Splendour in the Grass
Byron Bay, Australia. 2006
When I were a lad, there was a particularly portentous time when I was fond of saying “If music be the food of life, I hope I grow up to be a fat bastard.” I didn’t have many friends back then, and one might argue, deservedly so if that was the kind of pish I touted as wisdom. But four things remain true :
1: I’m still addicted to music
2: Greaser is still my best mate
3: I remain a fat-free skinnoid, despite rampant musical indulgence over the years.
4: That quote is crap.
So as G and I celebrate 18 years of friendship and am:X-C related shenaniganeringifications, we find ourselves some 16,975kms from the site of our first gig together for two days of Splendour In the Mud...and yes, there will be mud!
After parking the car in the BP parking lot (amazing few others thought of it on day one!), we walked less than a kilometre to the Splendourous welcoming gates. The walk down through metroppocampilis was almost Carnivallic. Surrounded by a cavalcade of billowing flags, every Aussie who has ever harboured fantasies of being a hippy, even for one wet weekend was here. It was like the celebratory last scene in the Mortal Kombat movie – everyone dancing and joyously cavorting forward unto the distant bass.
We enter and our eyes rapidly drop from the scouring left-to-right pattern to the watching-where-the-hell-our-feet-were-going formation. The recent rain had churned the ground into an almost Glastonbury-like muddy slick in which you would never want to lose your car keys, even for the briefest of moments. Within the first five minutes I resign myself to buying new sneakers to go home with.
Now I had always been lead to believe that all Swedish people are hot – Aryan god and goddesses who spend their lives in natural hot-springs with smiles so innocent, they could melt puppies. Dungen (or “dooog-nuun” as we are coaxed to chant) look like Jethro Tull’s offspring, an image further secured by Gustav Ejstes’s penchant for blasting out a flute solo. It’s loud, nobody can understand a syllabul, and Ejstes himself seems almost apologetically fascinated with the rousing appreciation “crazy rock in Swedish language, yeah?” seems to be attracting.
Splendour promises several spectacles (and in the case of Youth Group and TZU, monocles), and Dungen were exactly that. They peak with the truly astonishing Panda and I note everyone (myself included) are singing along loudly and joyously with their own mashed up vowels and onomatopoeia. It is at the end of this first band of the weekend that I conclude this trip will be more a journey of discovery than a celebration of old faves and singalongs. Also that the crowd really are an open minded, well mannered lot, the hippie-vibe of togetherness bonding us all to the music, erasing all arrogance and ill-temperament. Or perhaps that was just the mud seeping into our soles like some pliable symbiote.
Case in point : the toilets. There I was, waiting patiently in line for 10 minutes for a cubicle, chatting very happily with a nice girl called Emily from Perth. She’d come over specially with her girlfriends and were really looking forward to Clair Bowditch and Decoder Ring. It was only at the very front of the line, with me next that I realised there wasn’t actually any men in this line and, yes, this is the one for the ladies. My subconscious then confirms hearing some passer by moments before asking a friend “Is that a lesbian or a guy?”. Oh wells. None of the girls gave me a hard time and I shyly skulk back to the bloke’s line. It takes me just 90 seconds to obtain a (very muddy) portaloo of my own.
Now to be honest, over the last few years, I have found it increasingly hard to find new rap or hip-hop that I can connect with. I empathise with ‘tha godfathers of rap’ such as Afrika Bambaataa who earlier this year disowned the genre, damning it’s misogynistic, image and money obsessed standard content. So when it comes to an artist such as Mos Def, it’s fascinating to see a rare, contemporary example of socially conscious rap. Here is a bloke from the streets of New York who has literally cut his teeth the hard way but doesn’t waste rhymes ramming the point home. To be honest, I think of him more of an actor than a rapper, anyways.
