Nik


you can put anything here

Monday, May 6, 2013 @ 1:05 PM PERMALINK

I apologise to my 5 readers for my hiatus. Work has been picking up and I've been struggling to keep up.

My first (and up to now, only) festival experience was at Soundwave 2009. Bong, Leon and I had decided to go to Soundwave in Perth and made Pam and her family put us up in their home.

I just thought about this and realized that this is actually not accurate. My first festival experience was at the National Folk Festival in Canberra with my Godfather. Even though I didn't (and still don't) listen to  folk music, it was an AMAZING experience. 

This was also when I accquired the love for 'Girls of the Playboy Mansion' - I'm talking about the MTV reality programme not whatever porn related material that has just crossed your mind.

I don't know if they are still airing it but all the main girls they featured that cycle - Holly, Bridget and Kendra have since moved out of the mansion. As obviously scripted as it seemed, it was still good fun to watch. Okay, I know no one cares except me. Moving on...

I was in Melbourne last year during Soundwave weekend but decided that it was too expensive for me and skipped it. This year however, lured by the music of our teenhood, Bong bought tickets for both of us to go. This year's line up featured 72 acts and the Melbourne soundground was said to have hosted 65,000 people.

A bunch of Bong's friends were planning on going too but had decided to sell off their tickets as the date got closer so it ended up just being us.

The Melbourne Soundwave is MASSIVE as compared to Perth. I wish I had taken a picture of all the people getting through the entrances of the show-grounds but I was just too stunned. I am aware that this makes me sound like a bit of an idiot but when you come from a country with a population of 5 million, seeing 65,000 people in one place is really highly unusual.

Apart from the crowd, the grounds are really sprawling. When we had gone to the Perth's Soundwave at the Oval, you could kind of see all the stages at one glance. At Flemington Racecourse, you really had to commit to the bands you wanted to see because there was no way you could set hop.

We spent about 15 minutes trying to orientate ourselves before we realised that we were looking at the Adelaide map. Genius.

Once we identified where all the stages were, we decided to just sit down and relax.






I no longer remember the sequence of the bands we watched. So I'm just going to put up all these poorly taken photos in random order.

We started off with watching Gallows. Now some people may think that English hardcore punk is a little heavy to start the day but hey, we like to live on the wild side (kidding).

My favourite part of the set was the guy crowd surfing in his wheelchair. I didn't catch a snap but here's one from Take40. This didn't go unnoticed by Gallows vocalist Wade MacNeil who gave the guy and the crowd their due props.

Getting to see Motion City Soundtrack play live was really like a teenage dream come true. I had assumed that they wouldn't be very good live but boy was I wrong.


I'll be honest, I've never heard of The Dear Hunter before Bong bought our tickets but because Bong likes their stuff, I gave it a listen and it's pretty good although a little too complex for my simple music mind.

Considering that The Dear Hunter is Casey Crescenzo from the The Receiving End of Sirens, we had expected to see a larger crowd so it was a little sad to see such a small turn out. Perhaps their set had clashed with a music bigwig.




I had been quite excited to see O'brother but their turnout was pretty miserable too. Poor guys.



Feeling a little overwhelmed by the distances between stages, we decided that we should just go half an hour earlier to the Blink 182 stage. For some reason, we thought that would provide us with some kind of head-start in looking for a good place to park ourselves. WE WERE WRONG OBVIOUSLY - NOOBS.

This is the crowd that was ALREADY there.




There you go..A picture of the band, kinda.



Taking a break between sets. We were really lucky to have gotten pretty good weather. It was a cool 18 degrees Celsius ( I think) with no rain at all.



The one thing I really like about festivals is the junky festival food. I just can't help myself. Half of the experience is the food and shops. I did restrain myself from the shops this time round though.


It's not much to look at but I absolutely love baked potatoes. The only time I love baked potatoes more is at festivals. They are incredibly messy to eat  but I find that makes it all the more enjoyable.



To get to the stage Paramore was playing on, you had to enter this thing that looked a little like a sheep corral and we didn't really want to commit to that so we just stood outside and watched a couple songs on the TV.

I actually wish they did this with more of the stages because then short people like me could actually see what was happening on stage.





We left early cause we didn't want to be caught in the waves of people leaving after Metallica. We walked past the crowd on our way out and it was crazy. Throughout the day we had seen many people in Metallica T-shirts so it was not surprising at all that it looks like 60% of the audience was at their set.

We probably caught bits and pieces of other bands too but to be honest, I think we were a little unprepared to how LARGE the festival grounds would be and tired ourselves out pretty early even though we had drawn up a schedule.

Since it was still early we stopped at Melbourne Central and went to get a drink at the Factory -- great decor, amazing cocktails and (for the girls) pretty hot male bartenders on the weekend.

We came across these guys who seem to always be just outside Queen V. It is a pity that I can't recall their name because they were really good. I'll ask Bong later, maybe he'll know.



And we found a street with the same name as me. There's one in Penang too.



That's all for now! Off to try and clean my room again.

Labels: melbourne, music festival, Soundwave 2013