Byron Wrapup Pt 3

follows on from this post

Day Three: Saturday
By now I was living the blues. Saturday's lineup didn't present as many big names as the previous two days, but I was keen to get to the fest and make some discoveries. In the end, I hung out with my cousins, got drunk, met some nice hippy girls, ate some more Langos, and had a great day.

Amos Lee
Word on the street was that this guy was worth seeing. He plays laid back bluesish tunes on his acoustic guitar, and matches it with a great soulful voice. My only criticism would be that he was a little too good. He was so talented, he made what he was doing look effortless. I want to see people suffer for their music. If you'll permit me a rather bizzare metaphore, It's like I can't get a musical erection without a bit of S&M. The blues usually gives me what I need.

Amos Lee: Too goddamn perfect

Wandering Around
Those readers with excellent memories will recall the schedule I posted in part 1 of this series. There's a bit of a gap between Amos Lee, which finished at 3:00, and the next act I saw all of, which began at 7:00. Where did these missing hours go? Well, I remember drinking, and wandering around with my cousins. I caught 20 mins of Fred Eaglesmith's set. He's a Canadian who sings country music, and has an unhealthy preoccupation with guns, trucks, trains and dogs. He sings a song called "I think it's time to go buy a gun", which is fantastic.

While waiting with my cousin Jake while my brother went to the toilet, we were, unbeknownst to me at the time, approached by three good looking females. I was daydreaming when I heard Jake say something like, 'go on, he loves it!'. The next thing I know, I receive a whack on the arse. Yelping, I turned around to see three girls run past me and into the crowd. Jake recalled the moment later on the family blog: 'Favourite moments of the fest - Three girls debating whether they should smack Andrew on the arse - I leaned over and said 'He loves a smack' - so they gave him a short, sharp whack." Love it I did.

It seems awfully decadent to pay $squillions to fly across the country (not to mention the cost to the planet in C02 emissions!) to attend a music festival, then ignore the musicians to wander around and get drunk. But sometimes you've got to take a bit of a break to refresh the musical palette. And sometimes, random girls smack you on the arse.

My brother (top), my cousin Jake (right), and two lovely girls we made friends with

Fishbone
My cousin Adam dragged us back to mojo to see these guys, who I'd never heard of. They're a black American group reminiscent of the Cat Empire, and they rock. The crowd were restless when they started out with a 10 minute, very cool jazz spoken word piece, but I was digging it. Soon, though, they launched into some high energy numbers (still very jazz-influenced), and suddenly everyone was dancing. The lead singer kept stage diving into the huge audience, getting passed round the mosh pit for minutes at a time, singing all the while. Big respect to the roadie who basically had to treat the guy's mic cable like a fishing line. When he came back towards the stage, the roadie would reel in the cable to stop it getting tangled in the crowd.

Soulman
Now I had a decision to make: did I want to check out rock legends Eric Burdon and The Animals, or stay at Mojo to wait for Ozomatli, who Adam informed me would rock? I knew that it would be a sin not to see the Animals, who are undisputed music icons. On the other hand, I was drunk and wanted to party with the young people. In the end, I resolved to head over to Crossroads, where the Animals were playing, check them out, and stay if they blew my mind. I did so and lasted five minutes before I lost concentration (I am a terrible man). As I wandered back to Mojo, I passed the Apra stage, where I saw Adam and my brother checking out Soulman. I stopped for a listen.

He's a Jamaican living in Perth, and sings fairly easy listening rocky acoustic pop. But he's got a really friendly, happy vibe, and you can't help but be won over by him. A pleasant way to spend 20 minutes.

Soulman

Ozomatli (Best crowd experience of the fest)
These guys were awesome. Another Cat Empire-style ensemble who knew how to get the crowd dancing and happy. At the end of their allotted hour, they needed to let the roadies set up for the next performance, but didn't want to stop playing. So they all jumped off the stage and started a procession through the audience - drums, horn section, singers, and girls on stilts dressed as flamingos. George and Alice will recall that a similar thing happened at the Batacuda Sound Machine performance last year; that was at Jambalaya, a small stage. This was in Mojo, and the crowd just couldn't believe it.

The band formed a circle right in the middle of the tent and started a chant. Each time they did this, from where I was standing you could hear the chant faintly at first (no mics), then it grew louder as the audience nearest them caught on. The chant would ripple back from the middle of the tent, till you could hear everyone in the tent and the people outside on the grass getting in on the action. An almost religious experience.

