17 March 2008

Skyfire 20

| Cameron
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Well the 20th Skyfire has come and gone. This was the first one I’d been to in a long time – fireworks tend not to excite me very much.

In any event, the whether was fantastic and generally people seemed to be well behaved (and there certainly were a lot of people).

Other than having to stand in huge lines for shoddy portaloos (and having to listen to the idiot DJ’s on 104), I enjoyed the day. As for the fireworks… well, they were bright, they were loud, and there were lots of them.

ABC News has this story on a whole bunch of under-aged drinkers getting busted at the event, as well as this story reporting on Simon Corbell’s take on that and other stats from the event.

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Hopefully next years fireworks will be a lot better than Skyfire this year.
They were bit of an embarrassment considering they were in the nations capital, they were ok, but could have been a LOT better.

Mark
Sunset Fireworks

All I’m saying is it’s not as easy a job as you think. The promotions have bugger all to do with them and are usually organised to sweeten the deal for advertisers to create repeat business for the station. The pay is substantially crap. The hours are crap. And the music is definately, in my opinion, crap!

However I think it’s good to have a local station with local talent who know the area. Some more balanced opinions would be good from them at times and a bit of research wouldn’t go astray but, i think the syndicated stuff they get on 104 is a thousand times crappier with stupid gimmicks and more expensive stunts to make you beleive that the hosts are “cool”.

We’re all great at writing letters and expressing ourselves on forums but I reckon putting a microphone in front of half of you people and making you string a sentence together would see you shit in your pants.

Absent Diane1:46 pm 18 Mar 08

i know plenty of bogan tradie’s in utes that don’t even find that shit funny.

If you were a bogan tradie with a ute and three teeth (think Catweasel in a flouro shirt), you would probably find the boys on 104 funny.

I think even the station recognises the limitations of their local talent, hence the “imported” content later in the day.

Excellent. Thanks Cameron.

Definitely. Did some cool stuff, flew pretty low. Everyone within eyesight of where I was sitting had their eyes skyward.

Was the RAAF PC-9 any good?

Absent Diane12:46 pm 18 Mar 08

more than most is a bit presumptious. A lot of people are very passionate about music.

BattleKath said :

Bludger – why put up with canberra radio if you agree it’s so bad?.. … triple j is national and far more about new music and australian music, than whatever tripe is in the ‘top 40’.

Triple J however, also isn’t perfect, but it’s a shite load better than any other station.

I couldn’t agree more.

Bludger – why put up with canberra radio if you agree it’s so bad?.. … triple j is national and far more about new music and australian music, than whatever tripe is in the ‘top 40’.

Triple J however, also isn’t perfect, but it’s a shite load better than any other station.

More than most *people* or more than most *rubbish disc jockeys* ?

yes.. i’ve seen scotty play…and i stand by my first comment. he obviously doesn’t know THAT much about music, and certainly not ‘more than most’.

> and that’s before you even have to listen to the crappy announcers who wouldn’t know real music, even if it came out as an annoying avertisement on their own station!

Scotty has been writing music & playing in bands for years, he’s quite a good guitarist. He’s also a very strong supporter of local music (local Australian & local Canberran). Like the show or not, fact is he knows more about music than most.

Speaking of the army of people out there cleaning up the event – sounds like a good thing to send a few of our regular Court goers to as Community service. Shoudl be more of it. Keep the place cleaner too.

As for Sky fire – missed it, didn’t see the traffic although was a big night out on the town. The street sweepers in the morning in Civic do a fantastic job. Look at it about 5am and its shite 2 hours later you wouldnt recognise it.

