Crapskies!
Whoaz... so I totally havent updated for ages hey?
Well first of all, my guitar lessons with Jarryd Klapper have been going amazingly. Pretty much I've been posting a review on Matt's forum every week lol, but I guess I didnt think to transfer any across here lol. My bad. Anyways I will tell you more about that and uni later, what I really wanted to post in here was about AGMF, or Easterfest as they are calling it from now on.
so here is the story i posted on matt corby's forum, any references to "here" or "the forum" refer to there heh.
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FRIDAY
Well it all started on Friday morning. I woke up and got ready. We were supposed to be leaving at 8:00am from my place, but I don't think we got out of here until about 8:30/8:45. The trip up was kinda uneventful. I drove up with mum and my brother went up with my dad. Mum and I somehow passed them early on and at about the half way point we saw them behind us and were like "what the heck" coz they'd left a good 20 mins before us! Anyways, when we listened to Fatis Valour and Simple Plan in the car and were going up the range, I noticed a tour bus on the side of the road and looked for who's it was and it was Falling Short's haha. I was like "MUM!!! It's Falling Short!!! It looks like their tour bus broke down!" haha but she didn't pull over like I wanted her to. Instead we kept on driving and parked up the top near the camping entrance.
We walked over to where people were driving into the camping area to drop off their equipment, and then we see some people coming around into the artist only entrance and mum says to me "Yaz, that's what you have to do if you wanna meet famous people!" and I laughed at her and was like "Yeah mum!" funny thing was I actually wanted to be on the staff this year, but couldn't coz I was in Canada when they were signing people up. Oh well!
So we had to walk around the whole festival, the long way coz we didn't have our wristbands yet! Twas pretty annoying, but meh! So we got our wristbands, and mine was dark blue coz I was camping all weekend. When we were walking up to the area where the camping was, I realised I'd missed a call from Tash. I listened to the voicemail though and she was like "I was just wondering what colour Jarryd's car was, coz I think we may have just passed Matt and Jarryd coming up the range!" and so I called her back and I was like "Yeah I think it was them" and yeah haha. She said Tara looked right at Matt and then started telling her that it had to be him and that he'd DEFINATELY got a hair cut and it was very short! But she knew it was him by his eyes and I was like AWW!
Anyways then it took me like 30 mins to find my tent coz my father was not good with directions haha. But I got there (wasted about $15 of credit on it though) and helped finishing setting up. Then my brother came back and we all met up with my mum and walked around for a while. Briac and I then went into the store and I bought 2 Fatis Valour EPs and 3 Matt posters, and he got a Jess Hutton & the Easily Distracted shirt haha.
I talked to Jess and her bandmates (haha, that sounds so groupie of me) and the other people from my school there for a while and all of a sudden I hear an FV song on the Mainstage and I jump up and run out of the Cafe to see if I can see them soundchecking haha. I couldn't but there were other girls standing trying to see too and they're like "OMG IT'S JARRYD KLAPPER I HAVE TO GET IN THERE" haha and I was like you losers! At least I know the guy. Anyways, Jess Hutton & Easily Distracted were the first band that we saw at the SU Cafe later that afternoon and during their set Briac got up and modelled it for them haha. So funny. Anyways, we went and talked to them afterwards for a bit then headed in different directions.
I just hung out between the SU Cafe and Mainstage to see if I could hear anymore snippets of what they might be playing, and they were still soundchecking til nearly 2pm when I was due to meet the other members from here going. So I wondered off to our meeting spot, and wasn't really sure if it was them when I walked over coz I hadn't even met any of them, and Hannah was going to be running late, so I stood back and then Tash says "Hey, are you Yazzi?" and I was like "Yes!!! Are you the other forumers?" haha. Then she introduced me to everyone and we had a little chat. Hannah was still setting up her tent at this point, so I said that I would wait for her there and we'd meet up again later. So I hang out at the Cafe for like another 45 mins waiting for Hannah to finish setting up her tent & get her wristband and stuff. When we met we didn't really have anywhere to be, coz we hadn't heard of any of the other bands playing at that timeslot, so we just wondered around and looked at all the different stages; familiarized ourselves with the set up for this year's festival! Then we decided to go watch the Red Frog Crew do haircuts haha! SO FUNNY. One guy had this big fro and he got the top part only shaved, so it was like he was bald heh! Then a girl got a really bad undercut... luckily she could wear her hair out though
Oh yeah and when we were wondering around aimlessly, we were leaving the Red Frogs area and we saw Jarryd and were like "Hey Jarryd!! How's it going?" and chatted for a few before I think it was Shane that came over and said they had to go back to the hotel for something, so he said goodbye and we let him go!
After this we decided it was time to head over to the mainstage, coz we didn't have anything in particular planned until it started, but the gates opened at around 4pm. So we just hung around, I got sunburnt and took a few pics. At 4:30pm this chick named Claire Hazzard started playing and she was pretty good. I went and talked to my parents for a while coz they were sitting there too, but up higher on the hill and then I went back down to the front of the stage for Compliments of Gus at 5:10pm!!!
Compliments of Gus were easily one of the most amusing bands of the whole festival!!! They were funny and their lead singer was such an idiot! He skulled a whole bottle of that vitamin water stuff coz we were yelling SKULL SKULL SKULL SKULL! He said he probably wouldn't be able to play for the rest of the set, but we were like whatever it's nearly over anyways heh! And the keyboard dude was rockin' out so hard that his keyboard nearly fell off the stage haha, good times!
After them Nikki Kummerow played one song, which kinda sucked coz she's an amazing singer & should have got a heaps longer set on Mainstage! Anyways, I'm pretty sure she had hair extensions in coz her hair was VERY long haha. Then The Lads from NZ came out and they were funny!!! They had a pretty good set too. I'd taken enough pics by the end of their set to finish an SD card on my SLR haha... oops?
So anyways, after The Lads set, everyone started chanting for Matt (except us coz we were like NO!!! FV is before Matt) and when Jarryd walked on stage there were like a million people screaming for him and they're all like "OMG IT'S MATT CORBY" and we've just turned around and gone, "Dude... That's Jarryd Klapper" and they were like "Wtf? Who is that?" and we're like "Um... his band is playing before Matt" and they were like "but Matt has that hair" and we were like... "ah... NO!" haha. It was pretty funny, but VERY annoying! So FV made sure everything was cool onstage and opened with Hold Me Now. Everyone started dancing around and rocking out and they had such a good vibe on stage. I'm pretty sure all the people that were there for Matt (I'm not kidding when I say it didn't look like there was much more room on the whole grassed field) were converted to Fatis Valour fans!!! Then they played These Confusions and started Surrounded By City Lights and it was then that Matt joined them on stage.
Having heard both Matt's and FV's version of SBCL I was kinda expecting it, but it took all the little fangirls a while to realize that Matt was onstage and there was an immediate "OMGMATTCUTHISHAIR" murmur in the crowd. But I was too busy taking pictures to really notice anything but how good I thought the change was and how amazing the song itself was hah. After SBCL had finished Matt played Stories of Poetry (which we still didn't know the name of then) and High & Dry with Jarryd on the piano. Haha, I think it was in High & Dry that the mic went crazy and the dude came on stage to fix it & Matt was like "Nah, it's alright, thanks anyway" hehe. Sooo funny! In between songs Matt was funny, saying he was on a show called "The Biggest Loser" and that if Jarryd had said "Is there a dog in here just now" (from Death of a Funeral- coz he loves that movie) he was gonna give him $50 & so he said it after, but Matt was like "It doesn't count anymore" haha. Then Sam did the drum thing & Matt says "I said I'd give Sam $50 if he did that too". And he also lost his tuner, but I think Jarryd gave him his, and Matt lost his quitar pick but had another one, then Jarryd lost his pick and Matt loned him his and says "fine I'll just have to play with my fingers then!" haha. And it was funny coz before High and Dry he goes "Does anyone here like Radiohead" and all these teenies scream and he says "you're too young for radiohead" ahaha, but someone else goes "no you're too young for radiohead" i think me and hannah just about lost it bahaha! After that he played The Scientist but the two songs kinda connected. Then Jarryd joked with the crowd asking them if there was a race to see who could get Matt Corby footage on youtube fastest and Matt was like "let's try slowest" bahaha and Jarryd goes "It's probably already there" and Matt kept going on about how it should be the slowest person and take like 20 years aha. Then he closed with Bittersweet Symphony. So good!!! (Yeah some of that's a bit out of order, but you get the point haha).
