As I said on my last post, I was looking forward to flying back to work/reality/normality/routine yesterday morning. I don’t think I have been this happy to get up at 4.30am to go to work for awhile, well thats what I was thinking until I hopped off the plane at Woodie to 46 degrees and humidity. 

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have 3 weeks off over christmas.  Mandy’s sister was over from the US firing on all 8 cylinders.  It has been one non-stop party, as we all do in this festive season.  

Music festivals. The Music festival binge started on New Years eve, with ‘Origin’ a Hip Hop/Drum’n’Bass festival in Perth that featured such big names as Public Enemy, Pendulum etc.

Then New Years Day was spent feasting on some good ‘ol’ Aotearoa (for the international readers Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand, meaning ‘land of the long white cloud’) music, Fat Freddies Drop was the dish of the day.  But before going there, we all met up for a New Years Day feast at Little Creatures Brewery in Fremantle, its gold.  Then it was onto a mates place who lives around the corner from where Fat Freddies was playing. 

Fat Freddies was super duper, blue skies greeted the NZ population of Perth, of which there is an abundance.  The gig was a melting pop of Maori designed tattooed, half naked kiwis rocking out to the unique sound of chilled out kiwi music.

Then the following morning after 5 hours sleep the alarm went beep beep at 6.30am signalling it was time to rise again to do it all over again for a 3rd time, but this time for 2 days.  Myself, Mandy and Crystal (Mandy’s sister), absently mindfully packed the car, and headed 4 hours south to Busselton for the SouthBound music festival with 4 other good mates. 

SouthBound was hosting a wide smorgasbord of music genres, with bands such as, The Hives, The Kooks, Donaven Frankenreiter, The Cat Empire, South Rakkas crew, Atmosphere & Brother Ali.

For me the best gigs came from the up and coming or unknown performers from whom you expected nothing, the ones you had no expectations of, the likes of Soko, a young 22 year old French girl who was first recognised on MySpace. She was so sweet and innocent, but with some pretty crazy lyrics, eg, “in my wet dreams I suck your dick like a whore”, and then another song when she sings “I’ll kill her” as she sings about a girl that that her ex-boyfriend cheated on. The above lyrics may seem quite extreme, but if you saw this tiny little girl on stage who was crying while singing her songs, who was so overwhelmed and excited at playing at her first music festival, you also would of been drawn to her. I remember her excitingly looking behind her at the big screen with her face on it, and exclaiming in her quietly spoken french accented englsih “oh my god, hahaha, I never seen my face in big”, as she put her hand up to her mouth to hide her embarrassment. Her youthfulness and nonMTV lyrics were refreshing like a fresh fruit salad after a morning dip in the ocean. 

The other powerfully energetic performance that we randomly stumbled accross was Sharon Jones, a big buxomness Afro American lass, with a Hearty Aretha Franklin voice and character too match. The kind of lady that made you move your feet and drop your bottom lip as her energy engulfed you and transformed your body in a moving object.

Then there was ‘Blue King Brown’, a local Perth Reggae Band that had 10 or so people up on stage rocking the crowd into a frenzy. 

Then like all good things, it came to an end, it was time to pack up camp and head to Busselton to wash our stinky bodies, and stinky they were, a couple of days dancing in 40 degree heat , ummmmm.

OK, shut up Hap your not a bloody music columnist, just put the dam photos up and shut up! (If you get my email updates and have trouble viewing the photos, either go direct to my blog, or right click on the photos and go to ‘show picture’).

Peace.