovan rock concert

Imagine you’re at the Warped Tour, rocking out to various incarnations of punk/ska/metal/rock in a sea of punky teens and other random concertgoers. (Sidenote 1: Warped Tour is a great concert festival that travels around the US every summer. I haven’t been since 2001, so this post assumes it hasn’t changed too much since then.) Now make the following amendments to the scene and you’ll know just what it’s like to attend the annual “Rock Festival Stary Melnik” in Chisinau, Moldova:

• Put away your wallet. Entry for the 10am-11pm concert is only 20 lei (~$1.50)

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• Replace the sponsor. Instead of Vans (American skate shoe company), Stary Melnik (Russian beer company) is the headline sponsor. Keep in mind that this means there are people everywhere with tall half-liter cans of beer. Including, in some cases, small children. No, these are not early-years DJ and Steffi Tanner – they’re 8-12 year-olds drinking beer. With their mother.

• Remove all souvenir stands and side stages. Which is fine because two main stages rock hard enough to carry the whole show.

• Remove all garbage cans. The ground works fine.

• Choose a venue with twice as much square footage per concertgoer. With plenty of space to get our groove on, my new Russian teacher Katya and her friends and I had a great time.

• Forget English. All singing is in Russian or Romanian. Which isn’t always all that noticeable in these genres.

• Add a fair number of punky Euro-mullets. They’re actually pretty cool. (I’m not kidding.)

• When Moldovan superstars Zdob si Zdub come on, stop moshing and start dancing the hora! While you may only be familiar with the Israeli/Jewish version you’ve busted out to Hava Nagila at Bar Mitzvahs and weddings, there’s also an awesome Romanian/Moldovan version. And what better soundtrack for this than Zdob si Zdub, the Moldovan punk/folk entry to (and 6^th place winner of!) the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest. (Sidenote 2: This televised contest pitting European nations’ singers and songs against each other has been running for over 50 years and draws hundreds of millions (!) of viewers each year. Placing was a proud moment for Moldova in its first year of participation.)

FUN, right?