sadly my big week out is over. quite sadly actually. now that it is february it feels like it is the beginning of the end of my time in melbourne. this past week its been fantastic meeting up with quite a few people i havent seen for months, those in town for a short time and those who are just busy. the people, the shows, the sunny days in beer gardens and the relaxed atmosphere.. thats summer.

a few friends from sydney flew in and trained in on saturday/ sunday last weekend. i met up with steph and ryan for coffee in the morning, it was probably their 20th coffee that morning and we hung out until emma and stu came and met us. with all the rearranging or where we were all going to go that afternoon steph left ryan in our care for a few hours so she could do get her stuff done. we dropped off emma and stu's stuff at my house sat for a bit then started to walking the direction of fed square to pick up gaby. on the way downstairs i get a message from jason asking what time we are heading to the show. my reply was something like: beer garden, right now, pick you up on the way. by pick you up im sure i insinuated involvement of a car and not walking but oh well. we got jason on the way to fed square and then found gaby.. group growing every stop.. got on a tram after decided that the 16 definitely went that far down st kilda road so it was a safe route to take. arriving at the belgian bier cafe we were about 45 minutes later than the intended meet up time, so megan had been waiting for a little while. steph arrived a while later and so did aaron, who hadnt been sure if he would make it or not. i didnt realize that only steph and i had met him before, so he was putting faces to crazy. then the drinking shenanigans began. megan has a good pic of ryan reaching for beer among about 20 empties sitting there, captioned: MOAR. that was the afternoon. at one point gaby and i went to get chips. seeing that there was three sauces we decided on one tomato, one mayonaise, and one hot sauce. we are smart cause it was a good choice and we devoured the chips. gaby's other half dropped by for a while before they headed off to their evening activity. aaron had to go too and watch fireworks in the g-rat on sunday night. melbourne had their fireworks on saturday night.

i was starting to feel not so good with the amount of beer consumed and wanted a break for a while. i decided to go home because i needed to change my shoes anyways, and met everyone else at that prince. it was going to be emma, stu, steph, jason and i that went to the show. megan waited with ryan in the bar downstairs playing pool or something for 3 hours. i cant imagine the patience she has with tired ryan who hadnt slept the night before. anyhow, i get into the prince and there are 50 or 60 people in the room, the people i know at front and center. apparently when they got there jason gravitated towards cam and tish who had been waiting for a while. that ended up being a waste of time on their part since some bogan asshole pushed them out the way when UNKLE came on. the new drink of choice began: vodka and red bull. im so loving red bull even though i know how bad it is to drink and mixing it with alcohol is even worse.. damn knowledge of the adrenergic system. funny thing is i never drank a single red bull until a couple of months ago.. when i bought a round i was shocked they were $13 each. hello, rip off.

i already posted about this show and it was fantastic. i didnt mention how the people who obviously got in free (read: photographers) were fucking annoying as, some stupid girl decides she is going to push me out the way then stick her camera in front of my face. until she moved i made it next to impossible for her to take a clear shot. asshole. perhaps when one doesnt have to pay $65 to get in the door they can show more respect for the people that do. all you need if one good photo to get paid from whoever you are taking pics for.

after the show we waited way too long to get a cab home. we split up and finding two taxis proved to be a challenge. fitzroy street was swarmed at that time of night and more people were leaving bars than i would have expected at 12:30. we finally did get a taxi and got dropped off at the mcdonalds at swanson and lonsdale. realizing that none of us had eaten dinne, we very much in need for food at that time, mcdonalds was going to have to do. the UNKLE show day shall now forever be known as the day i went to mcdonalds in australia.

big day out was monday. we left much later than anticiapted to get there. i forgot to eat dinner that day too. i guess i was too concerned about seeing bands. tuesday was the nightwatchmen, i posted about this already too. i was less than impressed when my friends basically walked outside saw a cab and jumped in. they didnt even ask how i was getting home. thanks! wednesday was going to be arcade fire, then it was going to be rage, then it was nothing because i sold my ticket to arcade fire then decided that rage were way too boring at BDO and i wasnt wasting another $110 to see them play something i can hear on a cd.

thursday i did get to LCD soundsystem. gaby decided not to go so i got her ticket. that worked out well since i couldnt find anything online. not a single ticket was even on ebay. steph came over after work and we had drinks at my place. i managed to be a complete minimalist that night and not take a purse. i used to be able to go out all the time with i.d., keys, money and my phone. and that is what i did on thursday, yay me. id drunk enough that i had to use the toilets three times before LCD came on. that worked out ok too, on the route back to the floor after the last trip i followed some other girl who was going back to her spot and we were only 4-5 people back from the stage. that show was really good too. good crowd, lots of dancing and happy people not pushing each other out of raging anger. it would have been good for the set to be longer, i always feel like that when it is an enjoyable show.