Ozomatli gets down with the massive crowd at Mojo

Bo Diddley
After Ozomatli I felt exhausted and energised at the same time. I stuck around to see if The Roots would be any good. The writeup in the program described them in much the same way as Ozomatli: large group with ecclectic influences including hip hop. In the case of The Roots, ecclectic meant borrowing from both Eminem AND 50 Cent. They stunk, and people started to float away from Mojo, myself included.

By then there was only one option, and that option was Bo Diddley. Half blues man, half blues legend, he's really really old but still very cool. Most of his songs are centred around how great he is, including 'Hey Bo Diddley', where he sings 'Hey Bo Diddley' and the crowd answers 'Hey Bo Diddley', and the 'Bo Diddley Rap', wherein Bo Diddley recounts his success with the ladies. A feel good end to another day in Blues Paradise.

Byron Wrapup Pt 2

follows on from this post

Day Two: Friday
Had a big sleep in and got to the festival about 2:00. It rained intermittently all day, but so far the grass was holding up reasonably well under the feet of the stampeding masses, and muddy patches were sparse. My ears had warmed up on the Thursday, and I was suitably receptive for a day of sensational music.

Paolo Nutini (Andrew's discovery of the festival!)
Didn't know anything about this dude. He was on early, so I wasn't expecting much. Despite his (stage?) name, he's actually Scottish, and sings as if he's impersonating an old Scottish man with a lisp. It took me a while to get over this and realise that his songs actually kicked serious arse. His band were good too, and soon the crowd were loving it. I've since listened to his album, and he mutes the whole old man impersonation considerably on his CD. I strongly recommend having a listen to some of his stuff (ugh, MySpace). Next time I'm in at JB, I'm buying his album (which was an exhorbitant $35 at the Bluesfest).

Rodriguez
If Bob Dylan and Nick Drake had a baby, and that baby grew up to be a 60ish year old musician, he would sound like Rodriguez. Apparently he was big in the 70's. Seems as though he's run out of steam in the 21st century. Definitely one for the die hard older fans, who seemed to dig him. The most interesting thing about his performance was that he spoke to the audience only in cryptic, rhyming couplets. Oh, and he couldn't remember the name of his band members, so he had to ask his bassist to introduce the band. One day I want to be so famous I don't have to remember names.

Gomez
I'd really only heard a couple of tracks by these guys before the fest. They're the kind of band that seems to crop up pretty frequently on chillout compilations, so I was expecting something pretty laid back. Actually, they know how to rock. They're about a seven piece, with three guys up the front singing, and two drummers. An impressive setup, and an impressive sound. Left me wanting to hear more of their stuff.

Joss Stone
She's prrdy. Well, about as prrdy as British girls get, anyway. The music was... inoffensive. Well, maybe that's a little harsh. She started off in a fairly poppy kind of vein, and it was only really in the second half of her set that she let the band (which was extensive and talented) do their thing. She does have an amazing voice, but like Vanessa Amarosi among others, some purists might question what she was doing at the Bluesfest in the first place.

Animal Liberation Orchestra (Most mind blowing surprise of the festival!)
I almost wasn't going to stay around for these guys, because I had half a mind to check out Terrence Simien and the Zydeco Experience. Laziness won the day, and I stayed at Mojo. A good thing, too, because these guys are my type of people. They're a guitar/piano, bass, and drums trio that kick out the jams mellow-wise, if you catch my drift. They kind of sound like if Donovan Frankenreiter came from a good middle class family in Boston, and formed a band with two of his clones.

Anyway, about a third of the way through their set, they call out a good friend of theirs - Jack muthafuckin Johnson!! JJ wasn't even playing at the fest, so I don't know if he happened to be in town, or what. At that stage, Mojo was about half full, but as word spread, you could see people literally sprinting from the other side of the festival to get to the tent. The rest of the set was about a 50-50 mix of Jack Johnson and ALO songs. It was all good. I've now got their album, and a memory of a great performance I won't soon forget.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
Bela Fleck is widely regarded as the world's best banjo player. He teams up with the Flecktones, comprising a guy who could be the world's best bass player; a clarinet/sax player who can play two saxophones at the same time; and a guy in a pirate hat who calls himself the 'future pirate' or something similar, who weilds a homemade guitar-shaped looking device, which is actually a drum machine.

