Bogans Know How To Camp

I doubt this will be one of my most coherent posts since I am still recovering from the fabulousness that was the Meredith Music Festival but I s'pose I should spew forth my recollections before they get washed away like the dirt in my toenails.

Friday started well with me confidentally buying supplies, confidentally organising (by proxy) chairs for lounging in, confidentally packing for cold nights and confidentally waiting for my friends. I was a monument of confidence until I was questioned as to the whereabouts of my tickets. After confidentally saying "with you" I was shaken to discover, no, the tickets had been handed to me on wednesday night.

Oh Fuck.

An hour later the tickets had been located at my friend's house and we were on our way to the dusty, dirty, drunken, other, one-pair-of-underwear-for-three-days festival that I look forward to every year.



The drive down was a bit subdued compared with last year's Space-Van which was hired especially for the weekend and contained seven people and two cds made especially for the event (Wolfmother's Women and Dimension may've got special treatment that year. By the end of that weekend, Dimension was being used as the song of choice to describe anything - including what happened before getting there "I fell down in the field, yeah, wrote 'herbert lost her tickets' on a piece of PAYPAAAAH' [yes, apparently losing my tickets the day of the festival is almost a habit] and whenever everyone was too munted to think of anything to say someone would just wail "WOMAAAAN" to fill in the gaps) but even without the aid of special soundtracks we managed to get there before the sun went down.

Exchanging my button pressing abilities (button of a camera people, button of a camera) for my new neighbour's tent-putting-up-skills (which were actually just as bad as mine but ineptitude spread amongst four people is somehow funner. Particularly when they are not unattractive young gentlemen) I was down in the supernatural ampetheatre in time to witness the falsetto of My Disco. What's with these bands that all sound sameish? It's not like My Disco were bad, in fact they were pretty ok but I found myself standing there thinking of five other songs by other bands that I kept on expecting them to break into. The visuals though! Ooh-er. Aunty Meredith had really kicked the light show into the future this year. Impressive. As was the hot, crunchy bass-line that was turned up to 11 for most of the set. Sure it ended up sounding the same from song to song but it was a line of hotness that made the night seem set for good times.

I saw so little of Band of Horses and was so bored by the bit that I did see that I don't have much to say about them. Yay me for bringing jeans? Although it wasn't as cold as last year I still felt smugly satisfied that I had the layers to meet any challenge.

The New Pornographers, when contrasted with the bass-heavy Disco, seemed somehow tinny and flat in comparison. Votes are still open for the identity of their streaker. Good money is on a roadie that lost a coin toss/bet but I'd like to believe that it was someone from one of the overseas, indie, Saturday bands who had been persuaded that streaking was an Australian institution and mandatory for all bands who participated at Meredith. If only more had fallen for that... New Pornographers had apparently been worded up on Meredith's penchant for covers. Becoming bored with the (lame) banter of the vocalists, the NP drummer broke into The Doors part way through the set. He looked like a muppet and sounded a little like one too but was impressive nontheless.

My friend, Awesome, that I see about twice a year and always at Meredith, and I decided to get amongst it for the midget-led Rose Tattoo. The lady who looked kind of like an early 90's refugee from Neighbours and who rocked out, perm and all, to the entire set and who had the skills to gracefully field such "compliments" as "Aw, it's rool great that you're not too old to, like, rock out and that" or "good on you, even though you're like, old" was a total highlight. As was Anderson's proselytising "brothers and sisters!" To my friend's delight I enquired when they were going to be playing "last train out of Sydney". I am totally not rock and roll.

We stuck around for the Presets cos both of us had seen them play before and thought they'd be a fun way to end the evening. For some reason they chose to open with the most lightweight, boarderline annoying track of theirs I'd heard. Plus they didn't have the drummer from last time who wore the old fashioned deep-sea helmet the entire set that I'd seen. Coupled with the extreme light show there seemed to be something distinctly... Sydney about the Presets. Something... slightly Gods Kitchen/Belfast 4/glow sticks about them. Something...slightly disappointing. Hmm.

Heading back to the camp I discovered that our nearest neighbours who had brought in this weird, windowless cabin which looked exactly like Harry Potter's bedroom under the stairs but towed into a paddock as well as a bunch of other trailers were fond of their sound system. Very fond. 24 hours a day, especially starting at 1.30am fond. Thank god for ear plugs.

I woke up at stupid o'clock in the morning with my tent like a sauna and the comment that "bogan's sure know how to camp". Turns out our neighbours hadn't just brung the noise, they'd also brought in... a portable spa and two tanks of water. Only two rules ladies - no pissin' in the pool and no fat people.

Saturday was going to be a long day.