Splendour In The GrassToday really should have been a glorious day. The sun was out, spirits were high, some guy was getting about in a Coca-Cola bikini that framed his butt in such a way as to make me seriously question my own sexuality… the elements were in place for day two of Splendour In The Grass to be the second festival Saturday in a row to be my new best day ever.
Except (a) I’ve been fighting a goddamn nightmare flu all weekend while trying to cover this event – you’re welcome – which left me running for the nearest vacant toilet as often as I was running between stages, and (b) … this.
I didn’t know what this was when I saw it. I was casually minding my own business, thinking about the scrumptious Byron Bay Organic Doughnut I had eaten earlier (post me a cheque), when I passed the so-called Tent Of Miracles, in which… this was happening. Last night, I’d have believed the moniker – there was some kind of free-for-all dance party going down when I crossed its path then – but, looking at this guy, on stage, playing “guitar” on a fake machine gun with fake dynamite strapped to his body surrounded by prop explosives and an unbearable sense of self-satisfaction, I have to say, it didn’t seem really all that miraculous. It definitely wrecked my mood, anyway, because, being a non-confrontational person, I internalise abnormal amounts of rage.
And, all things vomitous and sweaty considered, I was in such a good mood before this. I’d just come from watching The Smith Street Band smash it out of the park at The Amphitheatre, where an absolute ocean of people were hanging on for dear life as the seasoned yet, importantly, still appreciative punks delivered, for my money, one of the finest performances of the day. Prior to that, SAFIA and Art Of Sleeping also brought the early-afternoon goods, both proving to be nice ease-in acts for a second round in the cage, combatting crowds and mud and the smell – oh god the smell – as you do on a post-rainy, sunny and humid Splendour Saturday, when all the awfulness below rises directly into your already dust-filled nostrils as the surface layer of woodchips, placed overnight in a vain attempt to make the situation better, do nothing but make everything worse and the whole disgusting stew evaporates and combines into the sort of odour that is unidentifiable but you suspect is perhaps what death smells like.
Where was I?
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Right, the frightfully offensive caricature that totally ignores how eye-fuckingly terrible it is, all for the sake of… what, exactly? Is this… art? If it’s art, it’s objectively bad art. Worse, as I stood there gawping, a guy in a Native American headdress (I thought we talked about this already) danced his way into the tent to cut a rug andencourage the disgrace on stage. I can’t even tell you how much this whole scene disappointed me.
So, I set out to better my mood, and – surprisingly, since I’ve always just assumed god hates me – it panned out in the form of infectious British electronic outfit Years & Years. Ironically, they were not having a great day either – their gear had been lost in transit and they were forced to pull together an instrumental complement from disparate equipment backstage – but they, too, were determined to make the best of it. I felt kinship. It buoyed me. I’d never seen them before, and if they hadn’t made me so damned happy I’d have been sad about that, too.
Also uplifting were the stories I heard today – the tragicomic witness account of the guy who was arrested by cops on horses for smoking a joint on the hills of The Amphitheatre yesterday being among the most memorable – and people I met. During one of my many “squat in the mud until the nausea passes” meditation sessions, a Red Frog volunteer whose name I later learnt was Brad approached me to make sure I was all right, and I somehow wound up finding out about his planned move to the Sunshine Coast to pursue social work as a paid profession. I’ll never see him again, but damned if I’m not rooting for him, the friendly bastard.
Jarryd James was also a pretty solid show – albeit somewhat punctuated by an air of trepidation, the rising singer-songwriter clearly still coming to terms with the reality of where his stunning voice has landed him – but Canada’s Purity Ring deliver an absolute home run of an outing. It’s an aural and visual extravaganza, all tangles of fairy lights and gorgeous sounds and bliss. It’s reflective of Splendour’s attention to diversity that two of my favourite sets of the day – The Smith Street Band and Purity Ring – could be so sonically disparate and yet playing on stages within walking distance of each other.
And that, at the base of everything, is the true delight at the heart of this festival – that such a vast array of people, with so many musical loves and interests and tastes, can converge and co-exist and reach an unspoken understanding/camaraderie with one another, all in the name of being able to spend these few magical days ping-ponging between being in thrall to riotous, uninhibited celebration and chilling way the hell out. And, occasionally, if you’re unlucky, also spewing like a hydrant even though you’ve not had a drop of alcohol to drink. But, even then, you’ll still come away from it all smiling like an idiot.
I would know.
