She's Giving Me The Excitations!
So, last weekend I tramped off to Sydney to attend the Good Vibrations festival. There is a cracking account (including some funky-ass photos) after the cut.
It took an absolute mission to organise the whole thing: I missed out on tickets literally by a couple of hours, so I bought one from a scalper on eBay. This is not something I'm proud of, and given my experience, not something I'll do again - I paid far too much, the guy was difficult to contact, and I didn't get the actual ticket until roughly 24 hours before the festival was due to start. For those not aware, recently festival organisers have taken to cancelling tickets that they consider to have been resold, and hence I was a little worried about potentially having a very expensive and totally worthless ticket. Add to that the fact that I missed my ride up to Sydney on the Friday night (had to run errands for people and organise things), and I was pretty bleak about the outlook for the weekend.
Well, I didn't really have anything to worry about. I drove up on my own on Saturday morning, leaving at about 6:00am and slamming along at about 130kmph all the way. I got into Sydney about 10:00am, the weather looked great, and I went searching for my friends, who were staying at a house in Newtown. I'd gotten a little turned around and was pulled off into a side street in Redfern for a look at the map, when I noticed a kinda shady-looking Aboriginal guy walking up to the car. I'm usually not much of one for stereotypes, but this was Redfern, and I'm a little ashamed to say that I immediately assumed the guy was some kind of crook. Instead, he turned out to be a great guy who showed me the fastest and easiest way to get where I was going, how to avoid some nasty intersections, and offered to sell me some high-quality ice (joking!). So it was that I ended up at a little terrace house in Newtown, where Marcus, Keytie and Chris were just waking up.
We got our shit together, and were about to make a move when who else but Max busts through the door. He'd just flown in from the UK where he'd been doing some kind of crazy commercial airline pilot training, had no ticket, and no-one knew he was coming. Fairly standard stuff for Max, really. We jumped a train to Central, where Max randomly managed to pick up a ticket for a little over cost price, and then got a bus down Oxford St, from where we followed the hoardes of beautiful people heading into Centennial Park.
It was only about 26 degrees, but the various stages were already pretty damn warm. We met up with Anna and Jackie, went and caught the tail end of Bass Kleph's set in the Laundry (I keep missing the guy at festivals, and I like his style - damn), ran into and had a chat with Moran and Heather, and then stayed for most of Mark Dynamix (lots of electro and a bit of stripped-down tech-house, which was a nice change). We strolled back over to the main stage and surrounds to catch some of Cut Copy, and the crowd was already pretty huge.
We went and had a bit of a dance, and I took some photos of the crowd from near the main stage. I merged a couple together to make the following shot - it doesn't work all the well, but might help you to get a picture (you probably want to view the full-size one on Flickr):
Then, the worst happened - we got separated, some of us going to see Nightmares On Wax (who were awesome, from what I saw) and abandoning others. Anyone who's been to a serious festival will know that the mobile phone system just does not cope, and we'd been foolish enough not to set up a meeting point. After an hour or so of searching (during which time I ran into Scott, who'd just turned up), I finally found Marcus and transitively the rest of the group, and we got our shit together in time to get a good position for Jurassic 5 in the Roots tent.
That may have been the hottest I have ever been at a concert. The tent was absolutely jam-packed, and it must have been at least 40 degrees inside. As a result, most of the guys had their shirts off, and when J5 rocked up on stage the place went nuts - imagine a sweating, bouncing sea of testosterone interspersed with knots of stifled-looking girls and shorter guys. It was fun, in a masochistic sense of the word, but eventually we decided that if we didn't get out we were going to die from heat exhaustion. So we got out, drank some water, and felt much better. We relocated the rest of the troops, took a couple of happy snaps, and relocated to the main stage to watch Snoop Dogg, who was a "surprise guest" (not very surprising, guys!).
In fairness, although I meant to go and see Fort Knox Five, I got sucked into Snoop's performance. Say what you want about the man, he's a consummate showman. In between playing some classics (it was undeniably awesome to hear Tha Next Episode and Ain't Nothin' But A G-Thang live), he smoked up on stage, did a lot of embarassingly ego-boosting crowd stunts, and more or less rocked the joint (pun intended). By this stage everyone was nice and fired up, and we bounced around for a while, waiting for the Beastie Boys. When they came out, they delivered. I've heard some people criticise their set for reasons that essentially come down to, "It wasn't all like Intergalactic." Well shit - the Beasties actually do play music other than the rap that they're known for. Favourites included Root Down, Intergalactic (because it really is a fun song), No Sleep Till Brooklyn, and the eternal Sabotage (complete with a rewind due to a faulty guitar). Snoop Dogg's guest appearance was a lot of fun, but Rahzel totally fucked up his rendition of Brass Monkey. Apparently the sound quality was shitty, but we were in the sweet spot in every possible way. Great times were had by all.
After the festival finished up, we had some group hugs, and then split up. Max, Scott, and Marcus wanted to go home and crash, but Anna, Morgan, Keytie, Jackie, Chris and myself were fired up for some clubbing. And so we went out and bounced around on Oxford Street for a couple of hours, before realising that we were absolutely knackered. It took a freakin' eternity to get back to Newtown, but eventually we were collapsed on the couch, drinking Berocca like it was some kind of magic elixir and eating cucumber (for some reason). I passed out on the floor, with a sleeping bag draped across me.
The next day was pretty chilled out. Over the course of ten or twelve hours, all I did was eat breakfast, go to the beach, and drive home (this time with some company, which was nice). All in all, an absolutely successful weekend.