For several years I mistook Tex Perkins for The Tea Party’s Jeff Martin. Easy mistake to make – both humungous men of long black hair and a swagger to suggest a former life as a pirate. Again, I find myself savouring the spectacle with little to no knowledge of the music being played. But Tex is an Aussie icon – he commandeers stage presence. And when he introduces a song that “…is specifically designed to upset the Christian masses”, neither a boo nor hiss is to be heard. I suspect, much like The Tea Party, were I to obtain a Best Of CD of the finest moments of Tex, The Cruel Sea and The Beasts of Bourbon, I’d recognise more songs than not.
I head back to the dance-tent with excited spring in the step – The Avalanches are due to play a DJ set, but alas, rather than basque in brilliance and hints of their overdue sophomore albo, it’s just trundled out hi-tempo trance for the pill-heads. I wander off disheartened and soak up some more muddy vibes.
I can’t resist another visit to the Church Of Two Hands & One Chicken. This is the one spot that reminds you that festivals are haven of drug-takers – and they’re all the more entertaining for it. The sight of a crazed preacher-man administering the judgements of the Almighty surrounded by his harem of nuns, gimps, a whip-cracking dominatrix, a wheelchair bound dementor…and Che Guevara is too irresistible a mash to pass by. The act seems to be an ongoing cycle of overexcitable bending of the Lord’s word and cries of things that are “an abjuration of GOD!!!”, buttock-whipping, exorcisms and marriages. And for those with unclean buttocks, there is no shortage of willing participants. One might be compelled to flinch at the exposure of buttocks of varying peachiness but I simply can’t take my eyes off the very sincere and blood-drawing cracking of the cracks. The performance comes crashing down to earth when an unidentified assailant hurls a bottle that hits the wheelchair guy in the face. Everyone instantly straightens out in a quest to persecute the offender and comedy becomes drama. The offender gets away, the church struggles to get back into character, then it lifelessly dissolves, leaving the preacher hanging helplessly in the air above the pulpit asking a stage hand to winch him down. They’ll be back in more dangerous style later.
I’ve heard much of TV on the Radio and have rather suspected them to be a bit of an Arcade Fire insofar as discovering – much later than everyone else - that my life has been handicapped without them. I always had them pictured much like the aforementioned Canadian indie-groove octopus. From a distance, From a distance, David Andrew Sitek looks like a 20-something Henry Rollins in his thick black rimmed glasses. I instantly fall in love with this enigma who, throughout the set, never once turns to the audience, but bobs in time to every song whilst playing a veritable cornucopia of instruments. He has chimes hanging from his bass. He jumps on the glockenspiel. He changes guitars some four or five times. I later read his house burnt down on the day of a major interview for Spin magazine and that he finds the best way of mixing his records is in his underwear, taking hits from the bong Cypress-style. Some musicians have fun on stage and feed off the crowd. Sitek is single-mindedly thriving off the orgasmic pleasure of playing great music with his mates. And dammit – he isn’t even the singer! The final song in the set sees Sitek beatbox the entire rhythm section. He doesn’t drop a single beat. I’m exhausted for simply watching. I need to get their new album immediately.
There was a time when Wendi and I had the radio show on 6NR when we rode a crest of a wave of Australian alternative music. Jebediah, Regurgitator, Def FX, Spiderbait all were pumping out music that by rights should have been taking over the world. Sadly, all those bands have their best days behind them, just as for a while Something For Kate did. Their Beautiful Sharks albo remains a classic and I am guilty of abandoning them at their commercial peak, circa 2001’s Echolalia. So I find myself having enjoyed the day supping music that I was largely unfamiliar with and I desire some good old rocking out and singing along with well known favourites. Purple tent, here I come. Paul Dempsey’s voice still sounds as though his mother died just ten minutes ago, just as it always has. I ensconce myself in a respectable position midway through the throng, a third of the way to the front and out come the hits – Hallways, The Astronaut, Three Dimensions… I intentionally ditch my disappointment from the last few years and revel in familiarity. Then Dempsey announces a song which was “written some 20 years ago and remains as relevant today as it’s always been” and launches into quite a buoyant Rock the Casbah. It is glorious. And as a chaser, my personal favourite Electricity. Talk about being reunited with an old friend!
