I love my editor. Not only does he allow me to cover some really great gigs for free but I also get the opportunity to speak my very opinionated mind without any buffering, edits or censoring. A luxury that is extremely rare in the journalism industry. So here are the fruits of that labour in the form of my review on the worst music festival I have been to in the past 3 years. Future Music Festival. (Oh and a few extra notes from that day sprinkled in lightly)…
I wanted to like Future’s I really did, but remembering how aggressive the crowd was two years ago and considering I’d spent a life altering weekend at WOMAD… somewhere between fat chance and no chance is your answer. Let’s start with the hour it took me to wait in the VIP/Media/Guest line with four other ticket windows free, with the occupants sitting there picking their noses and scratching. Add to that a classy lady behind me using language that would make Lil Wayne cringe her sentence went a little something like this; ‘C*nt, blah blah blah f*cking blah, blah f*cking b*tch c*nt”… for an hour. It also helps if the girls looking through the list of names have a general grasp of the alphabet, I’m now realising why it took so long. Before heading towards the entrance I saw one girl, alone, passed out where a security guard had guided her under a tree as he went to get water, the rest of them were making all the boys lift up their shirts to check for alcohol smuggling. It looks grim doesn’t it? At the entrance they had no shade and too few lines with everyone completely stuck, bottlenecked and pushing I felt like cattle. I managed to hear Jessie J onstage already and she sounded alright, very rehearsed, she wasn’t in one of her elaborate outfits I guess in the toss-up between fashion and the possibility of passing out from the Aussie heat was not worth risking. After a brief walkabout figuring out where all the stages were I head to watch Hackney Rapper Professor Green, not before some girl calls me ‘piggy’ for pushing her off my foot when she walked into me, it’s a dog eat world here…
Changing the venue from the lush green grasses of Rymill Park to the barren red dirt of Ellis Park made the place seem that much more isolated. It was like entering some Mad Max vortex or the opening scene of Tupac’s (Hype William’s directed version) music video ‘California Love’ (which is based on the M.M film) if you like. Think an obliterate landscape with howling uneducated people lurching about. Imagine sticking every bogan in your state into one vicinity, giving them an excuse to start drinking before 10am and herd them into a caged premise with hollow repetitive thumping beats. Grim.
Ah yes. Nothing like the love of the crowd.
…I managed to get to a good spot and Professor Green’s performance really lifted the spirits. He played hits from his debut Alive Til I’m Dead album and At Your Inconvenience including ‘Just be Good to Green’, ‘I Need You Tonight’ and ‘Read All About it’ which the crowd really got into…
…Local Dj Stubanga was doing well on the Knife Party stage and for a law student by day, DJ by night he’s getting some great gigs; Future’s and this years The Big Day Out included…
…Within only an hour my feet were completely brown and the dust was all over my skinny jeans up to my shins, the ‘new and improved’ venue that is Ellis Park is more like a baron wasteland with impromptu random tents providing the shade as there were no trees at all within the large cage. The crowd was 30% normality with people there for the music, the rest were uneducated, offensive and aggressive who were pretty much just there because it was a public holiday, a legit excuse to get wasted during the day and the ‘in’ thing to do. Butt cheeks galore and men giving it as good as the girls in string singlets nipples out, fist pumping the air, pushing in front to get close to the stage just to stand there watching the concert through their phones. Dance music is completely wasted on this mob, I really want to love dance music but the crowd Future attracts year after year just gets worse and worse. This isn’t an age thing, this isn’t a bourgeois thing, Warren Ellis from Dirty Three was wrong looking at this lot there is ‘NO hope in the youth’, I wanted to get rip-roaring drunk just to try to ignore the vibe and put up with being there. The place would be a whole lot better if they banned alcohol and gave everyone an ‘E’ as they came in, then everyone might chill out…
Yayyyy.. some friends to cling to. The Plastik People Dj’s!! Salvation!! In the VIP area they were giving out pills (mints) in tiny tin cases… classy. As I mentioned before E’s would have been so much better.
…I listened to Chase & Status from the safety of the VIP area, hiding with some friends who were Djing a bit later and made it my mission to try and go to as many not so popular acts to stay away from the masses…
Haha.. one half of Plastik People Dj’s Mr Sala-man
…Friends and Future comrades Plastik People DJ’s were a nice escape right in the dusty back corner at the Pure Blonde “Beer Garden” playing to a tiny but dedicated crowd mashed up dance mixes with Bob Sinclair, ‘Drop it like it’s hot’, Pass the Courvoisier, Bob Marley ‘Could you be loved’, Beastie Boys, MSTRKRFT and ‘What a Bum’ Sister Nancy. They were also throwing down free beers and water to the crowd from the rider in the back which everyone appreciated…
Just call me tattoo hunter.