So anyways, after that we were all pretty hungry and wanted to get out. But everyone else was leaving too... I felt kinda bad for newworldson who was playing next, but i needed food haha. So I went with Hannah and her friend Elsa after giving my mum and dad my camera back. I got a pie from the SU Cafe, and I don't really remember what they got, but we went and sat up at the Hammered Silver Epicentre and went up the front row coz we felt like it and ate, then talked for a good 45 minutes before we noticed Jarryd in the corner getting ready to go onstage haha. We were all like "Whattttttttttt?" coz Jarryd's name wasn't in the program. So we're sitting there and he's tuning his guitar and Marlei and her friends and a few other people come sit in the row behind us and Marlei looks right at me and I'm like "hi" and she just looks at me weird ahaha and so i look back to the front and Jarryd starts singing Umbrella and all 3 of us in the front row were singing along haha. Then Shelly joined him on stage and they sang a couple of random songs none of us knew, before Hannah requested "So Close" and Shelly was like "hey I know that song" and so they played it and Shelly sang all of about 6 lines haha. Then they sang "I Hate That I Love You" and that was it!!! It was pretty funny though coz when they started to play there was pretty much just us and their friends in the crowd and as the show went on the whole crowd filled up! When we looked around at the end we were like "Say what now!? When did they all get here?" haha. Coz yeah... word spread quickly that Jarryd was playing methinks
Anyways we hung around for a bit coz I wanted to see if Jarryd could sign Heather's CD and one for Tara and my friend Sami, so we waited patiently for him to pack up. During this time we talked to a girl on the Falling Short Street Team who wanted Jarryd to sign her shirt & claimed also that she knew him from somewhere hah, so we were like yeah sure whatever and waited out turn. I got him to sign all 3 CDs and let me tell you they were random & funny as anything!!! Then he signed Hannah's shirt and said he had to go coz he hadn't eaten dinner yet & we were like "OMG Jarryd! It's nearly 10pm" so we let the poor boy go and eat food. Haha.
So we wondered down to MxPx and jumped our way through the crowd to nearly the front. We only really knew the last 3 songs they played haha, but it was still awesome!!! Except for some dude almost fainting in my arms I was like
"Stand up boy!!" but eventually his friend realized he was about to pass out and was like OMG, thanks for holding him up and I was like
okkkkk.
Haha, after MxPx was over we went into the Superstore again (if I laugh the only person that would possible get this is Heather - tis a Canadian thing) and were looking at CDs and stuffs and this guy comes up to us and is like "Hi! My name is Zach Almond, what's your names?" and shakes our hands and we are like "um..." and introduce ourselves. And he's all hyper/uptempo/happy and we're all gross and sweaty from the mosh haha. Anyways turns out he played a show earlier in the day and is signed with Aisle 6 which sponsors a stage at AGMF and we were like "that's heaps cool" but he was only playing that one show which we missed, so that kinda sucked. But he was from Texas and told us to buy his CD coz if he sold enough he could fly him mummy over
we were all just like AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW ehehehe. Soooo cute. So anyway he told us if we bought it and hated it to add him to myspace and told him it sucked and he would give us our money back, then he bid us goodbye and went to chat with someone else and we stood there contemplating it for a good 5 minutes before deciding to get it later on the weekend if we still had money.
Then we bought whatever it was we were getting and found the showers before heading to bed.
SATURDAY
Saturday... was VERY long haha. I was gonna meet Hannah and Elsa at Aisle 6 to see Any Given Day at 9:30am, but the Aisle 6 stage didn't open til heaps later, and it was Cardboard Castle straight up. So while I waited for the girls and the stage, I messaged about a thousand of you haha. Coz my phone was dead by the end of last night & I hadnt told anyone about our random Jarryd gig haha. So yeahhh, then I had to call someone to give a number and yada yada yada. I was kinda relieved when the Aisle 6 opened coz it was getting hot outside. Cardboard Castle were really good and Elsa and I headbanged a lot ahah. Twas awesome fun
After their set we decided to leave and go to the Dent St. stage and as we were walking there, these random guys infront of us had a guitar and were playing Save Tonight so we joined in hehe. Twas awesome fun.
When we got to Dent St. Planet of the Stereos still hadn't gone on yet, but we could see FV get there. We went and got a spot up pretty close to the stage and hung out. PotS played and we kinda shuffled forward a bit after their set coz SO many more people came. I'm not even kidding. Sam and James were standing over to the side during the PotS gig and nodding along to the music hehe, twas cool. Then we noticed James was wearing bobby pins in his hair to keep it outta his eyes
Anyways, the crowd would have tripled easily between PotS and FV which was AWESOME. We sat right infront so noone could steal our optimal picture taking positions haha. I think they opened with These Confusions on Saturday, and then played Hold Me Now before playing a new song (which at that point we had no idea what it was called). Then they played Surrounded By City Lights and closed with a cover of Neil Young's Old Man. If you weren't there, you have no idea how utterly halarious Jarryd was. I'm pretty sure he gave his tuner to Matt or something coz he tuned by ear between every single song and while he was tuning he talked about the most random things. Like they were playing right beside the shopping centre and he says "So in that song I was just looking at the wall going 'whoa that's a big wall'"
and he was like "Noone get too close, coz I tend to reflect the sun and you will get burnt from me reflecting it onto you. I take full responsibility for anyone that get's burnt during this set today" ahaha. At the time we laughed coz it was funny and as the set went on we could actually see Jarryd's skin turning redder & burning, but we didn't know Hannah would be just as severely burnt either haha!!!
After FV were done their set we up and moved it on inside where there were already masses or people crowding around to see the artists at the Shopping Centre. Nikki and her friend played first and they were really good. They must have played about 4 songs or so and we saw Zach from last night listening on the other side of the stage. During their set we saw Jarryd in about 5 different parts of the shopping centre talking on the phone, to other people and just running around like a maniac in general coz he had to organize how Matt was getting in and stuff I suppose. Coz after Nikki's set he went on stage and tuned Matt's guitar and stuff for him and sat at the back to make sure he could get in ok. When Matt came he was surrounded by like 5 security guards and they had to block any place where people might be able to get through. Matt was really cute though! When he walked on stage he looked up at the second floor and was all like "wow" hehe. It sucked a LOT that there were so many retarted teenies there though
gah it was sooooo loud! Very, very annoying! His set was really awesome though, he played Superstitious, It's Too Late, Songs of Poetry and The Blower's Daughter
All amazingly may I add, but he didn't really get to talk much... I just remember him making the joke about being on the Biggest Loser again aha. Anywayyy, after he was done singing he left pretty much straight away with all his security around him again. It was sooo sad. He couldn't have walked anywhere by himself at AGMF at all.
We all kinda got together over the side where everyone was gathering after Matt's set and got to talk to Shane and Sam from Fatis Valour and get pics with them. And let me tell you Sam put on the most GIGANTIC smile you have ever seen in all his pics! Twas unbelievably cute!!! And the pic I have of Sam & Hannah they look like siblings hehe. Then we talked to Shelly for a while coz she was standing around and told her her gig last night was really good. And she was like "aww thanks guys, we're playing again tonight, you should come watch"and we were like "yeah alright" and so yeahh... we just hung around for a while waiting for someone else to talk to before Shane agreed to pose with us too & we did something cool with him which we aren't prepared to share for a few more weeks lol. Don't worry though, you will find out!!! Oh yeah and Jarryd got a pic with the boost juice gorilla thing aha and made a growly face lol! It was funnehh!
