Parklife
Wow. It's been a pretty frenetic weekend. I started off with a relatively low-key house party on Friday night - I was playing a set, but I only got maybe halfway through before my car had to be used for a supplies run, and by the time we got back I totally couldn't be fucked. So, I drank martinis, smoked a cigar, jammed out to some Sublime with Smitty, and got an "early" night.
Saturday was spent packing (10%) and relaxing (90%). I met up with Sam, Catherine, and Andy to get a bus up to Sydney; we got into Central around 9:30 and met Kirsty, said goodnight to Andy (who was staying with an old friend in Newtown), got an (extremely erratic) taxi to Paddington, bought some beer, and chilled out for the evening, listening to Placebo and the Dresden Dolls. (Four people sleeping stuffed into a small, badly-ventilated room on a springtime Sydney night turned out to mean near-death by suffocation.)
We got pretty early on Sunday, and went walking through Paddington. I gave Soph a call for her birthday - she had good news, in that she won the Uni Games steeplechase with a national-qualifying time, which is really exciting; and bad news, in that some motherfuckers stole her bike (cutting through one chain and a Kryptonite D-lock in the process, that's dedication!), which bites pretty hard since it was a Christmas present, and it's her only means of getting to and from training. Still, it was insured, so it should be replaceable.
Robbie had come up on the 6:00am bus, and met us at his sister's house (also, conveniently, in Paddington). We grabbed a coffee and waited for Andy - he turned up with Nick, his mate, we grabbed some brunch, and got outselves into gear. There were a couple of organisational headaches, so we didn't really get through the gates as early as I would have liked (apparently the queue was monstrous later in the day, but we just strolled right past). It was immediately apparent that we were in for an interesting day; we bought bottles of water (for $4.50), settled by the lake, and watched security crash-tackle the occasional fence-jumper. (Later in the day, a section of the fence came down and about a hundred freeloaders rushed in. Amusing, but kinda irritating given that I paid a lot of money for my ticket.)
Where to begin with the music? We flitted between James Taylor and Jaime Doom & Gus Da Hoodrat, trying to get a feel for the place. Robbie and I had to take some time out to eat a pizza, before jumping back into the music. I spent a little bit of time watching Kid Kenobi & MC Shureshock (they're certainly a lot of fun, but I'm not really sure they qualify entirely as breaks these days, bending a little towards electro stuff), then migrated with Catherine to Funktrust DJs, who played a great get-up-and-dance-the-fuck-around set.
We went back and chilled out by the lake, and I wandered over to watch Mattafix play. When I arrived they were under siege with some monstrous technical problems, so Preetesh grabbed an acoustic and belted out a gorgeous version of Big City Life, which goes down as one of my favourite moments of the day. While they tried to sort themselves out, I was nabbed by the crew, and we trucked off to watch Dom. B from the Stanton Warriors do his thing on the decks. He was great, although to be dead honest I can't remember much of his set.
Coldcut was next up. I'd been curious to see how these veterans would do, and I wasn't disappointed; in fact, I'd have to call them the absolute stand-out event of the day. Four guys doing their thing, including an extremely talented VJ (who, I was amused to see using Google Earth), and the crowd just lapped it up. Video samples from Blade Runner and The Jungle Book laid over extremely tight drum'n'bass was just what I needed at that point. For some reason, we started treating it all like a sea-voyage on a ship of the line, with the roles as follows:
Captain: Nick, succeeded by Andy when the former fell in the line of duty;
First Mate: Originally Andy, post unfilled upon promotion;
Midshipman: Robbie
Ship's Surgeon: Sam
Navigator, First Class: yours truly
Diplomatic Charge: Catherine
After Coldcut left the stage, Mixmaster Mike came on. I'm not quite sure about this guy - I saw him last year in Canberra, and from what I remember, he played much the same set then as he did at Parklife. Still, I have to admit, it was a good, fun set. It was great watching the big screen above him - live screen grabs from Serato Scratch as he was going. The music he played was pretty damn diverse for a guy renowned as one of the best in the hip-hop game - Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit was in there, as was the this-song-reminds-me-of-year-twelve Crooklyn Cran remix of Faith Evan's Love Like This Before, System Of A Down's B.Y.O.B and a remix (possibly the FreQ Nasty one) of Krs-One's Sound Of Da Police. The crowd got pretty into it, Nick and Robbie had vanished (although I later ran into Robbie with a crowd of gorgeous Sydney girls - nice one bruvva!), Catherine's bag straps had broken, Sam and Mert were going nuts, and I was best described by the phrase "off chops."
Here's my main complaint about the day. Where the hell was the volume? I mean, ok, it's a festival in the middle of a city, but still... After about 8pm the techs dropped the sound to levels that I can replicate in my bedroom. We carefuly positioned ourselves in the sweet spot, and it was certainly loud enough to get into, but it wasn't nearly loud enough to really ignite the crowd into that amazing festival there-are-twenty-thousand-other-people-dancing-with-me feeling.
