From Fatboy To Chat Rooms

SHOW ONE - LAUNCESTON - BREATH OF LIFE FESTIVAL

Written By Hons

The trip to Breath of Life Festival started with the hard decision of whether to wear the newly purchased GOPRO camera into the shower. Deciding not to bless the world yet again with full frontal nudity of myself I strapped the camera to my head post-shower and started my journey to Launceston, filming POV from my bedroom all the way to Tassie. After six hours of transit, two flights, numerous awkward stares and assuring the Virgin Blue staff that the flashing light meant the camera was on standby mode I finally arrived at Launceston airport. 

I thought I'd treat myself to a mini holiday with my better half and her friends by camping for a few days before the festival. Two days of relaxing beers and fishing in the beautiful but freezing rivers of Tasmania was exactly what I needed before my body was reintroduced to jumping around like a dickhead on stage for an hour, after the group's few month rests from touring. Before I knew it, it was Sunday morning and once again I strapped the GOPRO onto my head and jumped into a cab towards the festival. 

With only just enough time to watch Fatboy Slim destroy the main stage and have a shoe pelted directly into my face at close range in the crowd during Illy's set, it was time to meet up with the rest of the guys backstage for a sneaky last-minute rehearsal in the tour van. The crowd was nuts, throwing every piece of footwear onto the stage during the set. I had the sudden thought that we should have been selling shoes in the merch tent - we would have cleaned up. Wore the GOPRO throughout the set and got some amazing footage of the crowd and a thong catch that would make my SAPSASA cricket coach proud. After the set we were privileged to share the main stage with our friend Drapht for a track and then watch the Hoods set the bar just that little bit higher for every other hip hop act in the country! 

SHOW TWO - CANBERRA - TRADIES CLUB

Written By Sesta

A crisp gentle breeze, a distinct lack of smog for a capital city, an unusually large force of customs officers and high-tech security equipment for a domestic arrival area... We must be in Canberra.

Coupled with a vibrant enthusiasm we only wield on the first night of the weekend we happily made our way to soundcheck. After ensuring our microphones were intrusive enough to disturb all of Canberra we indulged in the several packets of Twisties the venue provided us for sustenance while we killed time over a quiet cup of tea and a game of Pazaak. 

The show itself could not have gone better; the venue sold out, the sound was great, the vibe even greater. This was the Canberra we have come to know and love. After the show consisted of us hanging and chatting with what seemed like everyone who came to the show and having to politely refuse countless offers of personal house parties consisting of “anything we want”, Canberra's hospitality was in full effect. We posed in the obligatory photo with the venue owner and briskly made our way back to the hotel; we had an early start the next day to make our way to Bateau Bay.

Upon returning to the hotel Trials and I, as usual, realised we had none of the on-the-road supplies that demanding and flustered divas such as ourselves need at 4am so we took some sort of miraculous moving infinity tunnel to the ground floor in search of the 24-hour servo the man at the bottle shop made reference to earlier that day.

Canberra is a cold and eerie place at 4am. It's a place that will get the conspiracy juices of even the most hardened sceptic such as myself flowing all over the place but, that said, looking the way we do nobody bothered us. After gathering the necessary supplies and taking unnecessary but hilarious “selfies” in a public toilet we made our way back to the hotel. A short cut we had made on the way to the servo was now blocked by a shadowy figure gently repeating the word “hello” outside of what looked like a derelict business front. The long way home was looking rather attractive.

SHOW THREE - BATEAU BAY - LEAGUES CLUB

Written By Trials

On the way to beautiful Bateau Bay the only sustenance I had managed to scrounge was courtesy our favourite airline Virgin. Although they had repeatedly made it clear to me that although I hadn't 'achieved' enough points to use the most convenient bathrooms (although I did, quickly) there was no warning that today's snack would be something conjured up by literally throwing food scraps in the air and seeing what stuck together. Piece of almost genuine shit in my belly later and we had arrived.

We had never played here before so fingers were crossed all night between taking turns in the Pokie syndicate between me, X and Hons waiting for tonight's proceedings to jump off. Our good friends from Sydney Drakezilla & Swarmy came down to give us a hand and absolutely belted the guts out of it. Swarm had a new set with a nuts vocalist and DJ dropping body tricks while Drizake and his mate Vince drove the scandal bus getting some ladies on stage to serenade them. The set was classic, hung around and got half in the bag with the locals, ruined some T-shirts and retired back to the Backpackers.

In the three to four hours we had gone the local network seemed to switch from regular viewing to what really goes down around here. The channel had turned into a seedy chat room costing about five dollars a message but free for girls. I quickly noticed there were other people that rode performance horses and liked big butts, so I charged my telephone and settled in for the night.