We all departed after this coz we had to go to the loo & were starved!!! Hannah, Elsa and I got Subway for lunch and then wondered back over to the Festival site. We watched Ripple Effect at Aisle 6 and Zach screamo-ed a little for them aha, which we found highly amusing coz it was Zach
then we wondered over to the SU Cafe, before realising the person we wanted to see was at the Epicentre, so we walked up there instead. We sat in the front row and got into Trent Williams set. It was really cool and both Hannah and Elsa enjoyed it and were glad I made them go heh. Trent had added me on myspace about ohh... 4 months ago or something and I was very much looking forward to seeing him perform and was totally not disappointed!!! I took some happy snaps and then after he was done went over and introduced myself and said he's added me to myspace & we'd really enjoyed his set.
Then we went to wonder around for a while, but nothing was really on, so we went up tent and Laura called us haha then to the showers and Hannah was charging her phone, and Elsa was about to start restraightening her hair when I pulled out the program and asked what the time was. Hannah told me it was 6:15pm and I was like "OMG!!! JARRYD AND MARLEI HAVE ALREADY STARTED" and we were like "NOOOO!!!" So we sprinted our guts out to get down there intime and plonked ourselves on the grass in the front of the front row at the Cafe. We were gonna ask Jarryd for an award for being so dedicated, running for 3 mins coz we thought we were late for his show ahaha, but we didn't. Hannah, I apologise... it's only now I realised that they started at 6:20 LMAO! Anyways, when we got there he was still tuning. That was a major theme of his for the weekend haha. But it was funny coz he was sitting there in his jeans and shirt and had his hoodie on underneath and was wearing his hood up and I was like "ahaha I bet he's sunburnt and is trying to hide himself" and when we saw him later HE TOTALLY WAS. Anyway Marlei played a song on piano while Jarryd was still tuning his guitar, and she thought he was playing with her and said to the crowd how good it was coz he didn't even know it and Jarryd was like "I wasn't even playing" LOL. He didn't really talk in the mic though. They played about 7 songs, some of which I knew, some of which I didn't, all of which were amazing
After Marlei & Jarryd's set was over, we went to get pizza for dinner and took it to the mainstage, sat down and ate it while watching Alabaster Box and Newsboys. Pretty good stuff, but once we were done, we went to the SU Cafe thinking we were going to see Ellington, but NOOO! Ellington are not there, and Stu Larsen is playing so we were like "wtfff?" so we went to Metro and watched Compliments of Gus again instead heh. And when the singer went to drink something Hannah and I start yelling out SKULL SKULL SKULL SKULL and he's like "I'm not skulling it!!" so we yell "DO IT!" haha. He was such a party pooper
We trecked over to the BigTop and watched the last 2 or 3 songs of Falling Short and then went and stood at the back with my brother and his friend Dave who we used to play tennis with & he's stayed at our place before and stuff. He used to live in Towoomba and just moved to Brissie this year and he's been to tonnes of AGMFs before so he was like "Oh I hear from Briac you're getting guitar lessons from Jarryd Klapper" and I was like "Yeah he's awesome" and he starts telling me about how he was a big fan of Jarryd's and stuff since the first time he played at AGMF and how he was wondering how much it cost for my lessons and stuff coz he wanted to get singing lessons off Jarryd! I was like "that's sooo awesome" coz he obviously really, really looks up to Jarryd and yeah it was very cool. Then Antiskeptic started to play and we finished our convo, but left a little bit before they were over coz we wanted to see Shelly & Jarryd play again.
They played a lot of the same stuff as the previous night, with a few more little extras. The whole weekend it was bugging me as to where I'd seen Shelly before and I finally got my answer. She used to play in Hillsong United and I immediately felt my stomach turn in knots coz when I went to AGMF in 2006 I was up the front for LeoNine and they were opening for Hillsong United but I had to get out before they played, and it was impossible coz of the surge of people that came between. So I had to squeeze my way out during the set with everyone staring at me & it was pretty bad!!! Yeah, so I was sitting there going "Oh gosh, I hope she doesn't remember that" lol. But I guess she didn't. And Shelly said her and Jarryd would be playing at the church about a 20 minute walk from the festival tomorrow morning and Jarryd said that we should "all make sure we have a shower before we go to church, coz there's nothing worse than sitting nect to a stinky person in a church service"
At somepoint in Jarryd and Shelly's set he was also talking about how badly sunburnt he got today, (coz Shelly wouldn't talk when he was tuning his guitar, so he talked lol) and he came up with a fantastic analogy... you will LAUGH when you hear it, but in real life it was INCREDIBLE!!! He'd already started to talk about how the sun had "attacked" him and then these two guys run across the front of the stage and one of them tackles the other one... for real... and Jarryd was like "That was like me and the sun! The guy on the bottom was me... well my nose, and the other guy was the sun" Hannah and I were KILLING ourselves laughing coz he just kept talking and mumbling on about it like a crazy obsessed fool haha! But at the same time you had to feel sorry for him coz he sounded so sad haha. Poor, poor boy Jarryd is! He's so laid back.
Anyway when the set was done it was 11pm but we wanted to talk to Jarryd so we went over and were said hey. Then Hannah told him she got burnt coz of him and he was like "Yeah sorry about that, I got pretty burnt too" and he was all bright red and we were like "Awwww poor Jarryd" and he looked oh so tired, so we're like "aww, we shall let you go" and went back into the superstore to look for some stuff and I wanted another bright shirt for Sunday, so I bought a Stand Or Fall one and yeah, then we went and got hot chocolate and talked and Jarryd and the rest of FV were still hanging around in the Cafe, and we were like "I thought Jarryd wanted to go to bed" heh. So we hung out while drinking our hot chocs and my brother joined us and then someone came up and patted his fro (yes he has a blonde afro heh) and started to talk to us with his sister. We talked about who knows how many random things, but it was totally good times and a LOT of fun. I think we ended up getting kicked out at about 12:30 aha. So then we were all majorly tired, but were like "oh we have to have a shower... Jarryd said!" so that's what we did before bed!!!
SUNDAY
Well Sunday morning was pretty laid back. I opened my little pack of Easter eggs mum gave me to bring and ate a few, but it wasn't the same haha. Then I went down to see if we were going to Jarryd and Shelly's service, but Hannah's parents wouldn't let her and Elsa go, so we went to the service at the BigTop instead. Then we went back to our tents to get some stuff and I had to rush out and get my camera from my parents coz Trent was playing right on noon and they were late which meant I missed the bit of the Celebrity Cricket I was gonna see (which apparently some of the FV boys played in). I sat in the front row of the Cafe for Trent and his mate comes up and sits next to me before Hannah & Elsa got back and he's talking to me about some stuff and I start showing him the pics I took of Trent on Saturday at his set & he was like "whoa those are amazing!" and he wanted to get my facebook/myspace stuff coz he wanted me to send him them so they could put it on Trent's site hehe. I felt uber cool & special!!! So yeah, his set was amazing, yet again and it was very fun to watch!
When Trent's set was done I went and watched Jess Hutton & Easily Distracted again for about 10 mins and by the time I was back the Cafe was FULL and I was like "uh-oh" coz I thought all those people knew about Matt performing as "Tam" but luckily they didn't haha. They were all there to watch Hot Shoe Shuffle - the tap dudes, who by the way were amazing!!! Coz a whole bunch of people left right after.
We were sitting in kinda the front row/area of where we were allowed to sit, and security made sure noone was on the front green like they were sometimes allowed to be in previous sets and I think there was our group and 2 others that knew for sure it was Matt playing and yeah they were all hush hush about it too so twas all good. When we realized where he was we started pointing him out to each other and aww twas so geeky what he was wearing - ripped jeans, white shirt, a blue hawaii hat, glasses and bare feet. He looked like some sort of beach dork, but an amazingly talented one heh. Nikki and Nathan played with him and they first sang a medley of Easter/Christian songs How Great Is Our God, Holy Is The Lamb and Fire Fall Down, then he sang Damn Straight Lucky - what we previously called the Evermore Original heh and it has a really cool ending to it!!! You guys will be blown away when you hear the whole song! And he also sang a Nikki original with her called Bring Back The Airship which Hannah LOVES before Nikki and Nathan left, then he sang Stories of Poetry all by his little self. I was sooo relieved that there was no teenie fangirl screaming and that he was actually able to get through a set relatively normally. Tash asked security if it would be possible to get a picture with him after the show, but Matt told her it wasn't I'm pretty sure coz there was too many people around, so we left it at that and went to do our own things.