There's no pretense of organisation here - Bela and the Flecktones don't play songs so much as 10 minute long solo opportunities. I heard a helluva lot of bass solos over the five days - some good, some bad - but the Flecktones' bassist was the best.

Ziggy Marley
I'd been looking forward to this all day. I'd seen Jr. Gong Marley at last year's Bluesfest, but Ziggy is probably the true heir to his father Bob's legacy. I was right up the front of the Crossroads stage, and the smaller tent worked well to get everyone on their feet and packed in tight. Marijuana smoke filled the air and put everyone in the right frame of mind as Ziggy came out and launched in to a few of his own songs. Over the course of the set he probably played about six or seven Bob Marley tunes, which was what the crowd was there to see. Fantastic stuff.


Miscellaneous Reviews
Langos - 9/10: Langos is hungarian fried bread, topped with garlic sauce, sour cream, goulash and cheese. Kind of like a pizza without meat. Reasonably priced and very filling, it's the ultimate festival food. I was walking up to random strangers and shouting 'get one of these!'

Byron Bay Mud - 6/10: It pretty much rained off and on for the five days, which meant the festival grounds got muddier and muddier each day. I didn't bring waterproof shoes, and was extremely worried about contracting trench foot. Byron Bay mud has a curious consistency, though. It's thick, and if your shoes get muddy and then have time to dry, the mud sets and actually serves as a waterproof coating. The mud loses points, though, because now I'm back home I can't get it off my shoes.

Jim Beam - 10/10: A drink for bogans, you say? Well... yes. But for some reason my time at the festival has converted me into a Jim Beam fan...

Byron Wrapup Pt 1

More astute readers will know that I've been at the Byron Bay Blues and Roots festival for the past week. It's a five day event that takes place a couple of hours south of Surfers Paridise, and has, in my opinion, consistently the best lineup of acts out of any Australian music event.

What follows is part one of an extensive (tedious??) recount (gloat??) of my experiences at the 'fest. For those of you with itchy feet, here's the three word summary: Best Goddamn Bluesfest Ever! Click on the pic below for an overview of the program. Acts I saw are highlighted in blue.



Day One: Thursday
Despite the fact that the opening acts weren't starting until fiveish, we got up early to play a round of golf at the Lismore Workers Club course. It's a lovely course, and it would have been a good chance to unwind in readiness for five days of peace and love, but I was not at the top of my game. As anyone who plays golf knows, this is a euphemism that means I walked around the course silently spewing white hot frustration, frequently stopping to whack the ball 20m into the next patch of rough.

Still, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and, to paraphrase Brad Pitt, at least no one was throwing my severed penis out of a moving car. After we handed in our clubs we had a pie and a couple of Tooheys Olds at the clubhouse. For some reason, Tooheys really does taste better on tap and in NSW.

After a powernap back at the country club at which we were staying (aka my uncle's boarding school) it was time to hit the road. I was keen to get to the fest by 4:00, since there was to be an unadvertised performance by Ben Kweller in the smallest of the four stages. We took the back roads into Byron to avoid the inevitable traffic jams, and got a park 10 mins walk from the site of the festival. We had arrived.

This is a smaller version of a very big stitched image (click to enlarge, though). If anyone really wants to see the huge version, I'll have to get a Picassa account or something. I haven't had time to photoshop the joins out yet.

Ben Kweller (solo)
By the time we'd gotten our wristbands on and scooted over to the APRA stage, BK's set had already started. There were bouncers at the entrance to the tent and a small line had formed. The evil Coke overlords control this stage - entry is permitted to the first 300 people who supply the Coke reps with a (usually fake) email address and mobile number. Apparently registration had finished and the tent had reached capacity. I hung around outside anyway, because the performance was being displayed on a big screen just above the entrance, albeit accompanied by the muffled sounds emerging from within.

Gradually, people started to leave the tent. I jumped into the line, and within minutes was transported into the dark bowels of the Coke marketing machine. As I passed down the metaphorical corporate esophagus, I was greeted by a smiling blond succubus, who offered me a choice: would I prefer a free Coke, or a free Coke Zero? Feeling somehow dirtied, I reached out for the Coke. If I was going to be forced to look refreshed for the cameras (which were recording the performance for a Coke Live 'n' Local show), I opted to do so with the product that didn't taste like liquid cardboard.

