Weekend Festivities

So I fitted most of what was on into one weekend. I did however, miss out on Supanova ‘cause I was too knackered form the day before. I stayed home and relaxed on Sunday with a little telly and some uni homework.

How many bands are too many to see in one day? This is the question I asked myself on Friday night when planning out my Saturday. I was off the Price Alfred Park and the Surry Hills Festival to see Watussi and bLuejuice before wandering up the road to the Hopetoun Hotel for the Slip into the Sun Festival. In total I had ten bands to see, eight of them I had never seen before.

Watussi played Jamaican influenced jazz that fitted perfectly with the sun, beer and outdoor style of the gig. I can imagine that at an indoor gig it would get annoying really quickly, but outdoors it was just chillin’ man.

bLuejuice came out to a very appreciative crowd wearing their trademark checked shirts, jeans and t-shirts and other random accessory. This time it was a leather face mask. They rocked the marquee and had a little help from a drunken audience member how insisted on getting onstage on three occasions. Finally, she was escorted from the premises just as the boys were finishing their sixty minute set.

After a quick walk up the road I arrived at a very quiet Hopetoun Hotel. There was the door Punk with attitude, the bar staff and a couple of others watching the first band of the day. It was broad daylight outside, being only four fifteen in the afternoon, and natural flooded the bar. It was actually quite pretty.

Dead Farmers was a three piece local band that played a classic Aussie rock set, loads of drum sounds and overbearing guitar. I can’t say I remember any lyrics, but that was because I couldn’t really hear the vocals.

Hand Me my Jet Pack the second three piece of the day. They had an odd mic set up. Rather than facing out to the audience they faced into toward each other, it gave the impression they were singing to each other and left little room for engagement with the audience. The drummer had impeccable comic timing, but that was ruined by the bands reliance of feedback, guitar shaking and tap tap of strings. Shame really because I would have liked to have heard ‘Our Cars Run on Maths’.

The Sky Falling was under prepared for their slot as three out of eight. The lead singer /guitar player had issues with both his six string and twelve string being out of tune as well as his singing. He was terrible. They didn’t even look like they played together. A mixture of jeans and t-shirts was highlighted by the good-looking guy dressed in head to toe ivory cotton wear (could have been hemp) with wooden beads around his neck. He looked like he was off to the ashram straight after the gig. Afterwards the lead singer said to me, ‘we’re normally better than that’, Punk with Attitude said, ‘No, they’re not.’

Skull Squadron looked the part and sounded better than any of the proceeding three. All three members were dressed in black, good, they looked they were together. They liked instrumental sections and there were plenty, heaps of waha’s and lots of kneeling resulting in pedal fiddling. Their songs all blended into one, but that may have been clever segues or just that they all sounded the same.

I didn’t like Sound like Sunset at all…it’s forty-five minutes of my life that I will never get back. All I could hear were the drums. I felt like Quasimodo and that’s never a good feeling to instil in your audience.

The place had filled up a bit.

Richard in Your Mind came on about 9pm. I had been watching bands since just after one. But this was a band I actually wanted to see. I’d seen back in June when I first saw bLuejuice and I wanted to see if they had changed. They had, they were even better than I remembered. With mixture of bird song, folky electro-pop and Indian soul they worked their way through their set. A strobe light lite up Richards Buddy Holy glasses very well and it was at that point that I realised every member of the band was wearing similar glasses. They were good.

Up next was Holy Soul. The lead singer was geeky looking but somehow it worked with the Pink Floyd crossed with Squeeze psychedelic sound. I’d had enough by this point and had stopped taking notes. I had decided to go with the flow and enjoy myself and the last two bands of the evening. The Punk with Attitude was having a time of it too, he’d been up since Friday morning and was hanging out til midnight for a couple of cans of Redbull before heading off to his second job, DJing at a club on Oxford Street.

The final band of the evening was Red Sun Band. They were good.

(844 words)