To be published in Tsunami Magazine.
Splendour In The Grass 2012
Belongil Fields, Byron Bay
I am
a few months shy of turning 32 and I am old, basically ancient, on unfamiliar
ground as I wallow with the rest of them, wondering what happened to rock ‘n’
roll – both the music and the ideals behind it – stuck in some sort of ‘other’
dimension from which I can see no exit, no way out, no way to turn, no way to
assimilate or survive.
Pounded
from above by hail and rain, assaulted from below, torrents of thick, stinking
mud and shit from leaking toilets, buffeted by the ill winds of change and turn
– “Hey, Jack White,” someone yells at me before realising their mistake and
slogging onward towards the next in a long, long line of bands and music and
artists from which there is little respite.
Gaggles
of tiny whores abound, their own bared flesh their watchword; gangs of thuggish
males, dorks hanging low to the ground, follow, snuffling the scent like the
dogs they are and yet we’re all one, whether we care to admit as much or not,
here for likeminded reasons and to hell with the consequences, the dignity, the
mundane realities of life outside these chain-link fences, the rows of security
and police, the dogs and the confiscated drugs, which we needed in abundance
but left at the gate in the care of The Man.
 |
| SJF looking slightly perturbed... |
Pond
– the Beatles gang-raped by Iggy Pop and The Stems, with the Rolling Stones
coming in for sloppy thirds. DZ
Deathrays – noise for the pure sake of it and then some more on top, buzz and
grind, sheltered from the raging storm outside by the sonic storm inside. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – horn-laden
grooves in spades, gangsta rap shoved rudely in between, lubed up sweat and
slime set to a primal beat.
One
needs, in order to survive, to adjust and make the best of a bad situation, and
to be honest, the situation was hardly bad
per se, more alien and surreal. A
Splendour crowd isn’t, at first glance, a friendly and caring crowd, it’s a
selfish crowd hell-bent on its own demise where music, or the love of, is a
coincidental occurrence and cool is the currency of the day and people acquire
more based on what they wear and who they see. As the weekend rolls on though, people mellow and more
easily fit into the fact they’re one of many, not just one, and so an odd sort
of camaraderie settles over the site and a calm, of sorts, inadvertently rules.
I
drink a lot on the first day, mid-strength beer from the myriad bars scattered
around the site, full-strength beer from the teeming ‘VIP’ bar where people pay
almost a grand to mingle with, “artists, media and industry insiders”, the
former of which wouldn’t be seen dead in there, the second of which only access
for the toilets and strong drink, the latter of which thrive in this particular
environment, a strange mix of cashed up and wanting to be seen, being
seen. Indeed. At some point I end up in the Jager
Bar, the Hunting Lodge, which plays bad beats and serves watered-down Jager in
paper cups for six bucks a pop but has a beergarden where you can sit and smoke
in relative comfort. I keep
drinking, and all seems well for a while.
 |
| Post-hailstorm, outside, at some point... |
Mudhoney
– reviving the ‘90s with scruffy aplomb, squalls of feedback and rumbling,
jangling guitars fighting with each other for the limelight, the thunder of
rock ‘n’ roll apparent in every note, every bar, every song, a veritable
clusterfuck of dirt and angst set amongst three days of pop and pish-posh, a
diamond in the rough and the standout thus far.
Tame
Impala – big, building sound-scapes blunted by poor sound outside the tent
(certainly no way to get inside), epic potential but not really fulfilling what
I was hoping they were capable of, but a decent set none the less, indeed.
I
enter a time portal where it all stands still for an hour and so I go to get
pizza and am accosted by Zander who has seats and coffee and cigarettes and
conversation which serves to drag me from said portal and some woman asks if
they can go into the Berocca tent, which is closed, and Zander says there’s an
orgy in there – “You most likely don’t wanna go in,” I say – and she says she
definitely does, whilst her partner looks on with alarm and amusement, behind
slightly glazed eyes, ruffled hair and dirty hands.
I am
a wild-eyed fiend. My beard is
long and rangy, my hair hangs from under my hat and my jacket is specked with
mud. My black boots are now brown
and there are many unused drink tickets in my pocket which I will swap for weak
beer before the night is through, for the night is not yet over, not by a long
shot, for it is around now that I find the Gold, that on the inside I dance
like a drug-addled shaman, the likes of which the western world has yet to discover,
living deep within an impenetrable forest of inhibitions and the like, for it
is now that I realise what a fucker Warren Ellis is, what a teeming pot of
brilliantly psychotic sonic stew this man is capable of cooking up and I will
never be the same again.
 |
| Mudhoney. Possibly... |
Dirty
Three – I wasn’t punched in the face by a punter, nor a policeman or security
guard, but I was punched in the face by three unlikely looking fellows whose
job it is, it seems, to meld together sounds that are more akin to a
rollercoaster ride through the lower caverns of hell than they are to something
as mundane as a stage at a festival in a town by a beach. Shrieks and wails, thumps and bangs,
the energy that leaps from the four strings on Ellis’ violin is stronger than
everything else I’ve heard thus far, put together and multiplied by a number
these kids cannot comprehend. And
this is just what they do on a regular basis, and so we looked on with
unrestrained, slack-jawed awe, and were satisfied, really, for the first time,
and I felt things weren’t too bad.
Not that they really were to
begin with.
I
bounce from one band to the next – Father John Misty (acoustic guitar, first of
the weekend), Ball Park Music (uplifting pop-tinged rock for the masses), San
Cisco (who should be made to sit, eyes forced open a la A Clockwork Orange, listening to The Dirty Three, just to see how
it’s supposed to be done, despite the
fact they’re not alike at all) – and finally crash and burn on the Sunday
afternoon, a stained rag on a sticky barroom floor, bundled up and driven home
to recover and remember (or not) and wonder if I’ve lost touch with rock ‘n’
roll, or if it’s more alive now than ever before, just set to a different beat
with a different set of ideals, still the Kids vs The Man, the sweat and energy
still there in heaps and piles, indeed – it was solid, and we were there, and that’s
really all that matters, that’s just how it is.
Samuel J. Fell
This is good.
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