In any case, Ben Kweller was worth selling my soul for. He sang a few tunes off his latest album while playing guitar, then switched over to keyboard and did some of his older stuff. I think he had a bit of a cold, but no one seemed to mind. His style of music's really suited to intimate venues like the APRA stage. I'm sure he won over some new converts, proving that good can come of even a Coke marketing excercise.

After his set, Kweller answered a few questions, including one about whether the Bens (superband comprising BK, Ben Folds and Ben Lee) would ever re-form. BK said that that would definitely happen at some stage, although he didn't know exactly when, and that it could involve a whole album and a world tour! Sweet.

The Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars
These guys are always a great opening act for any festival. Everybody listening has fun, loses their inhibitions, and walks away ready to listen to more music. High energy stuff, with the bassist playing his guitar over his head for two whole songs, all the while swaying and grinning like a crazy man. Their sound is a mixture of Cuban influences and African beats. A happiness injection.

Ben Kweller
At 7:00, Ben was back with his band on the largest stage. The band worked well, and they tried to throw in a few blues undertones to the performance, but the large crowd weren't really up for some of BK's slower numbers with quirky lyrics. The sound levels weren't quite right, and at times it was hard to hear the vocals. Still, it was a special performance for me because I'm a long time fan, and haven't seen him do his stuff live since the Bens tour years ago.

John Mayer
The only John Mayer stuff I'd heard previously were his radio friendly pop tunes. I was skeptical, but my travelling companions assured me he'd be worth seeing. They were dead right. Mayer is a guitar god, and the crap that makes it onto the radio doesn't do him justice. I saw more awesome guitar solos than I could count over the course of the festival, but John Mayer still sticks out in my mind as a highlight.

Wolfmother
I really didn't know what to expect from a live Wolfmother performance, but hey, if you're at a festival and they're playing, you can't not see them, right? It seemed like everyone in the entire festival shared the same view and was crammed into the Mojo tent. Wolfmother didn't disappoint. I'm a convert, and if you can catch them live, I'd recommend it. For a band that's been touring for - what, about a year? - they put an amazing amount of energy into their show. The lead singer really has an amazing voice, and can bust out a pretty decent solo. They finished on 'The Joker and the Thief', and the crowd just went nuts. A kickarse end to our first day.

George is still soft

You all know it's true. But while we wait eagerly for his second post, we should steel ourselves for the months ahead.

I wouldn't disagree that Adelaide's a pretty sleepy town for the majority of the year. But every now and then, massive heavenly bodies align, planets composed entirely of culture. Their pull cannot be resisted; the only way to survive is to submit and hope you wake up in April with a slight headache and a considerable hole in your savings account.

These orbs of which I speak - The Adelaide Fringe, Womadelaide, The Adelaide Film Festival, ringed with moons - the Whitlams, Dan Kelly and the ASO - are gathering even as you read this. I've compiled the beginnings of a list -

Dan Kelly with Holly Throsby - 23 Feb

The Whitlams - 3 March

Rod Quantock - The John and Janette Howard Story - 8-18 March

Late Night comedy @ The Rhino Room - 8-31 March

Womadelaide - 11 March

Jazz at Fringe - 16 March

Tripod - 16-18 March

Ardal O'Hanlon (aka Father Dougal) - 27-31 March

Dylan Moran (aka Bernard Black) - 29 March

- and I haven't even had a chance to decipher the theatre section of the Fringe Guide yet.

For Julian:

I present my review of Heroes. It's a show that I really should like - all the elements are exactly where they should be - a winning formula by any assessment. And I think that's the problem.

After watching the first five episodes, I get the distinct impression that I'm being manipulated. Heroes comes across not so much as a hip, semi-cultish labour of love, but a precision strike at the heart of the 18-35 audience demographic. I have visions of a boardroom in California: old men sit around a table while a recent university graduate with a stylish but non-threatening haircut pitches the next sure-fire hit. "It'll be huge. We've done extensive testing. People want a show with a cheerleader, a stripper, and a couple of caricatured Japanese office workers. We'll chuck in a bit of quasi-philosophical tripe and some bad science, and get an Indian guy to narrate it. But don't worry: he won't be too Indian."

I'm going to stick with it for a few more eps, despite its tedious pacing and shameless product placement. It's lucky that advertising has no effect on me.

P.S: Did anyone else wake up today with a burning desire to buy a stylish new Nissan Versa?

Andrew's final thoughts: George, blog!!