I think it was here, that I ate lunch and then we went to watch Maverick before Fatis Valour played. They were pretty good but you should have seen the MASSIVE crowd Fatis Valour got!!! It must have been close to filling the BigTop, but everyone was standing, not one person was sitting! There was more people there than MxPx and the Church Service on Easter Sunday morning put together!!! It was sooo cool and when they came on stage to do their soundcheck Jarryd sang a little something into the mic & about 400 people sang it back to him and he was like like "whatttttttttttttttt" and did a double take. Then he sang something else, and even more people repeated it. Then he sang somethng trickier, repeated again... trickier, repeated again... trickier and then they lost it and he was like "ahaha, you guys suck!" lol. It was good times! So then they started playing and I don't remember what they opened with but they played everything off their album except "Check Your Phone" and they also played their new one again, which they named for us today as What You Mean To Me so both Hannah and I were wrong haha. They also played Surrounded By City Lights again I think... but I'm not sure. And before they played Hold Me Now they introduced it by saying "You may have heard this one on the radio" and I was like "I didn't know they played that on the radio!" haha. Anyways, they talked between songs ans stuff again and Jarryd was still funny, but not quite as halarious as Saturday. He did say though that he didn't think they deserved to be playing on the BigTop stage and that it should be a band called Freedom 1 and to go check them out later when they're playing at Metro. And we were just like "Awwww you guys are awesome and deserve every single fan you make!" they are soo conceited
Anyways, after FV were done their set, Tash came up to us and told us that Matt had been sitting watching and we were like "aww no way" but we knew better than to even look around for him coz we didn't want him to go running. And apparently some of the staff acted very immaturely towards him which I would have LOVED to slap them for.
Anyways so after the plug, how could we NOT go see Freedom 1? We sat around for a while in newworldson but got kinda bored, so went to Metro and the THUD of the speakers kept us awake! Freedom 1 were awesome, just as FV had said and after their show we decided that we had to meet them coz they were rad. Pete, the guitarist who was closest to us kept giving us the cutest goofiest smiles during the whole performance and I nearly got his guitar pick at the end, but it fell down behind the speaker heh. So anyways we went outside coz they had to pack up and get some stuff and they came out not too long after. While we were waiting we talked about how we'd barely seen Jarryd around all day when usually he's pop up somewheres and then he shows his sunburnt little face coz he left his bag in the Metro stage area haha. Lucky noone stole it huh? Anyways, so we talked to him for a bit, then he had to head off to eat (yeah it was a little before us tonight lol) and we bid him farewell for the time being. And we hung out til we each had a photo with every member of Freedom 1 and each had our shirts signed. Hannah was the last person to get a shirt signed by Pete and we were walking and signing, walking and signing when Pete realized that all the signatures on Hannah's shirt were upside down so he starts singing "upside down, upside down" they he goes "where is that from" and a lightbulb goes on in his head and he's like "mr squiggle!!!" and we were like OMG YES!!! So we all started to sing the Mr. Squiggle theme song and it was good times hehehe!
Then we departed from Mr Squiggle and got dinner - baked potato & corn LOL. I'm not kidding you. And when we were walking down to the main stage again later, we nearly literally ran into The Lads. We got our pic taken by one and with 2 of them haha. Coz noone else was around to take the pic LMAO. We struck up a random convo with them too about Aussie Idol and all sorts of other things!
Then we hung out at Mainstage for an hour or so, before going to a little bit of Project 86, but we got sick of them so went to Citipointe Live again. I was gonna go to the bathroom after this but decided to ran in and see how many people were around for Nikki's set before and there was a fiar few people still hanging around. It was pretty cool. Then we noticed that Matt was standing over to the side, he was wearing some black pants, a dress shirt and a beanie, with his wicked glasses hehe. He looked really happy with himself & disguise and he brought up his little laptop onstage with chord charts for Nikki's songs and everything - so funny.
They went all out on the stage decorations for Nikki which she has been going on about in her performance at Grand Central on Saturday. The made balloon pyrotechnics and cd things & included a bubble jet thing which blew bubbles!!! Twas soooo cool! Nikki played 2 songs by herself first, then got Nathan, Matt, Sam & James (from FV) to come on stage with her and play 3 more songs (I think) and Matt kept going on about how cool the bubble guy was haha! And then Nikki was saying that Matt and her had done the album covers by hand for all the CDs she had at AGMF and she said Matt's were the fat ones haha, so I was like "OMG Hannah, you got a skinny one! You could have got something Matt painted" lol. Turns out my dad got a skinny one too, but honestly i liked the fat ones, and there was a really cute one I wanted, but dad had already bought one, so I thought I'd save my money! It was the coolest set of the festival by FAR but. The very, very last song of the night was amazing though coz it was not only all of them, but also Jarryd and Shane, Marlei, most of Freedom one and tonnes of their other friends that sang from about the middle and joined in on the choruses! And apparently Jarryd only taught it to them on the side of the stage during the song!!! Twas the coolest thing I think I've ever seen!
Right after though I had to rush out but on the way I nearly ran into Jarryd and he was like "Hey Yaz!!" and I was busting SOOO bad, but I was just like "Hey! How's it going?" and yeah we chatted for about 2 seconds before I asked for a pic and Shane took it for us, then I was like "I just have to go do something" and ran off lol. Then I sprinted back and joined in all the random convos people were having. First my parents were talking to Shane about stuff and then Dad tells me he told Matt that he looked like Clark Kent and I was like
"Are you KIDDING me dad?!" Seriously, he is so embarassing
Anyway apparently Matt just laughed, then we left them talk for a while and Hannah and I went to see if we could get Nikki's signature or Matt's or to talk to some of the other people like Marlei hanging around on that side of the stage. We ended up just having a little chat with Nikki and getting her to sign some things while looking how cute Matt was trying to untangle the balloon pyrotechnics hehe, then headed back over and talked with Shane again for a bit, then to Sam. Dad asked if they usually do performances in Brisbane and Sam said not really, the only other thing they really had planned was the Huge Youth Conference (so yes FV are playing with Matt there) and he asked whether I was going and I was like "I sure am!" haha. Um... not really sure what else we talked about, but we talked for a good 10 minutes before we went to say goodbye to Jarryd and came home.
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So yeah... pretty much I had an amazing time!!! It was the coolest thing to see how big the crowds for Fatis Valour grew. It felt really cool that I actually knew someone in a band that is gonna be huge for sure really soon. All of the FV boys are so laid back and relaxing to be around though, they don't think they are big or ever will be though. They just take it as it comes which is honestly the best way to be, but if they ever get big overnight they will be in for a shock! They pulled the biggest crowds of the weekend to their Sunday show and apparently LOADS of people have been commenting the Easterfest website saying how amazing they were. And they were all the sweetest guys I think I've ever met. I had a couple of chats with Sam (their drummer) and Shane (lead guitar) and they were really cool and kinda knew who I was coz of Jarryd. Sam even asked if I was going to the Citipointe Youth Conference thing and I told him I'd definately planned on it and got my tickets! So yeah... twas pretty good.
What amazed me about the whole thing though was that I didn't realise til I came home how much they'd been getting played on 96.5fm. I told one of my friends Sami to listen to their stuff on Monday night and she's like "I've heard this song before" and I was like apparently "Hold Me Now" has been getting tonnes of air time on 96.5 and she's like "Yeah, that must be it! We listen to it at Outside School Hours Care (where she works) all the time, and I've heard it HEAPS!!! I was just like "No way, that's awesome!" It was pretty cool and exciting!
Anyways the last few days since then, I've just been uploading pic after pic for different people and at different places and been hanging out at home, trying to do stuff for uni and practising guitar, but my fingers still aren't strong and Jarryd is probably gonna be mad & disappointed tomorrow >.< but meh!
I guess this is long enough for now. I will type more on stuff sometime soon I hope! Been pretty busy!!
Hope you are all going well!
