The Future Ain't That Bright

First thing's first. Intelligence prevailed and Cameron didn't win best director or best picture for his plagiarized story of Pocahontas - sorry, Avatar. Looks like it was... Unobtainable, to state the freaking obvious. Which is an ability that Cameron seems to be uncannily good at (except without any wit or class).

But, enough of that as I'm here to talk about my experience into the Future - which is now in the past - as on Saturday about 2 weeks ago I made my way to the Future Music Festival at Randwick Racecourse.

We made our way in there at about 3 pm, mainly because I had no idea of any of the 'bands' (I use that term loosely) that were playing until Franz Ferdinand were due to go on at about 6.
Entrance was nice - we had VIP access so didn't have to queue. There was also a massive presence of cops but a distinct lack of sniffer dogs, which was surprising for a festival in the Inner City, based on past experience.

This festival is obviously targeted to a slightly different demographic of people then say, me, but I could not get over the difference in punters compared to festivals such as Big Day Out or Splendour. As soon as we entered the festival grounds we were greeted (very grudgingly) by a marauding band of shirtless muscles.

I know it's pretty much a standard sight at BDO, with the exception of the flag draped around the neck. But the benefit of the BDO is the douche bags are usually confined to the Boiler Room, with only a small number of them spilling into the rest of the grounds, forcing people to kiss their flag.

If this truly is the future of music, then God help humanity. Maybe it's just the sounds of the iGen and I'm still stuck in the Gen Y era. But i think The Simpsons got it right when Abe said 'I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me... and the same thing is going to happen to you!' Ok so it wasn't so much scary, more annoying seeing dickheads barging their way through people, being overtly and unnecessarily loud and tough. But I definitely wasn't feeling with 'it.'

Every tent I walked past sounded like someone was playing backing music or top 40 shit, which made me feel like we were in a glorified, outdoor Penrith Panthers.


Obviously it takes a certain amount of skill to be a dj, but in my opinion if I want to be entertained and watch something amazing, I'm not going to watch a dj sit behind a desk for his entire set, pushing a few buttons. Unless of course I have so many drugs that i can taste the music. By that time I'd be on an entirely different planet and EVERYTHING becomes awesome.

Unfortunately for me though, I was relatively sober and therefore bored*. Until Franz Ferdinand came on and actually moved on stage, and played their own live music.
These guys were full of energy and busted out on the synth. Half way through the set the roadies brought out basically a whole new kit and set it up at the front of the stage. All the band members then came out and started bashing out these awesome drum beats. I've seen that kind of thing done plenty of times before, but Franz definitely added another twist to the set-up by playing an entire drum kit and not just the djembe's that are the more common sight.

But this is where my main grumbles started. I was right in the D-barrier for Franz and about 40 minutes through, all the muscle punters started yelling out for David Guetta. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of dickheads who have their shirts on, but the general rule, which seems to be quite consistent, is: If you have your shirt off and two beers in your hand, stumbling all over the place, then you're probably a bit of a wanker.
These were the guys chanting to put Guetta on. I mean, I think Guetta is absolute dogs balls but I'm not gonna yell it out to the guy who came all the way over from France to play. I'm just gonna write about it later.

I'd never really heard the guy before but knew he was a dj. So I thought I'd give him the benefit of the doubt though and stand through his set until Prodigy came on.
The second Guetta came on the crowd surged forward and the sways started. I have never been surrounded by so many sweaty drunk males in my life, yelling out what I can only assume are words.

Clearly I have a difference in musical tastes to the people seeing him. But I don't understand the almost Michael Jackson style reception the girls were giving him. He fucking stood there for the whole set playing his songs. He could've just been pressing 'next' on his cd player for all I knew. It was boring as all hell. And he kept playing remixes (which sounded almost identical to the orginials) of all these top 40 style songs I've heard a hundred times over the past 10 years.
And to make the boredom worse, for some reason they gave him almost a 2 hour set! WTF?! Can't argue with the crowd I guess. I'll sure complain about it though!

By the time we got an hour through my bladder was reaching exploding point and the constant swaying was not working for me. So I had to leave. After about 15 minutes of getting through the crowd we ended up at what appeared to be the exit from the D barrier. But alas, there was no exit. That's right, in their infinite wisdom they decided that anyone wanting to leave the D barrier would need to climb over the fence and into the other 20 000 people crammed on the side. Planning at it's best.

The rest of the night was then over fairly quickly. Prodigy came on and played an absolute kick arse set. About half way through their set the lights all died and one of the staff came out to apologize to the crowd for the problem to a chorus of loud boos and bottles aiming, no doubt, for his head.



When it was decided that the show must go on, Prodigy came out and played an entire song in the dark before the lights suddenly burst back on and the amazing stage show continued. Prodigy obviously play a lot of electronic stuff too, but at least they're freaking interesting and have some real instruments and drums on stage.

Maybe I'm just a square and don't understand all this new-fangle music kids listen to these days. But if I wanted to listen to the vast majority of bands at Future I would have just had a party at home and bought some Ministry of Sound cd's. It would've saved me 125 bucks ($180 for VIP tickets - which gets you a drink line that only takes 20 minutes to wait in. Well worth it...) and I'd be able to skip the tracks for anything that bores the shit out of me.

Clearly BDO understand how to make a music festival. Future seemed very ad-hoc and the setup was ridiculous. The festival grounds were split into 2 parts with a narrow thoroughfare in between the 2 areas that takes 10 minutes to walk through alone.

Making money was the clear objective of this festival, with the setup and bands coming in second. And the stories I've heard from Soundwave Festival makes it perfectly clear that experience really does make a difference when it comes to music festivals.



I enjoyed the day more or less, but it has absolutely nothing on the other more prominent fixtures, BDO and Splendour. And for anyone that thinks David Guetta is absolutely so, like, amazingly like cool and stuff. Please don't talk to me. EVER. I'm sure you will just annoy me. I don't have anything against DJ's and i know clearly have talent. But I don't wanna stand watching a guy press buttons for 2 hours. I wasn't even slightly drugged up enough for it to be anything but tedious.

*Experiences may have varied based on the intake and type of drug(s) consumed. Meatheadedness may also play a part.