friday was more meet, part 2. the idea was pizza and beer, or beer and pizza. steph found out that marrakech has $0.99 coronas from 5-7 and the aim was to get there. jason and i got there at 6:30 and there was massive line outside to get in. we texted some more and further rearranged what to do. in the mean time megan and chris showed with one of their friends. chris and friend would prove to be entertainment for the rest of the night. steph left the bar because it was ridiculously packed inside and cheap beer was almost over. the decision was made to go to st jerome's. score. it was not packed at all and we walked right in. coopers long necks were in order. gaby met us there, which was good since the plan to meet for pizza at 7:30 was not going to happen until much later. during beer drinking we had some good reminising about shows and tour moments. fun and silly.

pizza eating was to be at pizza-a-metro, my pick, and i was surprised no one else had been there. the seven of us had 1.7 meters of pizza, none left over. so good. the varieties we ordered were salvatore, vego, special and aussie. (this was written for the purpose of the former regulars ;-) ) and house red wine and beer. i think everyone agreed that it was pretty excellent food.

megan, chris and friend headed off to a show in chapel street after pizza and the rest of us took a walk down lygon street. end point: il dolce freddo. gelato goodness. i told the server to give jason a sample of durian since he had never had it before, 3 hours later he was telling me he could still taste it after eating chocolate ice cream. i had some pandan and coconut gelato, highly recommended.

we hung out for a bit eating on the street, then hung out for a bit at my place before gaby and steph headed home. jason stayed at mine and left this morning at 5am to catch his flight to perth. i went back to sleep after he left and have been having the laziest day yet this year. sadly the excitment is over and i have to concentrate more of work without the benefit of having good nights to look forward to. not sure if i will be around next australia day holiday week to hang out in melbourne some more.. time will tell.

oh and for tomorrow, happy yield day! 10 years, wow.

im so sick. this morning woke up, got out of bed then began to hack up a lung. its so much worse than the last three days.. and ive been sicks all weekend. meh.

the big day out was less then impressive. no suprises there. it was possibly at the worse possible venue they could have held it. zero shade, paved parking lots, and dirty dusty ground. the dirty dusty ground got into my lungs and made me sicker and sicker. it was horrible to watch the dirt blow around in the dark.

getting to and from flemmington wasnt that bad. but, it could have been better organized. they did run the trains, i assume, until they got people out of there. not only until 11:15p as was advertised. we got on a train around 11:25p.

last night i went to see tom morello's the nightwatchmen. it was exponentially better than anything ive seen him perform in before. one dude and one acoustic guitar. actually there were two guitars, one as back up for when he broke a string. the man likes to talk, and he he did. it was interesting and random and since everyone there was at some point in time a rage fan that was cool. the crowd was 95% male and some of what he was saying was directed at males. if anyone ever runs into him in the street, ask him where chris cornell is. answer: "at the hotel thinking of ways to break up the band" ha. he did a modified lyrical version of dirty deeds and guerilla radio acoustic. that was only non nightwatchmen stuff. he did a few songs that are to be released on the next album too. towards the end of the show he talked quite in length about the video shoot for sleep now in the fire, which was directed by michael moore. i remember hearing about this at the time, in short michael told everyone to keep playing no matter what and that was the first time that michael was arrested. he was laughing when he said it was the first time the new york stock exchange had to shut their riot doors in the middle of the trading day.

rage at BDO was boring. note for note album versions of songs. and the bogans loved it all. angry testosterone fueled idiots, who were completely uninterested in the messages of the songs and just wanted to push each other and scream and climb on structures and break stuff. the lackluster performance made me decide not to go to the show tonight, because i could spend $110 on a lot better things and take a nap. the option to listen to the cd for the same effect is there too.

ISO: 1x ticket to LCD soundsystem. pls.

its very strange how my camera audio for the 30 second clip i have from carl cox's set sounds remarkably good. the picture is shit because at that point i couldnt hold the camera very still. all the other clips i have from yesterday are steady.

the big day out once again was a let down. why did i go? fuck, i dont know. it was supposed to be a day of hanging out with friends. i think thats why i intended on going. much of the day was spent sending text asking where people were or telling them where i was. pretty shitty.

i saw two bands set in their entirety. UNKLE and rage against the machine. i will go off the the negative first.

