Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Good Vibes 2011

In November, I saw an ad looking for volunteers to help set up, work during and take down equipment for a music festival. At first, I thought nothing of it and brushed it aside. Then come the new semester, I made new friends who had tickets and were going. So I signed up for the volunteer gig as every shift you volunteered for, they gave you a free ticket to the festival.

The workload was pretty laborous of setting up fences and wrapping this pink wallpaper type material around the fences. It was more or less to give it an aesthetic look to it but hey, 5 hours of work and free entrance to a $180 festival? Why not! However, since the festival was not doing as well in sales as they had hoped, they cut the ticket price in half and you were allowed to bring a friend. So I decided to take my good friend (and A Phi!) Erin.

The festival ran from 12:00pm-10:30pm but because you weren't allowed to leave once you came in, all of us decided not to head out until 3pm. So we got there at 4ish and was just in time for Erykah Badu's set. She was really good, very soulful and even did some crowd surfing!

Afterwards we grabbed a bite to eat and then headed to Mike Posner. I wasn't really too keen on seeing him as I only know of his one song ('Cooler than me') but Erin insisted. We met up with her friend Emma and jammed out to Posner for the rest of his set. Like I said, it was alright, but nothing special.

After Posner, grabbed some more food and headed to The Ting Tings. I didn't know too much about the band but they were really good. I knew of only two of their songs ('Let Me Go' and 'That's not my name') but they played many others that were quite catchy. Towards the end of their set, the sun started to go down but I was still rockin the stunna shades.

Once done, Erin was hungry again for pizza so while her and Emma grabbed some food, I headed over to Bag Raiders for a bit before ending up at Nas and Damian Marley. This was the last I saw of them that night. The crowd was pretty large, but mainly since they were playing in a smaller tent and not the main stage. After listening to a couple of tracks from DJ Samurai, the crew came out on stage and started doing their thing. This was the longest of the sets that day and the two alternated between doing combined songs from their album 'Distant Relatives' to Nas doing solos ('Hip hop is Dead' and 'Made You Look') to Damian Marley doing Bob Marley tributes. Good music as I look forward to getting their album as well as some others by Damian Marley himself.

After their set, I had lost my voice and was started to feel light headed so grabbed some more liquids and food before heading to Faithless. Faithless clearly had the largest crowd of the night and because it was night, the lighting effects were epic. Very good set by them and while I wanted to stick around and rave in my own presence, I headed to Ludacris to check him out.

Luda was also epic but also VERY packed. So I only stayed for a bit before heading back out. He was starting with a few tracks from 'Word of Mouf' and also had his hype man with him. Which makes sense as no one wants to be traveling around Australia for a three day concert by themselves.... (or do they? *ahem* Mike Posner...).

Caught a few more tracks by Faithless (including 'Insomnia) and then headed over to Sidney Samson to finish out my night. I also stumbled across Thomas and Max which was insane as it was extremely dark and we were in a crowd of about 3000 people. Before this semester, I had never heard of Sidney Samson or any of his music, so I had listened to a few tracks of his before the festival. His tracks are really good especially his Tupac dubbed track 'Riverside'.

Sidney finished around 11ish and we headed out and headed home. At this point my shorts were torn, I was dripping sweat and luckily only spent $30 the whole day (mainly food and liquids). My voice was absolutely gone and I was ready for bed when I got home. Which just meant it was an awesome festival! Next up is the Supafest festival up in Brisbane with Taio Cruz, Snoop Dogg, Timbaland, Ciara, Bow Wow, New Boyz and T-Pain. Yea buddy!

Cheers and 再见!

-H

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