Over the whole weekend, not one drop of alcohol nor one molecule of chemical substance passed our lips (nevermind the queses for the booze itself, the quese for tokens were about twenty deep - G). I’ve always prided myself on not needing any ‘encouragement’ to enjoy music, so this next episode I fear may need some reiteration of that point. I can’t actually get to any sort of viewable vantage point for Mogwai at the McLennan tent. I stake a vacancy at the perimeter fence surrounding a large log fire. I am loathe to use the very lazy label ‘space-rock’ buuuutt…… I stare into the flames and am mesmerized by the trails against the ink black sky the sparks create. They captivate me in their dance, often painting the sky like a canvass in time with every guitar lick and stab. It sends my brain into a pensive trance, contemplating some of the people I appreciate most in my life. It might have been one minute, it might have been twenty, but at some point, a tall bloke called Jacob nudges next to me and strikes up a conversation about who was playing. I impart the little confident knowledge I have but agree that they really are something else. We exchange 90 second life stories and share a lack of appreciation for Adelaide. I tell him about my boyfriend, he tells of his girlfriend. Rob and Sarah, it would appear, share an apathy towards music which has resulted in the freedom to enjoy a weekend at Splendour with our best mates. If I was on chemicals, this sharing of quality time with a stranger might culminate with a slurrey “I love you – I love EVERYONE” but the experience is all the richer and more memorable for being ‘pure’.
G and I rendezvous and head back to the dance-tent to bare witness to Mogwai’s antithesis – Paul Mac as we enact our plan for the climax of the evening. The hyperactive Aussie cousin of Moby and architect of The Lab and The Dissociatives leaps and bounces around the stage in pure kinetic energy. Abby Dobson – one time singer of Leonardo’s Bride is on stage reprising her vocal duties for Gonna Miss You. I regale G with my tale of how Abby and her then partner Dean performed an acoustic set for my show on 6NR and how the next night at the Mushroom Showcase, we shared a few rollies. This is pure-pop and I’m loving it. Then comes Peta Morris to deliver Paul Mac’s biggest hit, Just the Thing. It’s disposable but it is fun. I later acquire a set list and am disappointed to learn we’d just missed out on Sweetness and Light – the FSOL-like track Paul released in 1994 under the guise Itch-E & Scratch-E.
DJ Shadow fans are a friendly sort. To my left, two 23 year old Perth girls. To my right, a 22 year old male student from South Carolina. We share enthusings for Josh Davis and, in a beautiful display of wilful wiling away of time, create shadow animals on the white sheet in front of us. To our left, a couple of really nice girls from Perth, one of which draws on Greaser’s arm.
Expectations are high, apprehensions are rife. There is much talk of Shadow’s new direction and I really dislike new single 3 Freaks but I agree wholeheartedly with a recent post on Shadow’s website in which the man himself asks “…are you a fan of the artist or the album?”. I would be mortified if any of my fave artists stood still for their entire career. But make no mistake – we are here to party. Shadow presides over us all from his decks sandwiched between two layers of projection screens 15’ above, and whilst there is obvious consternation over the fact that the visuals have failed to boot, the Shad keeps it together relatively well. G and I debate the level of his irritance – he apologises profusely and calmly but watch those eyes dart off stage and those teeth grit tighter… The man is understandably irked. The visuals remain dead until the third song where, it would appear a last ditch attempt to reboot the system results in a total power cut to Shadow’s entire deck, stopping the music. This does however appear to work and sound and vision are happily launched together.