(The full photo set can be found up on Flickr, here. Please look through them and make comments! I'm just getting the hang of this new little point-n-shoot I have, and any feedback would be great.)
It took an absolute mission to organise the whole thing: I missed out on tickets literally by a couple of hours, so I bought one from a scalper on eBay. This is not something I'm proud of, and given my experience, not something I'll do again - I paid far too much, the guy was difficult to contact, and I didn't get the actual ticket until roughly 24 hours before the festival was due to start. For those not aware, recently festival organisers have taken to cancelling tickets that they consider to have been resold, and hence I was a little worried about potentially having a very expensive and totally worthless ticket. Add to that the fact that I missed my ride up to Sydney on the Friday night (had to run errands for people and organise things), and I was pretty bleak about the outlook for the weekend.
Well, I didn't really have anything to worry about. I drove up on my own on Saturday morning, leaving at about 6:00am and slamming along at about 130kmph all the way. I got into Sydney about 10:00am, the weather looked great, and I went searching for my friends, who were staying at a house in Newtown. I'd gotten a little turned around and was pulled off into a side street in Redfern for a look at the map, when I noticed a kinda shady-looking Aboriginal guy walking up to the car. I'm usually not much of one for stereotypes, but this was Redfern, and I'm a little ashamed to say that I immediately assumed the guy was some kind of crook. Instead, he turned out to be a great guy who showed me the fastest and easiest way to get where I was going, how to avoid some nasty intersections, and offered to sell me some high-quality ice (joking!). So it was that I ended up at a little terrace house in Newtown, where Marcus, Keytie and Chris were just waking up.
We got our shit together, and were about to make a move when who else but Max busts through the door. He'd just flown in from the UK where he'd been doing some kind of crazy commercial airline pilot training, had no ticket, and no-one knew he was coming. Fairly standard stuff for Max, really. We jumped a train to Central, where Max randomly managed to pick up a ticket for a little over cost price, and then got a bus down Oxford St, from where we followed the hoardes of beautiful people heading into Centennial Park.
It was only about 26 degrees, but the various stages were already pretty damn warm. We met up with Anna and Jackie, went and caught the tail end of Bass Kleph's set in the Laundry (I keep missing the guy at festivals, and I like his style - damn), ran into and had a chat with Moran and Heather, and then stayed for most of Mark Dynamix (lots of electro and a bit of stripped-down tech-house, which was a nice change). We strolled back over to the main stage and surrounds to catch some of Cut Copy, and the crowd was already pretty huge.
We went and had a bit of a dance, and I took some photos of the crowd from near the main stage. I merged a couple together to make the following shot - it doesn't work all the well, but might help you to get a picture (you probably want to view the full-size one on Flickr):
Then, the worst happened - we got separated, some of us going to see Nightmares On Wax (who were awesome, from what I saw) and abandoning others. Anyone who's been to a serious festival will know that the mobile phone system just does not cope, and we'd been foolish enough not to set up a meeting point. After an hour or so of searching (during which time I ran into Scott, who'd just turned up), I finally found Marcus and transitively the rest of the group, and we got our shit together in time to get a good position for Jurassic 5 in the Roots tent.
That may have been the hottest I have ever been at a concert. The tent was absolutely jam-packed, and it must have been at least 40 degrees inside. As a result, most of the guys had their shirts off, and when J5 rocked up on stage the place went nuts - imagine a sweating, bouncing sea of testosterone interspersed with knots of stifled-looking girls and shorter guys. It was fun, in a masochistic sense of the word, but eventually we decided that if we didn't get out we were going to die from heat exhaustion. So we got out, drank some water, and felt much better. We relocated the rest of the troops, took a couple of happy snaps, and relocated to the main stage to watch Snoop Dogg, who was a "surprise guest" (not very surprising, guys!).
In fairness, although I meant to go and see Fort Knox Five, I got sucked into Snoop's performance. Say what you want about the man, he's a consummate showman. In between playing some classics (it was undeniably awesome to hear Tha Next Episode and Ain't Nothin' But A G-Thang live), he smoked up on stage, did a lot of embarassingly ego-boosting crowd stunts, and more or less rocked the joint (pun intended). By this stage everyone was nice and fired up, and we bounced around for a while, waiting for the Beastie Boys. When they came out, they delivered. I've heard some people criticise their set for reasons that essentially come down to, "It wasn't all like Intergalactic." Well shit - the Beasties actually do play music other than the rap that they're known for. Favourites included Root Down, Intergalactic (because it really is a fun song), No Sleep Till Brooklyn, and the eternal Sabotage (complete with a rewind due to a faulty guitar). Snoop Dogg's guest appearance was a lot of fun, but Rahzel totally fucked up his rendition of Brass Monkey. Apparently the sound quality was shitty, but we were in the sweet spot in every possible way. Great times were had by all.
After the festival finished up, we had some group hugs, and then split up. Max, Scott, and Marcus wanted to go home and crash, but Anna, Morgan, Keytie, Jackie, Chris and myself were fired up for some clubbing. And so we went out and bounced around on Oxford Street for a couple of hours, before realising that we were absolutely knackered. It took a freakin' eternity to get back to Newtown, but eventually we were collapsed on the couch, drinking Berocca like it was some kind of magic elixir and eating cucumber (for some reason). I passed out on the floor, with a sleeping bag draped across me.
The next day was pretty chilled out. Over the course of ten or twelve hours, all I did was eat breakfast, go to the beach, and drive home (this time with some company, which was nice). All in all, an absolutely successful weekend.
(The full photo set can be found up on Flickr, here. Please look through them and make comments! I'm just getting the hang of this new little point-n-shoot I have, and any feedback would be great.)