Splendid fun in the Sun. The SUN!

Patience has some 'words' with a punter

That’s right we’re back from another delicious year of Splendour in the Grass. My awesome red pants are now a lovely shade of brown, and when I do up my shoe laces great plumes of dust erupt into the air. Memories of another awesomely dirty and sweaty festival. Sweaty because the sun was out! For the whole freaking festival! Something that's almost unheard of at Splendour. No mud, just shitloads of dust.

Was the cost of the ticket worth the three days of festivities, mid strength alcohol and exorbitant food prices? I didn’t pay for my ticket, so I’d say absolutely! I also had access to full strength alcohol for almost the same price as mid strength, so I was pretty happy with the outcome. However, I still ended up spending the same amount I would have spent on a ticket, on food, alcohol and other random junk (like the organic donuts. They are the most orgasmic pieces of organic deliciousness that could enter your mouth, and I would kill for another one. Kill. Blackberry Jam donut. Wow. It’s like there’s a party in my mouth... and everyone’s eating donuts).

Not the same store, but definitely the same delicious donuts

Even without forking out for the ticket, Splendour is a massive drain on the finances. With all the camping gear you need to get, plus food and drinks for the weekend, the little ‘extras’ such as merchandise, you can quickly burn through that cash in the pocket. Alcohol can’t be brought in either, so if you want to drink you’re at the mercy of the festival prices which, as you can imagine, are fair and equitable. Of course, you could just forego the purchase of alcoholic beverages for the weekend and save yourself a bucket load of money, but that would just be weird.

In the end though, with all the bands you see and the quality of music that was played, the cost is quickly forgotten. As soon as you enter the festival grounds and are hit by those persistent beats following you throughout the festival grounds, money is quickly forgotten and the excitement of the day quickly kicks in. Consumerism at its best.

No alcohol for this guy. Just lots and lots of drugs ( just to specify, the one on the right.)

There were some grumbles from people about a relatively weak line-up following the announcements, but I found myself a few previously unheard of musical gems through my wanderings that I never would have considered checking out from just looking at the list.

So, some highlights for me? Well Javid has pretty much spelled out my feelings on the Kanye show as well, so there’s no need to go any further on that. But there were quite a few standout moments for me over the weekend. There’ll be some videos up shortly of our Splendour experience, but there were two rocking bands that you must check out now. Right now.

Javid and I stumbled across US blues band, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears while we were waiting for Gotye to start at the G W McClennan tent on Friday evening. 

This is pure blues music, almost unheard of in this age of pop music and ghetto blasters.

They caught the crowd by surprise with their high octane, gritty blues tunes. It had all the right ingredients: fantastic solos, dirty guitar, trumpets and tenor saxophones, and a singer who evidently has a love of the early blues pioneers such as Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. For the last quarter of their show, Joe Lewis introduced The Relatives onto the stage, a quintet of funky gospel singers from Texas all dressed in bright blue suits and yellow shirts. My God, these guys can sing. The crowd was already bouncing, but when these 5 men came onto stage and started singing their angelic harmonies to some beautifully gritty blues music, well that was enough to send everyone over the edge. By far this was one of the most surprising and entertaining acts of the festival, mainly because the energy and excitement was so high for the whole act. And the guy on sax was bouncing around on stage like Tigger on cocaine. It was quite a sight to watch. The fact he managed to keep it up for the duration of the set was quite a feat.

The other piece of musical deliciousness I stumbled across while walking past the Mix Up Tent was Fitz and the Tantrums, a six piece soul indie pop band also from the US. Their demands that people enjoy themselves were not particularly hard to accomplish considering how much fun the crowd was already having. With no guitar, a black guy on the tenor sax and 2 singers, one being singer/songwriter Noelle Scaggs, the soul just pours from the stage. Having never heard any of their studio produced material, I can still safely say this is a band you must see live. I’m sure their music would be outrageously funky on the CD, but to get amongst the sound and bounce around with hundreds of other excitable punters is where it’s at. They have a similar idea to Jack White and The Saboteurs by taking the fundamentals of blues and soul music, and adding modern pop techniques to create some 3 or 4 minute catchy little diddy’s. But naturally, without a guitar, and the addition of the sax, there's a whole new area of the music explored, and my God do they do it well.

There’ll be plenty more video reviews coming over the next week or so on all the bands we checked out over Splendour. Naturally all our favourites were fantastic. Patience from The Grates went absolutely crazy on stage, bouncing even more than usual and bantering quite a bit with individual members of the crowd before jumping in and crowd surfing for a few minutes. I’m sure there would have been a significant amount of ass and boob grabbing.

Pnau packed out the Mix Up tent and played a huge mix of old and new. While I still don't understand the point of the accoustic guitar, because you cannot hear it at all, they still put on an amazing show in typical Pnau style.

The Living End, as always, played a blistering show with all the biggest hits in there. There was plenty of stuff from the first album to keep the fans happy. And no beer swigging, VB, guitar sliding this time. Just Owen presenting his Double bass so Cheney could run up and bust out a solo from the top of it. I enjoyed it.

So to sum up, there’s not much that can be said against Splendour. The sound everywhere (minus Kanye with his music so loud it could almost induce brain haemorrhaging) was perfect and all the bands extremely tight. Sure the prices are exorbitant and the initial ticket price was massive, but these are things generally to be expected. It’s a massive weekend and requires a fair amount of saving up if you really want to get loose and spend without a care in the world. I have no idea how much it costs to run a festival so I don’t really want to comment on the cost of everything. No doubt the prices are a bit over the top, but as to how over the top they are in order to make a profit and run a festival with as much success as Splendour, requires a bit of investigation.

One certainty though is that Splendour is by far one of the best Australian festivals to attend. The flag waving red neck wankers are few and far between, and you are blessed by an absolute lack of talentless brain dead musicians, which are common place at other festivals like Future and Parklife.

Kanye wasn't really that popular anyway...

So you know now that next year’s Splendour will most likely be significant in cost. Prepare for it. Start saving soon. It’s a festival well worth attending… if you can afford it.