How to dance to DJ Shadow? Well in a tightly packed mosh, options are always limited. Sometimes you nod approvingly, like the punters in the record store in High Fidelity. Sometimes you bounce enthusiastically, like the punters at the Kinky Wizards gig in High Fidelity. We are thrust into a warm envelope of loving familiarity…Grain Of Salt, Six Days, Changeling all set the scenery. These songs sound incredible in the comfort of ones own lounge or car but to hear them on huge speakers with the goatied author just feet above us is nothing short of bliss. I am moved…until it goes horribly, horribly wrong. The arrival of ‘the new stuff’ has an uneasy welcome – one can’t help but be fearful of the simple fact that it really is a big ask for an artist to make a hat-trick of flawless albums. Shadow appears aware of apprehension and asks us to sit back and let the new stuff have a fair go, just as much as the old stuff. A tall, lanky pom called Chris James almost embarrassedly trots on stage. Only it’s not REALLY Chris James – the real one is standing next to me and has been known as Greaser for the best part of 16 years. What we have in front of us is Garth Brookes alter-ego Chris Gaines after 2 years of ruthless bulimia. And for once, I really would prefer to hear Garth Brookes singing. He croo-ooooooo-ooons like an indie wannabe trying desperately to be soulful. The breaks behind him sound pleasantly diverting but it’s a clumsy mess. James looks awkward – the apathy is astonishing. Still – I marvel at his spine. It’s gonna take a right bashing over the coming week or so as he tours Australasia. Will other audiences be kinder? Will his performance improve and his genius be allowed to shine? (The answer is no.)
Thank heavens for the arrival of Lateef the Truth Speaker to bring the bounce back. Trust an MC to work a crowd. The call to arms in the air is hardly original but with a shadowy bass-beat, it works like a can of Coke after a hangover. He drops Enuff – one of what would to be a few highlights of The Outsider. Then an amped up Mashin’ On the Motorway. Time to break it down and play ‘Call and response’ with the audience. Those with a passing knowledge of the shadow canon pick up on the cues. “Break. It. Down…baby…” slams us into The Number Song. We are once again coasting. We end at such a great height, ready to wade through the churned mud to the car and be ushered back to the apartment by the only Sat-Nav in Australia with a bad sense of direction.
Day two starts with a well earned lay-in. It would have been great to have been up at the crack of dawn and enjoyed a gold-coast sunrise but feet needed rest, Mac needed new sneakers and an overturned lorry needed to de-spread itself over six lanes on the freeway. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise for it permits the delay of our heroes enough to make them hungry enough for a healthy pie brunch from the Humble Pie Shop. One mushy-pea floater indeed, young sir! But afore the order, Mac is agog. He is staring at a tall, gaunt, possibly alcohol scorched, mutton chopped gentleman just three folks back. I have never been this close to Tim Rogers before. I’ve been 25’ from him as he reeled on and off the stage in Fremantle with broken ribs sedated by neat vodka. It is possible that this man is alcoholic for I have never seen him without a drink in his hands (inclusive of his appearance on RocKwiz). But what also must be said is that I have never seen him perform a duff note or a shit song. Here I see him before be. Or rather behind me. Without a drink, but waiting to put in an order for a pie. I take my pie and walk past the line, determined to discretely and coolly extend a grateful, non-intrusive palm and say something short and pointed like “Tim – looking forward to the show!”, or “Love your work, Tim!”. But instead, I nervously walk past, like Dave Grohl’s nervous school-girl in the video to Learn To Fly desperate to be noticed. Tim glances up and makes momentary eye contact. But terrified, I look straight through him pretending not to notice who he is before caving the moment I walk past, screaming “Oh my gooooooodd!” at precisely zero decibels. I really do display a complete absence of testicles sometimes.
Writing this several weeks after the event, I am sadly more educated in the ways of The Zutons. I have been enchanted with their Doves-meets-the-cast-of-Grease rock. Sadly, I learned too late and missing them at Splendour is my penance.