Krafty Kuts came on at 8:30 to close it out, and you could tell from the start that he wasn't happy with the sound. Still, he played a rock-solid set, a mish-mash of party breaks and funky electro (with the emphasis on "party" and "funky"), which got the crowd pretty fired up. By that stage there were ridiculous levels of gnashing of teeth and rolling of eyes on the dancefloor, and everyone really gave it their all. Krafty rounded out the set with the massively-raped-by-radio track Exceeder, by Mason, which certainly sounded pretty impressive, then played another track or two before hanging up his headphones. The exchange between the guy with the mic and the crowd went something like this:
Event Organiser: "Do you guys want one more?"
20,000 People: "*ROAR* yes please *ROAR*"
So he spun another one, which turned out to be a mash-up of Kanye West's Golddigger. Not really what I was expecting for an encore (if he had played Tricka Technology, the place would have gone stark fucking mental), but by that stage of the night I was far, far too muntered to care. We were planning on going out afterwards, but by the time we got back to Kirsty's we were all just too far gone. Sleep came remarkably easily, I got up this morning around 9, we had breakfast, meandered back to Central, jumped on the bus, got back to Canberra, and I've just been taking it easy ever since. Now I have to go back to work. :(
So, in conclusion, the results from the 2006 Parklife are as follows:
Best Set: Coldcut, for the reasons outlined above.
Worst Set: Peter Hook, apparently, although I didn't even hang around for a single song.
Most Overplayed Track: Fedde Le Grande, Put Your Hands Up For Detroit (an mp3 clip of the drop can be found here). I heard this not once, not twice, but THREE times during the day on a single stage, and rumour has it that it got slammed on the other stages as well. This track is/will be the next Satisfaction or Fasten Your Seatbelts - an incredibly catchy little synth hook that you can't help but love, despite the cheesiness. Expect to hear this on dancefloors your way soon, if you haven't already.
Most Interesting Yet Disturbing Comment From An Act: "Have fun kids, but stay off the fucking ice!" (MC Shureshock)
Hands In The Air Award: Fuck, the whole day, although it's probably a toss-up between Mattafix's acoustic version of Big City Life, Mixmaster Mike's drop of Sound Of Da Police, and some of Coldcut's set.
Nicest Surprise About The Venue: absolutely minimal police presence, and no sniffer dogs (that I saw, at least). I'm a firm advocate against dogs - the seasoned folk will get drugs in no matter what happens, they encourage risky drug-taking by younger and less-experienced people, and they effectively paint a whole social scene as criminals, which doesn't do police respect any good.
Thing That I Most Hope Gets Fixed Next Year: the sound levels.
Saturday was spent packing (10%) and relaxing (90%). I met up with Sam, Catherine, and Andy to get a bus up to Sydney; we got into Central around 9:30 and met Kirsty, said goodnight to Andy (who was staying with an old friend in Newtown), got an (extremely erratic) taxi to Paddington, bought some beer, and chilled out for the evening, listening to Placebo and the Dresden Dolls. (Four people sleeping stuffed into a small, badly-ventilated room on a springtime Sydney night turned out to mean near-death by suffocation.)
We got pretty early on Sunday, and went walking through Paddington. I gave Soph a call for her birthday - she had good news, in that she won the Uni Games steeplechase with a national-qualifying time, which is really exciting; and bad news, in that some motherfuckers stole her bike (cutting through one chain and a Kryptonite D-lock in the process, that's dedication!), which bites pretty hard since it was a Christmas present, and it's her only means of getting to and from training. Still, it was insured, so it should be replaceable.
Robbie had come up on the 6:00am bus, and met us at his sister's house (also, conveniently, in Paddington). We grabbed a coffee and waited for Andy - he turned up with Nick, his mate, we grabbed some brunch, and got outselves into gear. There were a couple of organisational headaches, so we didn't really get through the gates as early as I would have liked (apparently the queue was monstrous later in the day, but we just strolled right past). It was immediately apparent that we were in for an interesting day; we bought bottles of water (for $4.50), settled by the lake, and watched security crash-tackle the occasional fence-jumper. (Later in the day, a section of the fence came down and about a hundred freeloaders rushed in. Amusing, but kinda irritating given that I paid a lot of money for my ticket.)
Where to begin with the music? We flitted between James Taylor and Jaime Doom & Gus Da Hoodrat, trying to get a feel for the place. Robbie and I had to take some time out to eat a pizza, before jumping back into the music. I spent a little bit of time watching Kid Kenobi & MC Shureshock (they're certainly a lot of fun, but I'm not really sure they qualify entirely as breaks these days, bending a little towards electro stuff), then migrated with Catherine to Funktrust DJs, who played a great get-up-and-dance-the-fuck-around set.
