[First filed: November 24, 2008 @ 15:54]
“Oh my god, bogans in fluros – how cute!”, a girl in pink tights next to me yells, at the wet Trackside Festival on Saturday.
Cold and wet were most, as mother nature decided to take part in the all-ages festivities. The rain and soft storms brought out an interesting display of gumboots and ponchos. More fashionable things were happening too, including a lot of matching bright-coloured t-shirts and singlets of punters who cared more about their appearance than their health.
Bands from across Australia, as highlighted on Triple J, trekked to our grand capitol. These include; The Living End, Cut Copy, Gyroscope, The Panics, Bliss N Eso, British India, Something With Numbers, The Getaway Plan, Carpathian, Sparkadia, Muph N Plutonic, Bluejuice, Grafton Primary, Little Red, Sam Simmons, D’Opus and Roshambo and locals Los Capitanes and Hancock Basement, plus more.
There certainly was no lack of enthusiasm, and this was particularly highlighted during Little Red’s high energy and fun performance. This pop-rock band, reminiscent of the Beach Boys and the Beatles, stood out from the rest of the line-up of hardcore/metal/punk/indy bands.
Standing in the middle of a crowd of hard-core sing-along Little Red fans is probably the most fun one can have at such a festival. Halfway during their third song the beautiful sun slowly slipped away and the rain came out. Whispers among the crowd went something like: “Oh no rain… hang on, is that rain? What are those sparkly glitters in that girl’s hair? What is that tapping sound on the hood of my awesomely stylish poncho? Is that…. HAIL? No worries, let’s sing even harder for the band and dance faster to keep warm…”
(More and a slideshow below)
The crowd’s spirit was high when Melbourne’s British India got up on-stage, only to to find that the main speakers had been shorted out by the previous down-pour. They played their first song with all their might only through only their fold-back speakers, but all you could hear was the angry chants from the crowd, “louder, louder, louder”. The sound did come back, half hour later, but sadly half the crowd had left too. But India played to their fullest and every song was a hit and the crowd madly sang, screamed and moshed. The energy from both
the band and the crowd was enough to dry anyone’s hair, or at least feel like it was drying, even though the rain just kept pouring down.
Some other attractions included an inside bar and comedy stage that was constantly too packed to even look inside, a side-show alley of rides, various food stalls and lots and lots of bands.
As the festival continued into the night, the majority of over-age patrons (the people with the red wrist bands) had been drinking for some hours. Considering it was a twelve-hour festival – 11am till 11pm – quite a bit of alcohol had been consumed and this could have been enough to make any mob just a tad aggressive, even without rain. Nonetheless, there were no major incidents of aggression, other then some pushing and shoving to get to the front, shoes, thongs, cans and uh… people thrown through the crowd and onto the stage.
All in all, there certainly were some special moments which truly proved that there’s nothing that can stop a dedicated crowd of fans, not even rain, hail or shine.
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