So the first treat of day two is destined to be a completely unique experience. I still don’t know what to make of Matisyahu but I think today is going to decide it for me. I can’t help but have absolute respect for a proud orthodox Jew who, to many ideas is the walking stereotype thereof. Yes, he has the hat, the large white shirt, the long beard and sideburn-tassles. But this man jumps around the stage doing loud white reggae-rap…with a conscience!!! If nothing else, you can’t take your eyes of him for a second which, let’s face it, is a VERY important part of rock and roll.
But musically, DOES he rock? Oy vey yeah! The paradox is how he somehow strips in reverse, finishing his set with more clothes than when he started. And whilst I have spent much time thinking I have never heard anything like Matisyahu, a realisation came to me last week. I dare you to play “Informer” by Snow from 1993. Some overlap, at least…
Next big ticket item is the mighty You Am I. Greaser fights his urge to heckle with a considerance to the quality of Mr. Roger’s pie. New album, Convicts has the swagger and rollocking of Timmy’s famed favourite sea-dog’s jacket let loose. There is no let-up, it is balls to the wall rock ‘n’ roll, straight no chaser. They plunkett the bountiful back-catalogue, digging up favourites such as Who Put the Devil In You, Rumble, Good Mornin’ et all, all sitting comfortably next to newbies such as Gunslingers and Friends Like You. With little room for the sentimental balladry, the ‘My sound forcedly obligated to perform *****NOT DAMAGE****** but it is the only blight. These boys are fired up for the last gig on the Convicts tour and they want to party. Just a couple of weeks later, Rogers would be partying across Australia with Tex Perkins for their My Better Half tour. One might think a drink or two may be consumed on THAT tourbus!
Airports and music festivals – there are the two places thou shalt not seek ‘value for money’ in any foodstuffs. Over the weekend, G and I partake in a small cardboard tray of noodles from Iron Wok ($9), and beef teriyaki ($10). On day two, we stop by a wonderful pie store and speculate how easy it would be to purchase a few dozen pies and sell them off at $9 a pop. We’d get away with it, too!
I can’t resist heading over to the dance tent to see wot the fuss is all about regarding ‘hot new Aussie dance act’ The Presets. EVERYONE’s been talking about them and the packedness of the tent suggests some feverish savouring. They are one of those crazy™ bands who mash rock and techno (treck?) and jump around saying “C’mon!” a lot, trying to get everyone else up to the same speed as their own trip. It’s as if the Chicks On Speed became blokes and ditched the irony.
And here I make a public confession which, though I haven’t even told this to Greaser, I figure if you dear reader have made it thus far into this thesis, you deserve some juicy morsel with which to humiliate me in the future. Bored with The Presets, and with time to kill before the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, I wonder whither I should indulge a chemical indulgence of the like I have never tried. There is a tent which claims to have “Highs for all tastes and budgets”. I discard concern for their compliance with OH&S or even legal trading laws and peruse their candies and paraphernalia from a safe distance. I am a complete fraud. If ever I was ready to try a chemical substance, the time is now…but I am completely and utterly out of my depth, league, zone and ballpark. I clumsily pluck enough courage to grunt an interruption between the stallwench and her highly-knowledgeable-about-these-kind-of-things customer and proffer forward a $2 coin for what is just a boiled sweet in the penny-basket signed “home made ecstasy candy – completely legal, safe! GUARANTEED pleasant high (10 – 15 minutes)”. Well, for $2 I’m sure I can afford to find out if it does what is said. 20 minutes later, I have consumed this ball of what, let’s face it, looked as though it was the jellified scrapings of a washing-up basin – and The Presets still sound shit. So no effect there, then whatsoever.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahss are one of those nouveau originales so quickly emulated and ruthlessly copied. Moptop of hair, shouty and squawky of voice, Karen O’s enigma bounces across the stage as if providing her own stock animation. From the far reaches of the back of the purple tent, I can only marvel at the energy. However the sound is less than complimentary which, to a band for whom garage rock actually means something very literal and special indeed, does not translate very well. After three songs of frustrated dense-sound observation wishing I was about half a kilometre closer, I bimble off to soak up more vibes.