Love Yazzi xox
Well first of all, my guitar lessons with Jarryd Klapper have been going amazingly. Pretty much I've been posting a review on Matt's forum every week lol, but I guess I didnt think to transfer any across here lol. My bad. Anyways I will tell you more about that and uni later, what I really wanted to post in here was about AGMF, or Easterfest as they are calling it from now on.
so here is the story i posted on matt corby's forum, any references to "here" or "the forum" refer to there heh.
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FRIDAY
Well it all started on Friday morning. I woke up and got ready. We were supposed to be leaving at 8:00am from my place, but I don't think we got out of here until about 8:30/8:45. The trip up was kinda uneventful. I drove up with mum and my brother went up with my dad. Mum and I somehow passed them early on and at about the half way point we saw them behind us and were like "what the heck" coz they'd left a good 20 mins before us! Anyways, when we listened to Fatis Valour and Simple Plan in the car and were going up the range, I noticed a tour bus on the side of the road and looked for who's it was and it was Falling Short's haha. I was like "MUM!!! It's Falling Short!!! It looks like their tour bus broke down!" haha but she didn't pull over like I wanted her to. Instead we kept on driving and parked up the top near the camping entrance.
We walked over to where people were driving into the camping area to drop off their equipment, and then we see some people coming around into the artist only entrance and mum says to me "Yaz, that's what you have to do if you wanna meet famous people!" and I laughed at her and was like "Yeah mum!" funny thing was I actually wanted to be on the staff this year, but couldn't coz I was in Canada when they were signing people up. Oh well!
So we had to walk around the whole festival, the long way coz we didn't have our wristbands yet! Twas pretty annoying, but meh! So we got our wristbands, and mine was dark blue coz I was camping all weekend. When we were walking up to the area where the camping was, I realised I'd missed a call from Tash. I listened to the voicemail though and she was like "I was just wondering what colour Jarryd's car was, coz I think we may have just passed Matt and Jarryd coming up the range!" and so I called her back and I was like "Yeah I think it was them" and yeah haha. She said Tara looked right at Matt and then started telling her that it had to be him and that he'd DEFINATELY got a hair cut and it was very short! But she knew it was him by his eyes and I was like AWW!
Anyways then it took me like 30 mins to find my tent coz my father was not good with directions haha. But I got there (wasted about $15 of credit on it though) and helped finishing setting up. Then my brother came back and we all met up with my mum and walked around for a while. Briac and I then went into the store and I bought 2 Fatis Valour EPs and 3 Matt posters, and he got a Jess Hutton & the Easily Distracted shirt haha.
I talked to Jess and her bandmates (haha, that sounds so groupie of me) and the other people from my school there for a while and all of a sudden I hear an FV song on the Mainstage and I jump up and run out of the Cafe to see if I can see them soundchecking haha. I couldn't but there were other girls standing trying to see too and they're like "OMG IT'S JARRYD KLAPPER I HAVE TO GET IN THERE" haha and I was like you losers! At least I know the guy. Anyways, Jess Hutton & Easily Distracted were the first band that we saw at the SU Cafe later that afternoon and during their set Briac got up and modelled it for them haha. So funny. Anyways, we went and talked to them afterwards for a bit then headed in different directions.
I just hung out between the SU Cafe and Mainstage to see if I could hear anymore snippets of what they might be playing, and they were still soundchecking til nearly 2pm when I was due to meet the other members from here going. So I wondered off to our meeting spot, and wasn't really sure if it was them when I walked over coz I hadn't even met any of them, and Hannah was going to be running late, so I stood back and then Tash says "Hey, are you Yazzi?" and I was like "Yes!!! Are you the other forumers?" haha. Then she introduced me to everyone and we had a little chat. Hannah was still setting up her tent at this point, so I said that I would wait for her there and we'd meet up again later. So I hang out at the Cafe for like another 45 mins waiting for Hannah to finish setting up her tent & get her wristband and stuff. When we met we didn't really have anywhere to be, coz we hadn't heard of any of the other bands playing at that timeslot, so we just wondered around and looked at all the different stages; familiarized ourselves with the set up for this year's festival! Then we decided to go watch the Red Frog Crew do haircuts haha! SO FUNNY. One guy had this big fro and he got the top part only shaved, so it was like he was bald heh! Then a girl got a really bad undercut... luckily she could wear her hair out though
Oh yeah and when we were wondering around aimlessly, we were leaving the Red Frogs area and we saw Jarryd and were like "Hey Jarryd!! How's it going?" and chatted for a few before I think it was Shane that came over and said they had to go back to the hotel for something, so he said goodbye and we let him go!
After this we decided it was time to head over to the mainstage, coz we didn't have anything in particular planned until it started, but the gates opened at around 4pm. So we just hung around, I got sunburnt and took a few pics. At 4:30pm this chick named Claire Hazzard started playing and she was pretty good. I went and talked to my parents for a while coz they were sitting there too, but up higher on the hill and then I went back down to the front of the stage for Compliments of Gus at 5:10pm!!!
Compliments of Gus were easily one of the most amusing bands of the whole festival!!! They were funny and their lead singer was such an idiot! He skulled a whole bottle of that vitamin water stuff coz we were yelling SKULL SKULL SKULL SKULL! He said he probably wouldn't be able to play for the rest of the set, but we were like whatever it's nearly over anyways heh! And the keyboard dude was rockin' out so hard that his keyboard nearly fell off the stage haha, good times!
After them Nikki Kummerow played one song, which kinda sucked coz she's an amazing singer & should have got a heaps longer set on Mainstage! Anyways, I'm pretty sure she had hair extensions in coz her hair was VERY long haha. Then The Lads from NZ came out and they were funny!!! They had a pretty good set too. I'd taken enough pics by the end of their set to finish an SD card on my SLR haha... oops?
So anyways, after The Lads set, everyone started chanting for Matt (except us coz we were like NO!!! FV is before Matt) and when Jarryd walked on stage there were like a million people screaming for him and they're all like "OMG IT'S MATT CORBY" and we've just turned around and gone, "Dude... That's Jarryd Klapper" and they were like "Wtf? Who is that?" and we're like "Um... his band is playing before Matt" and they were like "but Matt has that hair" and we were like... "ah... NO!" haha. It was pretty funny, but VERY annoying! So FV made sure everything was cool onstage and opened with Hold Me Now. Everyone started dancing around and rocking out and they had such a good vibe on stage. I'm pretty sure all the people that were there for Matt (I'm not kidding when I say it didn't look like there was much more room on the whole grassed field) were converted to Fatis Valour fans!!! Then they played These Confusions and started Surrounded By City Lights and it was then that Matt joined them on stage.
Having heard both Matt's and FV's version of SBCL I was kinda expecting it, but it took all the little fangirls a while to realize that Matt was onstage and there was an immediate "OMGMATTCUTHISHAIR" murmur in the crowd. But I was too busy taking pictures to really notice anything but how good I thought the change was and how amazing the song itself was hah. After SBCL had finished Matt played Stories of Poetry (which we still didn't know the name of then) and High & Dry with Jarryd on the piano. Haha, I think it was in High & Dry that the mic went crazy and the dude came on stage to fix it & Matt was like "Nah, it's alright, thanks anyway" hehe. Sooo funny! In between songs Matt was funny, saying he was on a show called "The Biggest Loser" and that if Jarryd had said "Is there a dog in here just now" (from Death of a Funeral- coz he loves that movie) he was gonna give him $50 & so he said it after, but Matt was like "It doesn't count anymore" haha. Then Sam did the drum thing & Matt says "I said I'd give Sam $50 if he did that too". And he also lost his tuner, but I think Jarryd gave him his, and Matt lost his quitar pick but had another one, then Jarryd lost his pick and Matt loned him his and says "fine I'll just have to play with my fingers then!" haha. And it was funny coz before High and Dry he goes "Does anyone here like Radiohead" and all these teenies scream and he says "you're too young for radiohead" ahaha, but someone else goes "no you're too young for radiohead" i think me and hannah just about lost it bahaha! After that he played The Scientist but the two songs kinda connected. Then Jarryd joked with the crowd asking them if there was a race to see who could get Matt Corby footage on youtube fastest and Matt was like "let's try slowest" bahaha and Jarryd goes "It's probably already there" and Matt kept going on about how it should be the slowest person and take like 20 years aha. Then he closed with Bittersweet Symphony. So good!!! (Yeah some of that's a bit out of order, but you get the point haha).
