Its Official

Im Pregnant!

or I've got hard gas. Either way its uncomfortable.



In more important news it's that time of year again where Splendour In The Grass makes it's first official announcement and people like me shake our heads.

NOT because Devo are top of the bill - I think they'll be fun and provided no one else is on I might even go and check them out if only for the nostalgia (when a problem comes along..) , and NOT at the lineup, theres a whole bunch of acts there that I would love to see like my current favourites PNAU plus The Presets, The Living End, The Fratellis (about fucking time), The Grates and many many more. Those acts alone get me moist.

Where I shake my head (here he goes again) is FIRST - at the price. $200 + a $9 booking fee straight off the bat. A price I would have believed justified HAD the planning for the new site gone through and the new facilities made available. But NO, it's still at Belongil fields - which is fine, a great place to hold the thing - but not worthy of incurring yet another price hike. Last year a 'green ticket' option was available for patrons who wished to offset their carbon emissions with a surcharge donation going to tree planting and such. Surely to raise the price might have to do with making EVERYONES ticket green as only 31% did so last year. Nope. Chuck an extra seven bucks on your bill if you'd like to participate this year (which I'm sure less people will).

Secondly, the ticketing system. Anyone who went, and thousands of people who didnt (and consequently left abusive messages on the Splendour myspace) will express disgust at how it all went down last year. The website crashed repeatedly and many who were lucky enough to even get to the ticket screen were thrown to the back of the queue. I sat there with a phone in hand, redialling with my feet whilst constantly refreshing for god knows how long. I got through eventually, on the phone. This year there will be no phone and the hopes and dreams of every Splendour attendee sit in the hands of QJump -

Qjump is a newly launched online ticketing company whose parent company has 7 years experience providing web based ticketing services. Qjump sells tickets for many leading Australian events and venues and its website and custom built hosting environment has been specifically designed to meet the high capacity on-sale demands of events like Splendour.

We'll see. If I dont get my ticket because the site goes down, heads will roll. I'll take this baby and jump off a bridge. All I can say after this rant is please Splendour, make me eat my words in some delicious yet environmentally friendly way that makes my crap smell nice.

Joining the aforementioned bands on the lineup are: Wolfmother, Sigur Ros (yawn), Tricky, Vampire Weekend, Ben Lee, Cold War Kids, The Wombats, Laura Marling (who?), The Vines, Operator Please (ffs), Van She, The Panics, Gyroscope, MSTRKRFT, Lightspeed Champion, The Brown Birds From Windy Hill, Scribe, The Music and The Gin Club.

See? Its not too bad!

Oh, and the worst band on earth - Band of Horses (but you dont have to watch them)