Splendour In the Grass Part 1

Whiteboydancefloor's in the trenches sideline eye Dayve gives us the entrauling low down on what was Splendour in the Grass 2006. In a whiteboydancefloor EXCLUSIVE you'll hear first hand what it is to be enthraulled in this festival still only in its infant stages. Enjoy this two part thriller during this comming weekend.

Move over Pitchfork Festival. (no im not jealous, YOUR jealous)

DAY 1

We arrived in Byron Bay on the 22nd filled with enough excitement to be classed as a weapon. It had been raining considerably the night before but the sun had come out and spirits were high. You can imagine locals not particularly liking this time of year because the place was packed. People were everywhere buying supplies and a lot of them were going for gumboots. We probably should have taken that as a sign of things to come but we didn’t, we were just happy to be there.

The drive to the Belongil fields from town wasn’t a long one, but with the traffic and the fact that they had to sort all these cars out, it took a while. We got ourselves a parking spot that had us 300m away from the festival, according to the signs. We walk along nice and easily and just before we get to the main tunnel that’s about 150m away, we see the line. Its large(“this queue is almost long enough to be an R!”). So we head to the back of it and start to discover why people were getting gumboots – THE MUD. There was a lot of it and people had been telling us about it but oh well. It ultimately became another fun part of the splendour experience.

Finally we entered the gates and there we were, Splendour. Our first objective was to get beer, and we completed it nicely. But considering we’d been there a while now we’d been spending an awfully long time in queues (long enough to be an R!). We didn’t have a program which didn’t really help the organization of the day, and when we found someone selling them for FIVE BUCKS it was an incentive to speak to random people to find out what the hell was going on. Not much was planned for day one in terms of acts but I did want to catch the Grates and DJ Shadow. Neither of whom was on for a few hours, so we walked around and just watched the general goings on. The place is massive, probably more walking involved than BDO but theres more going on. I went and had my buttocks cleansed of sin at the Church of Two Hands and a Chicken. Also caught some half-sets from bands like Youth Group and Death Cab For Cutie. Neither of whom im particularly into but who both sounded alright as I walked on by. Time crept along and it was finally time to see the Grates. They hit the stage and opened with ‘Howl’ to get the crowd going (I think. You do have to, of course take into account certain influences I may have been under at the time – a few) and this Brisbane trio just didn’t stop. A warm crowd sang along to everything. A particular set highlight was a massive net full of brightly coloured balloons letting go during 19 20 20 which just added to the joy of the occasion. Eventually ‘Lies are much more fun’ came around it was over, but a solid set and very impressive. Wasn’t quite sure what to expect from a 3 piece with no bass player but they pulled it off well and I’ll definitely be going to see them again at some stage.

Then it was back to the general meandering of the day. There are more than just the main stages at this place. We saw performances on the side stages, in the sky, in the back of a station wagon and everywhere else in between. Its not just about the bands, the vibe and the atmosphere take control and you’re in another place. Separated from the world. I could go into writing another little essay on drug culture, which was more evident at splendour than any other festival I’ve been to but this is probably gunna be long enough already.

Time came for the first day to close, but not before seeing DJ Shadow, who came to be a sensational visual highlight of the weekend. I’m not that familiar with his new material, and I’ve heard that it sucks. I was only there to see and hear the songs off his revolutionary ‘endtroducing’ album and he played a fair few of them. To explain how the performance looked, lets look at your monitor. Imagine if your monitor was broken down into a whole bunch of smaller ones, some of them joining together to make images, some of them just smaller ones. And they’re all playing bright, vivid visualizations and videos that are interesting individually but then all make up a bigger picture too. And now imagine that just below the middle of your monitor is this platform with a DJ standing in the middle of it. He wasn’t even on the stage. We missed the first song but as he dropped into ‘The Number Song’ the place went off and kept going that way. About halfway through some rapper came out to do, obviously, some of the new stuff and I must say I wasn’t really paying attention to him, though it did get to a stage where his hoppity-boppity speakings made you wish he’d shut up so you could listen to the fat beats. The set closed with a disappointingly not-as-epic-as-on-the-CD version of ‘Long Stem’ that still satisfied. Due to the thing I wasn’t going to go into, we spent the rest of the night in the Tipi Forest listening to the random DJ’s and seeing some ultra-weird shit until they kicked us out at 2am.

Time to go get some sleep, and get ready to do it all over again…

That wet your appetite? Stay tuned as we feature Dayve's Part 2 / Day 2 in our Splendour in the Grass Special on Monday!!!

http://www.splendourinthegrass.com.au/