So anyways, after that we were all pretty hungry and wanted to get out. But everyone else was leaving too... I felt kinda bad for newworldson who was playing next, but i needed food haha. So I went with Hannah and her friend Elsa after giving my mum and dad my camera back. I got a pie from the SU Cafe, and I don't really remember what they got, but we went and sat up at the Hammered Silver Epicentre and went up the front row coz we felt like it and ate, then talked for a good 45 minutes before we noticed Jarryd in the corner getting ready to go onstage haha. We were all like "Whattttttttttt?" coz Jarryd's name wasn't in the program. So we're sitting there and he's tuning his guitar and Marlei and her friends and a few other people come sit in the row behind us and Marlei looks right at me and I'm like "hi" and she just looks at me weird ahaha and so i look back to the front and Jarryd starts singing Umbrella and all 3 of us in the front row were singing along haha. Then Shelly joined him on stage and they sang a couple of random songs none of us knew, before Hannah requested "So Close" and Shelly was like "hey I know that song" and so they played it and Shelly sang all of about 6 lines haha. Then they sang "I Hate That I Love You" and that was it!!! It was pretty funny though coz when they started to play there was pretty much just us and their friends in the crowd and as the show went on the whole crowd filled up! When we looked around at the end we were like "Say what now!? When did they all get here?" haha. Coz yeah... word spread quickly that Jarryd was playing methinks
Anyways we hung around for a bit coz I wanted to see if Jarryd could sign Heather's CD and one for Tara and my friend Sami, so we waited patiently for him to pack up. During this time we talked to a girl on the Falling Short Street Team who wanted Jarryd to sign her shirt & claimed also that she knew him from somewhere hah, so we were like yeah sure whatever and waited out turn. I got him to sign all 3 CDs and let me tell you they were random & funny as anything!!! Then he signed Hannah's shirt and said he had to go coz he hadn't eaten dinner yet & we were like "OMG Jarryd! It's nearly 10pm" so we let the poor boy go and eat food. Haha.
So we wondered down to MxPx and jumped our way through the crowd to nearly the front. We only really knew the last 3 songs they played haha, but it was still awesome!!! Except for some dude almost fainting in my arms I was like
"Stand up boy!!" but eventually his friend realized he was about to pass out and was like OMG, thanks for holding him up and I was like
okkkkk.
Haha, after MxPx was over we went into the Superstore again (if I laugh the only person that would possible get this is Heather - tis a Canadian thing) and were looking at CDs and stuffs and this guy comes up to us and is like "Hi! My name is Zach Almond, what's your names?" and shakes our hands and we are like "um..." and introduce ourselves. And he's all hyper/uptempo/happy and we're all gross and sweaty from the mosh haha. Anyways turns out he played a show earlier in the day and is signed with Aisle 6 which sponsors a stage at AGMF and we were like "that's heaps cool" but he was only playing that one show which we missed, so that kinda sucked. But he was from Texas and told us to buy his CD coz if he sold enough he could fly him mummy over
we were all just like AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW ehehehe. Soooo cute. So anyway he told us if we bought it and hated it to add him to myspace and told him it sucked and he would give us our money back, then he bid us goodbye and went to chat with someone else and we stood there contemplating it for a good 5 minutes before deciding to get it later on the weekend if we still had money.
Then we bought whatever it was we were getting and found the showers before heading to bed.
SATURDAY
Saturday... was VERY long haha. I was gonna meet Hannah and Elsa at Aisle 6 to see Any Given Day at 9:30am, but the Aisle 6 stage didn't open til heaps later, and it was Cardboard Castle straight up. So while I waited for the girls and the stage, I messaged about a thousand of you haha. Coz my phone was dead by the end of last night & I hadnt told anyone about our random Jarryd gig haha. So yeahhh, then I had to call someone to give a number and yada yada yada. I was kinda relieved when the Aisle 6 opened coz it was getting hot outside. Cardboard Castle were really good and Elsa and I headbanged a lot ahah. Twas awesome fun
After their set we decided to leave and go to the Dent St. stage and as we were walking there, these random guys infront of us had a guitar and were playing Save Tonight so we joined in hehe. Twas awesome fun.
When we got to Dent St. Planet of the Stereos still hadn't gone on yet, but we could see FV get there. We went and got a spot up pretty close to the stage and hung out. PotS played and we kinda shuffled forward a bit after their set coz SO many more people came. I'm not even kidding. Sam and James were standing over to the side during the PotS gig and nodding along to the music hehe, twas cool. Then we noticed James was wearing bobby pins in his hair to keep it outta his eyes
Anyways, the crowd would have tripled easily between PotS and FV which was AWESOME. We sat right infront so noone could steal our optimal picture taking positions haha. I think they opened with These Confusions on Saturday, and then played Hold Me Now before playing a new song (which at that point we had no idea what it was called). Then they played Surrounded By City Lights and closed with a cover of Neil Young's Old Man. If you weren't there, you have no idea how utterly halarious Jarryd was. I'm pretty sure he gave his tuner to Matt or something coz he tuned by ear between every single song and while he was tuning he talked about the most random things. Like they were playing right beside the shopping centre and he says "So in that song I was just looking at the wall going 'whoa that's a big wall'"
and he was like "Noone get too close, coz I tend to reflect the sun and you will get burnt from me reflecting it onto you. I take full responsibility for anyone that get's burnt during this set today" ahaha. At the time we laughed coz it was funny and as the set went on we could actually see Jarryd's skin turning redder & burning, but we didn't know Hannah would be just as severely burnt either haha!!!
After FV were done their set we up and moved it on inside where there were already masses or people crowding around to see the artists at the Shopping Centre. Nikki and her friend played first and they were really good. They must have played about 4 songs or so and we saw Zach from last night listening on the other side of the stage. During their set we saw Jarryd in about 5 different parts of the shopping centre talking on the phone, to other people and just running around like a maniac in general coz he had to organize how Matt was getting in and stuff I suppose. Coz after Nikki's set he went on stage and tuned Matt's guitar and stuff for him and sat at the back to make sure he could get in ok. When Matt came he was surrounded by like 5 security guards and they had to block any place where people might be able to get through. Matt was really cute though! When he walked on stage he looked up at the second floor and was all like "wow" hehe. It sucked a LOT that there were so many retarted teenies there though
gah it was sooooo loud! Very, very annoying! His set was really awesome though, he played Superstitious, It's Too Late, Songs of Poetry and The Blower's Daughter
All amazingly may I add, but he didn't really get to talk much... I just remember him making the joke about being on the Biggest Loser again aha. Anywayyy, after he was done singing he left pretty much straight away with all his security around him again. It was sooo sad. He couldn't have walked anywhere by himself at AGMF at all.
We all kinda got together over the side where everyone was gathering after Matt's set and got to talk to Shane and Sam from Fatis Valour and get pics with them. And let me tell you Sam put on the most GIGANTIC smile you have ever seen in all his pics! Twas unbelievably cute!!! And the pic I have of Sam & Hannah they look like siblings hehe. Then we talked to Shelly for a while coz she was standing around and told her her gig last night was really good. And she was like "aww thanks guys, we're playing again tonight, you should come watch"and we were like "yeah alright" and so yeahh... we just hung around for a while waiting for someone else to talk to before Shane agreed to pose with us too & we did something cool with him which we aren't prepared to share for a few more weeks lol. Don't worry though, you will find out!!! Oh yeah and Jarryd got a pic with the boost juice gorilla thing aha and made a growly face lol! It was funnehh!