Lets be honest – Scotty and Nige are far better than any other DJ’s Canberra has (which isn’t many).
They’re not so PC as all the others that have been on. At least they stretch the boundaries slightly further than the previous morning folk. It’s not all sugar coated blah like lets-raise-money-for-some-guy-that-can’t-afford-to-by-a-tree-house-for-his-kids, while playing feel good music in the background. That’s ok once in a while but all the time – yuk I OD on the sugar. Can anyone remember Marty and Erica or even the 106.3 folk – I vomit a little just thinking about them!!!

lol @ les.

happy to be told i’m dreaming, but didn’t the skyfire thing sued to happen on sunday nights??

i used to cycle to event, was oftne home before much the taffic even began (then lived ainslie) only way to fly – as it were…

ant – given the “stupid boring silly games and promotions and other commercial radio crap” likely take up 75% of the talk time, I don’t think it matters how good they are. 😉

les – Of course there was going to be junk. 130,000 people were there. Yeah yeah, put it in a bin – every bin I saw was over flowing. Is it too much to expect people to take their own rubbish? Unfortunately, it is (people are lazy) – and that should come as no surprise to you or the army of cleaners or planners. Hence why they had an army of cleaners organisers.

I was embarrassed to be a canberran wandering through commonwealth park on sunday though. Seriously – what type of bogans head to skyfire? I’ve never seen such a dump… you could barely see the grass for all the bottles, cans and plastic. There were armies of cleaners but there’s no way they could get it cleaned in one day. Especially around easter there are heaps of tourists around here – what a hideous display. Who ever organised it should be embarrassed really.

Hate to say this, but I quite enjoy Scotty and Nigel on the morning radio. They seem to have the odd clue, and are sometimes rather funny. I normally hate commercial radio announcers (those two on 106 at the same time are bloody horrible), but barring the stupid boring silly games and promotions and other commercial radio crap, scotty and nige are surprisingly good.

The fact that you need to pay a price by listening to their tripe is a poor sign for them, no? 😉

Look, the last time I was at Skyfire (prior to this one) I was in 104’s function area as a guest of 104 management. All of the people are great, and they take pride in the success of the event. I’m sure “Scotty” and “Nige” are top blokes off the mic – but they’re complete morons on the radio.

Scotty and Nige is the price of admission. Sorry.

..hence i don’t go to skyfire. plus families bite.

the quality of 104 and 106 for that matter is SO sh*t. and that’s before you even have to listen to the crappy announcers who wouldn’t know real music, even if it came out as an annoying avertisement on their own station!

Sorry, they’re on Coma FM – that’s enough for me.

Ahh Skyfire, how many times can they run the same event and sell it a different way??? You’d swear by the attendance that Canberra has NEVER seen fireworks before.

Give Scotty and Nige a break though, they’re not bad blokes, and it’s not an easy job…

They’re definately the best thing that’s been on 104 in quite a while…

Completely forgot it was on until I hit that insane traffic jam on commonwealth ave bridge, trying to head across to the southside around 7pm. Didn’t help that nobody knew the left lane was closed until they actually reached the traffic cones blocking it off, causing a lot of confused merging/barging in/lane struggles. Cops galore directing traffic, but plenty of people running across the road in front of hordes of frustrated drivers with lead foots still…

We didnt have any problems getting in or out and we were over the Commonwealth Place side. I thought the display was good, as was the soundtrack. But I agree with you Cameron, the DJs from 104.7 are dead set wankers. At least in the mornings I dont have to listen to Scotty and Nige and their C-rap team, at Skyfire you have no choice.

I didn’t go to Skyfire, but saw pictures of the fireworks. I did go to Civic for NYE, and did see the fireworks. The pictures of the Skyfire fireworks look good. Much better than the NYE spaz effort. As you would expect.

I forgot it was on! Bah. Imagine traffic out was a nightmare, so trick would be to sit around and watch teh fights. I remember in years gone by you’d see people getting up and humping their deckchairs and blankets off twoards the carpark, before it’d finished! Seemed a bit pointless.

Traffic is rubbish everywhere – not surprising when there’s 100,000+ around the lake. The group I was with simply hung around for half an hour after the display – traffic was nonexistent when we left.

Gungahlin Al12:43 pm 17 Mar 08

Visitor from Sydney was impressed – and they’ve seen some big displays there.
Better than our recent NYE fireworks I thought. Good show.
Don’t think I’ll go over Commonwealth Place again though – after traffic is far worse than the northside.

I could hear it from my house, but was the wrong side of Black Mt to see anything. And our cat didn’t seem bothered at all…

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