RATM were crap. their set was boring and mundanely average. for songs that are all at least 9 years old they should be able to do something with them other than play note for note from the albums. considering all the hype that it surrounding this band being back together (ok, seriously who needed the money?) it was such a let down. the only song with a tiny bit of variation was sleep now in the fire, which had vocal changes because it seemed that zach couldnt sing it the way it was recorded. can get those high notes anymore. oh, and one lyrical change in killing in the name to "some of those that burn crosses are the same that hold office."
the crowd of course was apeshit. people climbing trees because the way the festival is set up is so that one cannot see at all if they are not inside the inner fencing, there was way too many people there to start with. the most entertaining part of the set for me was the encore break when some sort of organizer came out of stage and told everyone on the structures to get he fuck down. in my area people started to yell "youre a wanker" and "chop it down" to the idiots in the tree.

before RATM and during bjork's set i went to find dawn and siblings. i had finally found them during grinspoon and they had a spot on the outside barrier behind the blue stage. trying to get back there was a challenge as there were a lot of fucktard in the crowd at that time who told me there was "no space" to get through. go fuck yourself asshole. if you think there is no space now wait for an hour until the band comes on. 3 or 4 songs in dawn and av were pulled out and i was on the barrier. i didnt see them for the rest of the night. testosterone fuled angry males need to get hit by a truck and DIE are stupid and the pushing was quite unbelievable. security was prepared and did a really good job of getting about 30% of the crowd from behind the barrier out and 20% of the crowd from inside the D barrier. yes they were leaving from the front of the stage going backwards. people that naive to think that they are going to stand in the crowd that is going apeshit and not going to get pulled down with it need to analyze why they stood in front of that stage for 7 hours. if you cant run with the big dogs stay on the porch. the entrance to the D barrier was closed by 4pm. oncei got on the barrier the crowd didnt seem as bad and people started to apologise for elbowing me. yah, the same people who 3 songs ealier had tunnel vision to push me out the way. some people are such dicks. i couldnt be bothered to move during the set and i could see so i stayed until the end. if i had left i would have missed the bogun up a tree bit and that was quite good.

when the raging destruction was done i ran back to the boiler room, where retrospectively i should have stayed the whole time, to catch the last 45 minutes of carl cox. coxy was excellent, as always, and put me back in a good mood. the crowd there were in an ecstaticly good mood, which was a welcome change. his set was great, people singing the music, at times, and he did a little bit of talking. i found out when i got home that he had a side show on sunday night too, at billboard which is about 100 meters from my house. rumor has it cox owns a house in melbourne and spends half his time here during the year, (i think half is pushing it) hence why he plays 2-3 shows a year in melbourne. being in the boiler room made me miss going to the guvernment, and all the fun stuff that happen before, during, and after going there.
carl cox is an interesting dj to watch. he moves. and for a man that size its more of an effort to dance around for hours than some skinny dude. anyways, dancing, clapping, pointing, whatever, he looks like he is having fun. much better than watching someone go through the motions.

the other performance i watched in its entirety was UNKLE. once again awesome. despite playing vocal tracks of singers who were not there, they managed to make every song sound different from the recorded version. hold my hand was fantastic. james lavelle could give carl cox a run for his money in terms of dj's who move. james was all over the place.. "this is the cool part coming up, watch me jump" without actually saying it. and he's a dj who sings. sings well. thats pretty cool in itself. from the best of my recollection the set was nearly the same at sunday night at the prince, about half war stories. im crap at remembering songs after the fact. intro-->chemistry opened. they didnt do rabbit in your headlights and something else in the middle was cut out.

the performance had lighting screens throughout and lasers during eye for an eye, which the side show did not. some guy beside me during restless said to his friend "thats josh holmes". only a few tracks didnt have a live vocalists. the guy who comes out to sing, i dont know what his name is, but he's like the mark lanegan of UNKLE. anyways, him, he reminds me of someone else but i cant pin point who.
a few minutes before the set time the smoke machines at the side of the stage that were pointed at the crowd were rotated to fill up the stage with smoke. for most of the show the band was hiding behind the smokey clouds and backlit. it was really smokey too, better to see the lasers during one song with. they must love photographers.

in the future i do hope i recall how much i hate festivals. i hate mosh pits and i hate 40,000 people sharing my area. if i do get amnesia or something and stupidly go to another festival, i will be spending all of my time in the dance tent. the boiler room at the big day out trumphed the main stages by a long ways.