We all departed after this coz we had to go to the loo & were starved!!! Hannah, Elsa and I got Subway for lunch and then wondered back over to the Festival site. We watched Ripple Effect at Aisle 6 and Zach screamo-ed a little for them aha, which we found highly amusing coz it was Zach
then we wondered over to the SU Cafe, before realising the person we wanted to see was at the Epicentre, so we walked up there instead. We sat in the front row and got into Trent Williams set. It was really cool and both Hannah and Elsa enjoyed it and were glad I made them go heh. Trent had added me on myspace about ohh... 4 months ago or something and I was very much looking forward to seeing him perform and was totally not disappointed!!! I took some happy snaps and then after he was done went over and introduced myself and said he's added me to myspace & we'd really enjoyed his set.
Then we went to wonder around for a while, but nothing was really on, so we went up tent and Laura called us haha then to the showers and Hannah was charging her phone, and Elsa was about to start restraightening her hair when I pulled out the program and asked what the time was. Hannah told me it was 6:15pm and I was like "OMG!!! JARRYD AND MARLEI HAVE ALREADY STARTED" and we were like "NOOOO!!!" So we sprinted our guts out to get down there intime and plonked ourselves on the grass in the front of the front row at the Cafe. We were gonna ask Jarryd for an award for being so dedicated, running for 3 mins coz we thought we were late for his show ahaha, but we didn't. Hannah, I apologise... it's only now I realised that they started at 6:20 LMAO! Anyways, when we got there he was still tuning. That was a major theme of his for the weekend haha. But it was funny coz he was sitting there in his jeans and shirt and had his hoodie on underneath and was wearing his hood up and I was like "ahaha I bet he's sunburnt and is trying to hide himself" and when we saw him later HE TOTALLY WAS. Anyway Marlei played a song on piano while Jarryd was still tuning his guitar, and she thought he was playing with her and said to the crowd how good it was coz he didn't even know it and Jarryd was like "I wasn't even playing" LOL. He didn't really talk in the mic though. They played about 7 songs, some of which I knew, some of which I didn't, all of which were amazing
After Marlei & Jarryd's set was over, we went to get pizza for dinner and took it to the mainstage, sat down and ate it while watching Alabaster Box and Newsboys. Pretty good stuff, but once we were done, we went to the SU Cafe thinking we were going to see Ellington, but NOOO! Ellington are not there, and Stu Larsen is playing so we were like "wtfff?" so we went to Metro and watched Compliments of Gus again instead heh. And when the singer went to drink something Hannah and I start yelling out SKULL SKULL SKULL SKULL and he's like "I'm not skulling it!!" so we yell "DO IT!" haha. He was such a party pooper
We trecked over to the BigTop and watched the last 2 or 3 songs of Falling Short and then went and stood at the back with my brother and his friend Dave who we used to play tennis with & he's stayed at our place before and stuff. He used to live in Towoomba and just moved to Brissie this year and he's been to tonnes of AGMFs before so he was like "Oh I hear from Briac you're getting guitar lessons from Jarryd Klapper" and I was like "Yeah he's awesome" and he starts telling me about how he was a big fan of Jarryd's and stuff since the first time he played at AGMF and how he was wondering how much it cost for my lessons and stuff coz he wanted to get singing lessons off Jarryd! I was like "that's sooo awesome" coz he obviously really, really looks up to Jarryd and yeah it was very cool. Then Antiskeptic started to play and we finished our convo, but left a little bit before they were over coz we wanted to see Shelly & Jarryd play again.
They played a lot of the same stuff as the previous night, with a few more little extras. The whole weekend it was bugging me as to where I'd seen Shelly before and I finally got my answer. She used to play in Hillsong United and I immediately felt my stomach turn in knots coz when I went to AGMF in 2006 I was up the front for LeoNine and they were opening for Hillsong United but I had to get out before they played, and it was impossible coz of the surge of people that came between. So I had to squeeze my way out during the set with everyone staring at me & it was pretty bad!!! Yeah, so I was sitting there going "Oh gosh, I hope she doesn't remember that" lol. But I guess she didn't. And Shelly said her and Jarryd would be playing at the church about a 20 minute walk from the festival tomorrow morning and Jarryd said that we should "all make sure we have a shower before we go to church, coz there's nothing worse than sitting nect to a stinky person in a church service"
At somepoint in Jarryd and Shelly's set he was also talking about how badly sunburnt he got today, (coz Shelly wouldn't talk when he was tuning his guitar, so he talked lol) and he came up with a fantastic analogy... you will LAUGH when you hear it, but in real life it was INCREDIBLE!!! He'd already started to talk about how the sun had "attacked" him and then these two guys run across the front of the stage and one of them tackles the other one... for real... and Jarryd was like "That was like me and the sun! The guy on the bottom was me... well my nose, and the other guy was the sun" Hannah and I were KILLING ourselves laughing coz he just kept talking and mumbling on about it like a crazy obsessed fool haha! But at the same time you had to feel sorry for him coz he sounded so sad haha. Poor, poor boy Jarryd is! He's so laid back.
Anyway when the set was done it was 11pm but we wanted to talk to Jarryd so we went over and were said hey. Then Hannah told him she got burnt coz of him and he was like "Yeah sorry about that, I got pretty burnt too" and he was all bright red and we were like "Awwww poor Jarryd" and he looked oh so tired, so we're like "aww, we shall let you go" and went back into the superstore to look for some stuff and I wanted another bright shirt for Sunday, so I bought a Stand Or Fall one and yeah, then we went and got hot chocolate and talked and Jarryd and the rest of FV were still hanging around in the Cafe, and we were like "I thought Jarryd wanted to go to bed" heh. So we hung out while drinking our hot chocs and my brother joined us and then someone came up and patted his fro (yes he has a blonde afro heh) and started to talk to us with his sister. We talked about who knows how many random things, but it was totally good times and a LOT of fun. I think we ended up getting kicked out at about 12:30 aha. So then we were all majorly tired, but were like "oh we have to have a shower... Jarryd said!" so that's what we did before bed!!!
SUNDAY
Well Sunday morning was pretty laid back. I opened my little pack of Easter eggs mum gave me to bring and ate a few, but it wasn't the same haha. Then I went down to see if we were going to Jarryd and Shelly's service, but Hannah's parents wouldn't let her and Elsa go, so we went to the service at the BigTop instead. Then we went back to our tents to get some stuff and I had to rush out and get my camera from my parents coz Trent was playing right on noon and they were late which meant I missed the bit of the Celebrity Cricket I was gonna see (which apparently some of the FV boys played in). I sat in the front row of the Cafe for Trent and his mate comes up and sits next to me before Hannah & Elsa got back and he's talking to me about some stuff and I start showing him the pics I took of Trent on Saturday at his set & he was like "whoa those are amazing!" and he wanted to get my facebook/myspace stuff coz he wanted me to send him them so they could put it on Trent's site hehe. I felt uber cool & special!!! So yeah, his set was amazing, yet again and it was very fun to watch!
When Trent's set was done I went and watched Jess Hutton & Easily Distracted again for about 10 mins and by the time I was back the Cafe was FULL and I was like "uh-oh" coz I thought all those people knew about Matt performing as "Tam" but luckily they didn't haha. They were all there to watch Hot Shoe Shuffle - the tap dudes, who by the way were amazing!!! Coz a whole bunch of people left right after.
We were sitting in kinda the front row/area of where we were allowed to sit, and security made sure noone was on the front green like they were sometimes allowed to be in previous sets and I think there was our group and 2 others that knew for sure it was Matt playing and yeah they were all hush hush about it too so twas all good. When we realized where he was we started pointing him out to each other and aww twas so geeky what he was wearing - ripped jeans, white shirt, a blue hawaii hat, glasses and bare feet. He looked like some sort of beach dork, but an amazingly talented one heh. Nikki and Nathan played with him and they first sang a medley of Easter/Christian songs How Great Is Our God, Holy Is The Lamb and Fire Fall Down, then he sang Damn Straight Lucky - what we previously called the Evermore Original heh and it has a really cool ending to it!!! You guys will be blown away when you hear the whole song! And he also sang a Nikki original with her called Bring Back The Airship which Hannah LOVES before Nikki and Nathan left, then he sang Stories of Poetry all by his little self. I was sooo relieved that there was no teenie fangirl screaming and that he was actually able to get through a set relatively normally. Tash asked security if it would be possible to get a picture with him after the show, but Matt told her it wasn't I'm pretty sure coz there was too many people around, so we left it at that and went to do our own things.