Back to the McLennan Theatre, Decoder Ring have already started. I find a seated vantage point and soak up…I have no idea what to expect to be honest. This is a band who remind me of my dear friend Wendi – one of the finest people on the planet – and I owe it to her to find out why she likes them so. They are a band who are simply making the music they love without concern for popular trends or mandates. Verse-chorus-schmerse. Decoder Ring are one of those rare entities that have achieved the dream – producing their own music which, save for perhaps Radarmaker, has little to compare it to – whilst performing with the multi-media visuals they wanted. Total artist control. And they’re loving it. Are U2 really having as much fun as this these days?
I amble aimlessly back through the mud to, well, actually savour and enjoy it while I still can. The weekend’s end is nigh on us. I soak up a performance of the Double Dragon acrobats. There is a concept revolving around Chinese mysticism but it’s as if the drugs have slowed e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g down in the vicinity to a virtual halt and the magic simply doesn’t happen.
I cruise via the Purple tent to bare witness to Australia’s Biggest Rock Band ever™ WOLFMOTHER (previous title holders : Jet, Spiderbait…). Big hair, big noise, heard it all before? For sure. But the kids are digging it. Personally, I kinda observe a parody of their own inception. I walk on.
And so we reach the popularist climax of the weekend – the high campery of The Scissor Sisters about to launch their second album. The rain starts to pour as they bound onto the stage and amazingly, they seem to have pulled a bigger crowd than WOLFMOTHER. But the minions are highly enthused. I question whether I should feel joy at the overwhelming tolerance or laugh at the total naïveté of the abundance of no doubt straight boys and girls bopping enthusiastically. They do realise the Sisters are…well…a bit GAY, right? Ironically, being a gay man I SHOULD welcome my fabulous sistahs to the stage with open ears and legs. However I still haven’t forgiven them for raping Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb though I have started to see some kind of fun redemption in Laura and Take Your Mama. The rain comes down and G and I seek shelter of sorts against the fence. Legs and muddy feet drop down beside our ears from Splendour Punch & Judy puppets sitting on the fence to get a soggy view of the gaiety on stage. And launching into a very washed out rendition of Take Your Mama, they fail to ignite my sympathies. The sound is pretty bad from back here and with the next song, G-Man and I find it all a bit much to bare. We’re sure up close and personal there is some hi-entertainment going down (in more ways than one) but from back here, we are left out in the cold.
And so it is a meander back to the Purple tent for our final bough out. This is where the weekend started for us, and this is where is shall end with the curmudgeonly Brian Wilson. He seems rather out of place in this environment. His band seem hand-picked from the finest session studios. There’s the three male backing singers together. The three female backing singers (complete with oft-synchronised ‘shoop’ and finger click moves.) There’s the bass section, the brass, the percussionists and they are all wearing clothes and jewellery that try to out-do Paul Shaeffer’s band on the Dave Letterman show. Wilson sits at his keyboard at the center, commanding all. The songs themselves seem too polished for a festival environment, and furthermore, he really seems a grumpy old bastard. After one song, he has a tirade against somebody off stage left about smoking. It is such a tirade one obviously assumes it is comedy. But then after the next song he continues. Apparently, he has specifically requested (demanded) that no smokers be allowed near the stage. I wonder how many of the mosh just a few feet in front of him are smoking. I also wonder at the hypocrisy of the man. Weren’t the Beach Boys notorious drug hoovers? Back where I’m standing, there is more than a passing whiff of reefer madness. My initial suspicions of him being out of place are not just confirmed but certified. We stick around for about 6 songs, only one of them I recognise. Musically, the band are tight – too tight.
And so we wander off. It has been a huge weekend and another fine chapter in the am:X-C journey. Roll on Big Day Out ’07, eh!
As testified by Nauto
G's opinion.
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