Parklife 2006

First of all, apologies for the poor formatting in this blog. I have no idea why Blogger has decided to wrap text where it shouldn't but I can't be arsed to recreate the blog again and no-one will really care anyway. It's taken me more than enough time putting it together as it is. So, enjoy.....

Last weekend was a long weekend in New South Wales (Monday was Labour Day, whatever that means) and H and I had an absolute winner. After the excellent Hard-Fi gig on Friday we headed back to Manly for the night before heading to Bondi on Saturday. It was a big day for Will as he was moving there from the City and we’d planned to spend the weekend there as well.

This is the view from his balcony. Vans used to live there and we had a few "Where's Vans?" moments.....

Whilst he unpacked I sat on my arse and watched the AFL final between the West Coast Eagles and the Swans. If was a fantastic game, won by the Eagles by 1 point. I watched the final quarter with James, Wills flatmate, in the unbelievably busy Beach Road Hotel.

Anyway, Saturday was the calm before the storm and we enjoyed a nice night out with our Bondi chums in Bondi. Sunday was the big one though.

PARKLIFE had arrived. H and I had heard so much about it, and as veterans of the UK festival scene (Glastonbury, Essential and Ashton Court for me and many many more for H) we were really excited to see what all the fuss was about and how different it would be, if at all, to thousands of ravers dancing in a field in the UK.

The gig was held around Kippax Lake in Moore Park, which is next to Aussie Stadium and the SCG. It was a beautiful setting, on a nice sunny day. I was really looking forward to seeing the Stanton Warriors and Krafty Kuts, and they didn’t disappoint (check out my very own videos of the Krafty Kuts set here and here). But for me, the highlights were Coldcut (amazing sound and visuals) and Mixmaster Mike, the Beastie Boys DJ, who scratched and mixed his way through the big anthems the crowd loved to hear. Peter Hook was excellent value for money as well. For someone who was at the forefront of the dance movement as we know it, he was still going strong years later. He’s a bit like Shaun Ryder but he can still speak

I guess the main difference when compared to a UK gig was that everyone looked like they had just stepped off the beach. Shorts and flip-flops were the go. And everyone looked like they were used to the sunshine. I didn’t see any sunburn at all. Mind you, it wasn’t that hot, maybe 23-24 degrees. Although we had just hit the second month of Spring, Parklife, for many people, is the unofficial start of a 6 month summer season.

Here's some more pictures of the festival (and the people).

As is always the case at these things, a lot of time is spent on the phone texting everyone. My sent messages folder on Monday told me I'd sent things like "At mixxy mike, right of stage, 20yds back from fuzzy banner on metal walkway", "2 the right, 30 yds from fuzzy sign, on metal. Make the mission, we are all here", "We r at the front in front of f" and "Who r u?". They all did the job, eventually.

Being at an event like Parklife brought back so many festival memories, mainly of Ashton Court which H and I used to go to with most of our Bristol chums, year in, year out (how I was craving an overpriced ice-cold can of the mighty Thorn (instead of overpriced can of Heineken)).

You were all missed, but a lucky few will be able to sample the ozzie festival experience on New Years Day. H and I have sorted out tickets for the Field Day festival in the Domain (which is part of the Royal Botanical Gardens) which is promoted by the same people as Parklife. Tickets for this sold out in 24 hours or so and given the success of Parklife, I think we have definitely made the right choice (I’m pretty sure that Mike, Ella, Mark, Kim and the Wichards won’t be disappointed – we had to make the decision for them given the urgency required to score tickets, the 12k miles separating us and the 9 hour time difference). It’s going to be a lot hotter than Parklife though - this year it was 46 degrees on NYD.

Post festival, dirty minging feet.....

We stayed in Bondi after the festival and enjoyed a lazy day on Monday in recovery on the beach. Being able to go for a dip in the ocean certainly helped the recovery process! Three weekends ago there were three six-foot sharks 50m off the beach at Bondi which had to be scared off with a helicopter and lifeguards on jet skis. Luckily that wasn’t the case this time around.