I think it was here, that I ate lunch and then we went to watch Maverick before Fatis Valour played. They were pretty good but you should have seen the MASSIVE crowd Fatis Valour got!!! It must have been close to filling the BigTop, but everyone was standing, not one person was sitting! There was more people there than MxPx and the Church Service on Easter Sunday morning put together!!! It was sooo cool and when they came on stage to do their soundcheck Jarryd sang a little something into the mic & about 400 people sang it back to him and he was like like "whatttttttttttttttt" and did a double take. Then he sang something else, and even more people repeated it. Then he sang somethng trickier, repeated again... trickier, repeated again... trickier and then they lost it and he was like "ahaha, you guys suck!" lol. It was good times! So then they started playing and I don't remember what they opened with but they played everything off their album except "Check Your Phone" and they also played their new one again, which they named for us today as What You Mean To Me so both Hannah and I were wrong haha. They also played Surrounded By City Lights again I think... but I'm not sure. And before they played Hold Me Now they introduced it by saying "You may have heard this one on the radio" and I was like "I didn't know they played that on the radio!" haha. Anyways, they talked between songs ans stuff again and Jarryd was still funny, but not quite as halarious as Saturday. He did say though that he didn't think they deserved to be playing on the BigTop stage and that it should be a band called Freedom 1 and to go check them out later when they're playing at Metro. And we were just like "Awwww you guys are awesome and deserve every single fan you make!" they are soo conceited
Anyways, after FV were done their set, Tash came up to us and told us that Matt had been sitting watching and we were like "aww no way" but we knew better than to even look around for him coz we didn't want him to go running. And apparently some of the staff acted very immaturely towards him which I would have LOVED to slap them for.
Anyways so after the plug, how could we NOT go see Freedom 1? We sat around for a while in newworldson but got kinda bored, so went to Metro and the THUD of the speakers kept us awake! Freedom 1 were awesome, just as FV had said and after their show we decided that we had to meet them coz they were rad. Pete, the guitarist who was closest to us kept giving us the cutest goofiest smiles during the whole performance and I nearly got his guitar pick at the end, but it fell down behind the speaker heh. So anyways we went outside coz they had to pack up and get some stuff and they came out not too long after. While we were waiting we talked about how we'd barely seen Jarryd around all day when usually he's pop up somewheres and then he shows his sunburnt little face coz he left his bag in the Metro stage area haha. Lucky noone stole it huh? Anyways, so we talked to him for a bit, then he had to head off to eat (yeah it was a little before us tonight lol) and we bid him farewell for the time being. And we hung out til we each had a photo with every member of Freedom 1 and each had our shirts signed. Hannah was the last person to get a shirt signed by Pete and we were walking and signing, walking and signing when Pete realized that all the signatures on Hannah's shirt were upside down so he starts singing "upside down, upside down" they he goes "where is that from" and a lightbulb goes on in his head and he's like "mr squiggle!!!" and we were like OMG YES!!! So we all started to sing the Mr. Squiggle theme song and it was good times hehehe!
Then we departed from Mr Squiggle and got dinner - baked potato & corn LOL. I'm not kidding you. And when we were walking down to the main stage again later, we nearly literally ran into The Lads. We got our pic taken by one and with 2 of them haha. Coz noone else was around to take the pic LMAO. We struck up a random convo with them too about Aussie Idol and all sorts of other things!
Then we hung out at Mainstage for an hour or so, before going to a little bit of Project 86, but we got sick of them so went to Citipointe Live again. I was gonna go to the bathroom after this but decided to ran in and see how many people were around for Nikki's set before and there was a fiar few people still hanging around. It was pretty cool. Then we noticed that Matt was standing over to the side, he was wearing some black pants, a dress shirt and a beanie, with his wicked glasses hehe. He looked really happy with himself & disguise and he brought up his little laptop onstage with chord charts for Nikki's songs and everything - so funny.
They went all out on the stage decorations for Nikki which she has been going on about in her performance at Grand Central on Saturday. The made balloon pyrotechnics and cd things & included a bubble jet thing which blew bubbles!!! Twas soooo cool! Nikki played 2 songs by herself first, then got Nathan, Matt, Sam & James (from FV) to come on stage with her and play 3 more songs (I think) and Matt kept going on about how cool the bubble guy was haha! And then Nikki was saying that Matt and her had done the album covers by hand for all the CDs she had at AGMF and she said Matt's were the fat ones haha, so I was like "OMG Hannah, you got a skinny one! You could have got something Matt painted" lol. Turns out my dad got a skinny one too, but honestly i liked the fat ones, and there was a really cute one I wanted, but dad had already bought one, so I thought I'd save my money! It was the coolest set of the festival by FAR but. The very, very last song of the night was amazing though coz it was not only all of them, but also Jarryd and Shane, Marlei, most of Freedom one and tonnes of their other friends that sang from about the middle and joined in on the choruses! And apparently Jarryd only taught it to them on the side of the stage during the song!!! Twas the coolest thing I think I've ever seen!
Right after though I had to rush out but on the way I nearly ran into Jarryd and he was like "Hey Yaz!!" and I was busting SOOO bad, but I was just like "Hey! How's it going?" and yeah we chatted for about 2 seconds before I asked for a pic and Shane took it for us, then I was like "I just have to go do something" and ran off lol. Then I sprinted back and joined in all the random convos people were having. First my parents were talking to Shane about stuff and then Dad tells me he told Matt that he looked like Clark Kent and I was like
"Are you KIDDING me dad?!" Seriously, he is so embarassing
Anyway apparently Matt just laughed, then we left them talk for a while and Hannah and I went to see if we could get Nikki's signature or Matt's or to talk to some of the other people like Marlei hanging around on that side of the stage. We ended up just having a little chat with Nikki and getting her to sign some things while looking how cute Matt was trying to untangle the balloon pyrotechnics hehe, then headed back over and talked with Shane again for a bit, then to Sam. Dad asked if they usually do performances in Brisbane and Sam said not really, the only other thing they really had planned was the Huge Youth Conference (so yes FV are playing with Matt there) and he asked whether I was going and I was like "I sure am!" haha. Um... not really sure what else we talked about, but we talked for a good 10 minutes before we went to say goodbye to Jarryd and came home.
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So yeah... pretty much I had an amazing time!!! It was the coolest thing to see how big the crowds for Fatis Valour grew. It felt really cool that I actually knew someone in a band that is gonna be huge for sure really soon. All of the FV boys are so laid back and relaxing to be around though, they don't think they are big or ever will be though. They just take it as it comes which is honestly the best way to be, but if they ever get big overnight they will be in for a shock! They pulled the biggest crowds of the weekend to their Sunday show and apparently LOADS of people have been commenting the Easterfest website saying how amazing they were. And they were all the sweetest guys I think I've ever met. I had a couple of chats with Sam (their drummer) and Shane (lead guitar) and they were really cool and kinda knew who I was coz of Jarryd. Sam even asked if I was going to the Citipointe Youth Conference thing and I told him I'd definately planned on it and got my tickets! So yeah... twas pretty good.
What amazed me about the whole thing though was that I didn't realise til I came home how much they'd been getting played on 96.5fm. I told one of my friends Sami to listen to their stuff on Monday night and she's like "I've heard this song before" and I was like apparently "Hold Me Now" has been getting tonnes of air time on 96.5 and she's like "Yeah, that must be it! We listen to it at Outside School Hours Care (where she works) all the time, and I've heard it HEAPS!!! I was just like "No way, that's awesome!" It was pretty cool and exciting!
Anyways the last few days since then, I've just been uploading pic after pic for different people and at different places and been hanging out at home, trying to do stuff for uni and practising guitar, but my fingers still aren't strong and Jarryd is probably gonna be mad & disappointed tomorrow >.< but meh!
I guess this is long enough for now. I will type more on stuff sometime soon I hope! Been pretty busy!!
Hope you are all going well!
Love Yazzi xox