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Thanks to my boyfriend's extremely good taste in ex-girlfriends, we scored free VIP passes to the Splendour in the Grass music festival (thanks a million Fliss — xox), in Byron Bay, a beach town eleven hours’ drive northeast of Sydney. We're talking Sonic Youth, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, DJ Shadow, the Grates, Death Cab for Cutie, TV on the Radio, the Avalanches, Mogwai, Mos Def, Scissor Sisters, Decoder Ring, the Presets, Matisyahu, and whole bunch more, all squeezed into two days.
Most music-loving folks would have been delighted by a lineup like this, but for me it's a special form of torture. I have a pathological fear of missing out on good music. I tried (mostly successfully) to be blissed-out in the presence of amazing talent such as Sonic Youth, Mos Def, and DJ Shadow. But underlying my entire festival experience was an unshakable feeling that I might be missing a brilliant show by another band.
Sonic Youth or DJ Shadow? Death Cab For Cutie or Mos Def? Matisyahu or Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set? I knew it would be like this. To make things a bit easier on myself, I decided to favor international acts. I know I missed out on a stack of amazing Aussie bands, but I also know I'll get to see them all in the next year or two with good sound, no mud, and no porta-loos.
Saturday: Mogwai rearranges my molecular structure (and somehow manages to make Sonic Youth seem a bit blah)
Raz Bin Sam and the Lion I Band got my weekend off to a bootylicious start. Who'd have thought Hebrew ragga would sound so good? It was early on Saturday, and I really should have been conserving energy, but I can't stand still when there's ragga in the house.
I swooned the whole way through Mos Def's set. He was so at ease, he could have been jamming in the living room rather than performing in front of thousands of people. He sang a few songs, cracked some jokes, and indulged his passion for soul music, having his DJ spin a couple of classics. And when he sang "Umi Says," it was like our own little slice of Dave Chappelle's Block Party! Yay!
Then there was Mogwai, unquestionably my festival highlight. I was pretty impressed the first time I saw them, but this time (about seven years later) they were pure magic. I kept trying to explain them to people who'd missed the set, and all I could think of was "wall-of-noise lullaby." Layers of carefully architected drone/fuzz, brilliantly controlled feedback forming a sweet melody. Building it up, stripping it away, and building it back up again. They're in a league of their own.
Mogwai
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By the time Sonic Youth came on we'd been at the festival for over ten hours, and the sound in the main tent seemed pretty unflattering, and, well, I just wasn't that blown away by them. The feedback freakouts were fun, and Thurston was charming, but all in all, it wasn't happening for me.
Sunday: A soundtrack moment on the floor of the VIP tent (or, how I managed to miss the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and pretty much everything after that)
The Love Bus eased us into Sunday in a most beautiful way. Fliss was radiant, and the band was tight. Every time I see these guys play I think it's time to drop out of the city frenzy and become a mermaid or something.
A lot of people say you shouldn't mix drinks, and I imagine these people would frown on a mix of the Vines, Matisyahu, and the Presets, but it worked pretty well for us. I'm not a big fan of the Vines, but it felt pretty special to be present for their return to the stage after a two-year break.
I wasn't sure if Matisyahu would live up to all the hype that's been generated around his unusual combo of Hassidic Judaism and Reggae, but he pulled it off. He has a beautiful stage presence, and had us dancing for most of the set.
I was quite wrecked by the time we got back to the Mix-Up tent for the Presets. I wanted to see what all the fuss was, but wasn't in the most receptive mood. The first couple of songs weren't making much of an impact (on me anyway), but then they pulled out "Are You the One?" and things just went off. I jumped around like a freak and wondered how a drummer and a singer with a keyboard could make so many people jump around. Nice!
Now for the difficult part: explaining how we came to miss the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I've been struggling find a way to explain, and decided it's probably easiest to just tell the truth. So here it is:
Due to self-inflicted circumstances that rapidly morphed into circumstances beyond my control, we were taken out of action at about 8:00 p.m. Sunday night.
It was about two songs into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' set, which we were on the verge of viewing from backstage. At the last minute we decided we'd prefer to get into the crowd instead, so we popped into the VIP tent to avoid the porta-loo lines. As I was standing in the miraculously short toilet line my boyfriend flipped out. He said he'd almost died, then proposed marriage, requested that I bear his children (one, or maybe two), etc…whilst smothering me with kisses on the floor of the VIP tent.
This continued during the entire Yeah Yeah Yeahs set, and not being in top shape myself, I wasn't able to find the words to say, "Gosh, that's really nice dear, but could we discuss this after the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?" At the end of their set we managed to peel ourselves off the sticky floor and venture out to grab our jackets from the car. We paused on the way to catch the tail end of Decoder Ring playing the soundtrack they composed for the film Somersault. The little that we caught was exquisite, and though it was a little heartbreaking to know we'd missed such a beautiful thing, I'm glad we got a tiny taste. It turned out to be the last thing we saw (aside from a weird snippet of Brian Wilson that I'm choosing to edit out of my mind).
So what's the moral of this rather long story?
Perhaps it's not the end of the world to miss a good performance from time to time, especially when I'd already managed to see five or six brilliant ones that weekend. As for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I'll probably remember their set long after the rest have blurred in my party-worn mind. They have become part of a soundtrack moment in my life.
Had any soundtrack moments lately?
Posted August 2006
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missnae commented, on August 9, 2006 at 5:04 a.m.:
Bugger the bands, I mean damn lady - does this mean you are engaged?!