We went back and chilled out by the lake, and I wandered over to watch Mattafix play. When I arrived they were under siege with some monstrous technical problems, so Preetesh grabbed an acoustic and belted out a gorgeous version of Big City Life, which goes down as one of my favourite moments of the day. While they tried to sort themselves out, I was nabbed by the crew, and we trucked off to watch Dom. B from the Stanton Warriors do his thing on the decks. He was great, although to be dead honest I can't remember much of his set.
Coldcut was next up. I'd been curious to see how these veterans would do, and I wasn't disappointed; in fact, I'd have to call them the absolute stand-out event of the day. Four guys doing their thing, including an extremely talented VJ (who, I was amused to see using Google Earth), and the crowd just lapped it up. Video samples from Blade Runner and The Jungle Book laid over extremely tight drum'n'bass was just what I needed at that point. For some reason, we started treating it all like a sea-voyage on a ship of the line, with the roles as follows:
Captain: Nick, succeeded by Andy when the former fell in the line of duty;
First Mate: Originally Andy, post unfilled upon promotion;
Midshipman: Robbie
Ship's Surgeon: Sam
Navigator, First Class: yours truly
Diplomatic Charge: Catherine
After Coldcut left the stage, Mixmaster Mike came on. I'm not quite sure about this guy - I saw him last year in Canberra, and from what I remember, he played much the same set then as he did at Parklife. Still, I have to admit, it was a good, fun set. It was great watching the big screen above him - live screen grabs from Serato Scratch as he was going. The music he played was pretty damn diverse for a guy renowned as one of the best in the hip-hop game - Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit was in there, as was the this-song-reminds-me-of-year-twelve Crooklyn Cran remix of Faith Evan's Love Like This Before, System Of A Down's B.Y.O.B and a remix (possibly the FreQ Nasty one) of Krs-One's Sound Of Da Police. The crowd got pretty into it, Nick and Robbie had vanished (although I later ran into Robbie with a crowd of gorgeous Sydney girls - nice one bruvva!), Catherine's bag straps had broken, Sam and Mert were going nuts, and I was best described by the phrase "off chops."
Here's my main complaint about the day. Where the hell was the volume? I mean, ok, it's a festival in the middle of a city, but still... After about 8pm the techs dropped the sound to levels that I can replicate in my bedroom. We carefuly positioned ourselves in the sweet spot, and it was certainly loud enough to get into, but it wasn't nearly loud enough to really ignite the crowd into that amazing festival there-are-twenty-thousand-other-people-dancing-with-me feeling.
Krafty Kuts came on at 8:30 to close it out, and you could tell from the start that he wasn't happy with the sound. Still, he played a rock-solid set, a mish-mash of party breaks and funky electro (with the emphasis on "party" and "funky"), which got the crowd pretty fired up. By that stage there were ridiculous levels of gnashing of teeth and rolling of eyes on the dancefloor, and everyone really gave it their all. Krafty rounded out the set with the massively-raped-by-radio track Exceeder, by Mason, which certainly sounded pretty impressive, then played another track or two before hanging up his headphones. The exchange between the guy with the mic and the crowd went something like this:
Event Organiser: "Do you guys want one more?"
20,000 People: "*ROAR* yes please *ROAR*"
So he spun another one, which turned out to be a mash-up of Kanye West's Golddigger. Not really what I was expecting for an encore (if he had played Tricka Technology, the place would have gone stark fucking mental), but by that stage of the night I was far, far too muntered to care. We were planning on going out afterwards, but by the time we got back to Kirsty's we were all just too far gone. Sleep came remarkably easily, I got up this morning around 9, we had breakfast, meandered back to Central, jumped on the bus, got back to Canberra, and I've just been taking it easy ever since. Now I have to go back to work. :(
So, in conclusion, the results from the 2006 Parklife are as follows:
Best Set: Coldcut, for the reasons outlined above.
Worst Set: Peter Hook, apparently, although I didn't even hang around for a single song.
Most Overplayed Track: Fedde Le Grande, Put Your Hands Up For Detroit (an mp3 clip of the drop can be found here). I heard this not once, not twice, but THREE times during the day on a single stage, and rumour has it that it got slammed on the other stages as well. This track is/will be the next Satisfaction or Fasten Your Seatbelts - an incredibly catchy little synth hook that you can't help but love, despite the cheesiness. Expect to hear this on dancefloors your way soon, if you haven't already.
Most Interesting Yet Disturbing Comment From An Act: "Have fun kids, but stay off the fucking ice!" (MC Shureshock)
Hands In The Air Award: Fuck, the whole day, although it's probably a toss-up between Mattafix's acoustic version of Big City Life, Mixmaster Mike's drop of Sound Of Da Police, and some of Coldcut's set.
Nicest Surprise About The Venue: absolutely minimal police presence, and no sniffer dogs (that I saw, at least). I'm a firm advocate against dogs - the seasoned folk will get drugs in no matter what happens, they encourage risky drug-taking by younger and less-experienced people, and they effectively paint a whole social scene as criminals, which doesn't do police respect any good.
Thing That I Most Hope Gets Fixed Next Year: the sound levels.