I promised a post about my adventures at Southbound and failed to deliver. Lame. I can remedy that easily though.

I drove down to Southbound with a couple of my dearest pals, David and Daniel. Daniel is a navy boy so he was ludicrously well organised for the trip. He brought supplies aplenty, meals for all of us for pretty much any time we were hungry and a fuckin’ tent, none of which I had really thought of until about 1:30pm the day before.

After suffering the serious boredom of the new Bunbury freeway, dribbling shit to each other and listening to the god-awful music I’d put on my mp3 player, we made it down at about 9:30 at night, set up the tent with the help of my stage lights, suffered the spiritual torment that is blowing up a double air mattress, and proceeded to Base Camp, a kind of sideshow area set up to keep the campers happy.

We obtained beer and headed to the lounge tent, where we’d spotted some seats. The DJ was playing rave music like his entire understanding of dance culture had been obtained from the film Go. This was scary. But not as bad as the people dancing who appeared to be peaking out their weekend at 10pm on a friday. There were a lot of bogans, which meant I was about to have a lot of fun.

After a bit of a wander around, I went to DJ my first shift in the silent disco. Over the course of the weekend I racked up nine hours in there. It was fun, fucking with the bogans. Highlights over the weekend included rapping over the instrumental of Boom Boom Pow, forcing hetero-bogans to dance to Man 2 Man’s Male Stripper, learning the art of the delay button on the dj mixer, taking two peaking metrosexual trippers on a sexual journey through sexmusak culminating in Take That’s Pray, Johnny Hotrod throwing his gloriously annoying iPod apps (including my favourite, the rave horn) into the mix and playing Moby’s Thousand while berating the crowd for their shit taste in music when they all put their hand up in response to my asking who liked Moby. Lots of stupid dancing. Lots of good and bad memories.

On the Friday we shut down because someone publicly pissed all over the Astroturf, so that gives you an idea of the kind of crowd we had down there. By the Sunday night, when I was missing Datarock to play records to a bunch of trashy bogan hoebags who kept requesting shit music I’d had enough. I ended up turning into the biggest bitch possible; even once I’d finished my shift, I had just had my fill of nasty little bogan hoes. They would approach me as I walked around the site and venom would spew from my fangs.

What else happened? Oh yeah, I played a show and it was awesome. Student Edge, Fasterlouder, Fasterlouder (someone else from them) and Drum Perth all agreed enthusiastically. I was set up in a cinema and did a show based around video projections I’d made. It was a lot of work, but it went off superbly. I’m going to be doing new video work for Disco Bunker as I want a more unified look to everything, but everyone seemed to dig what I did and it was a great practice run at the least. I ended up getting an encore, which I took even though I should have really just stopped as the end of the set was perfect, but still it was a grand reaction from a crowd who’d been watching bands all day. Thanks to Ivan from the cinema and all the Sunset Events crew for having me down, it was a riot.

So, I guess, onto the bands. I’ll bold it as though I’m writing for a street press to help you out:

Band-wise, I didn’t get to see a lot as I was working a lot; what I did see was wildly varying in quality. Boys! Boys! Boys! put on a very tight show that saw them pulling slightly sexier slower grooves than I’m used to from them. I also got to see Abbe May play with her Rockin’ Pneumonia for the first time and again was entranced by her sexy slow grooves. It’s like listening to The Drones and PJ Harvey rub body lotion all over each other. Tame Impala were bumped up to the main stage for some reason but didn’t have the goods to justify it, playing a bunch of meandering prog rock psychadelic bullshit jam tracks before closing with that big single they had and then that Blue Boy cover. Kids need to spend some time with pens and paper getting their material tight, if you ask me. Speaking of development, that chick from Australian Idol, Lisa Mitchell sounded great but she had absolutely no idea what to do with the big stage; she ambled around it like a wounded deer. The thought The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were totally shit. Like, abhorrent. I was in my grumpy mood as described before and only saw the last few songs, but I was struck by what an atrocious bit of jam-ranting the lyrics to Cheated Hearts are. Self consicous artiness blows. I really wanted to leave the VIP area and see Diplo with his Major Lazer crew but the dj’ing, the early starts and the performing had taken it out of me. When I walked past their show they were playing Pon Da Floor or whatever it’s called anyway and it was irritating the crap out me, as it is want to do if it catches me in the wrong mood.

Musical highlight of the weekend and new favourite band are Future Of The Left. Their lyrics are full of caustic sarcasm and they sound like those Franz Ferdinand-y post punk bands would have a few years ago if they were more appropriately self righteous and pissed off. Glorious. The show was pure energy and rage too. Music writers of the future will reference them disproportionately to their current popularity, I guarantee it.

What else happened? I bumped into the entire Perth comedy scene over the course of the weekend and, as usual, felt oddly, comfortingly embraced by them. I’m not a comic but I used to be and they all seem to get what I’m doing - Perth’s comedy scene is gloriously wierd.

I mentioned early starts before - that’s pretty important actually. It totally fucked us up - none of us had thought before we got there about the fact that the hot sun would hit our tent and wake us up at 6:30 am, even if my nightime gigging and dj’ing was keeping me up until 3am. That’s the thing about camping festivals though; they do these shit things to you, and you end up appreciating little luxuries like a trip to the beach, a chair, a free bottle of water, a warm shower in a manky overused portashower or a clean(ish) portaloo with even more delight than you do the bands.

There you go; an exceptionally long post but at least it’s comprehensive. Bring on next year.