…American electro pop Holy Ghost! were my highlight of the day even though the lack of crowd was embarrassing I loved the forced intimacy. Front man Alex didn’t seem like he cared, seemingly nonchalant about it all, but they gave a great show and it was great to hear actual instruments being played…
…Before lighting up the first of many cigarettes he told us that this was the smallest crowd they had played to so far but the one with the strongest connection, the liar. Being so against smoking it’s funny that I find it so badass when musicians light up onstage, but I’m all for sticking it to the man however small the gesture…
Oh the sunburn. Grin & bare it.
Classy. No it’s not a bad fake tan job it’s arid dust. If you think this powder build-up was isolated to my feet you should have seen my camera the next day. Covered in a thick film of red dust. And although my jeans are looking quite black in this photo the red filth went up all the way to my knees by the end of the day.
…By this time thoroughly sunburnt but excited to see Fatboy Slim I headed to the main stage where I was in for the biggest disappointment of my life…
…After a great video intro and obtaining a decent position in the crowd I was looking forward to seeing Big Beat pioneer and nineties icon Norman Cook in the flesh. Q magazine named Fatboy Slim on of ’50 bands to see before you die’ and for the life of me I have no idea why. First off the set list said ‘Fatboy Slim’ not ‘Fatboy Slim DJ Set’ over the longest tension building hour and a half of my life he proceeded to DJ, playing everything BUT his own music, sampling maybe three lines from two songs, I hoped and prayed he would turn it around not giving in and pissing off to see The Wombats but that moment never came…
Holding a flare. Hardcore.
…If I wanted to hear a DJ set I could’ve gone to any other stage and have heard exactly the same music, which I did as half of the stuff he played I’d already heard throughout the afternoon. I cannot put down in words how disappointing this was, he just seemed like a has-been with all the ‘B*TCH’ samples he had looping over the music (I’m not a fan of that word already but to hear that on loop throughout the set is grinding). Nothing other-worldly about his Djing either with themes of ‘GET NAKED’ throughout and flashes of naked hippies appearing onscreen as well as an image of the ‘You’ve come a long way baby’ fat boy with wings behind him, but absolutely no sign or glimpse of the genius that made him so important in the first place. Clips of The Supremes ‘Stop in the Name of Love’ were sampled, ‘California Love’ by Tupac and Dre, Dj Kool’s ‘Let me Clear my Throat and ‘I’m in AUSTRALIA b*tch’…
…I could’ve cried again that weekend but for all the wrong reasons, maybe Mr Cook should get back on the booze or maybe turn in the tables because at the end there was no big encore, no final boom but he played his last song like all the others, bowed and walked off stage… ‘Thanks for the money suckers’ should’ve read up the back on-screen. Absolute bollocks!…
And the warm hospitality you got from your fellow party-goers extended backstage also. Sala-man went backstage with the good intention of chilling out with fellow Dj’s, meeting a few idols, shaking some hands and helping himself to the free booze. Only to be accosted by some guys asking why the f*ck he was backstage and taken to some interrogation room for about half and hour and being questioned by the bo-po (backstage police aka security) as to how he got backstage and what the f*ck he was doing there. Apparently some people are good enough to get paid shit all, the privilege to Dj in some crappy corner but no entitlements to at least some backstage action – which is honestly a pretty cool privilege that they should at LEAST be privy to. Well I caught up with him after they let him go after much pleading that he had to find his girlfriend and in a justly pretty pissed off mood. But onward and upward.
Hold on let me clean my glasses.
Ah yes here we go.
…Swedish House Mafia were the ones that really brought it home the curtain revealing an amazingly high DJ platform and the three of them giving me a reason to stay till the end of the night…
…Playing Armand Van Helden’s ‘NYC Beat’ and a fantastic remix of Temper Trap’s ‘Sweet Disposition with all the lyrics flashing up behind them, there were smoke bursts, fireworks, flashing lights and flames with the only discerning moment being when a lonely firework shot up from behind us in the crowd out of nowhere. Good thing it went straight up…
Wouldn’t that have been a headline!
Gangsta.
…They gave us a visual and aural feast being bombasted from all sides, we were told to “kiss more frogs” as Pendulum’s ‘The Island’, Gwen Stefani’s ‘What you waiting for’, Coldplay’s ‘Every teardrop is a waterfall’, Adrian Lux’s ‘Teenage Crime’, Florence & The Machine’s ‘You got the Love’ where all mashed up with ‘Get Dumb’, ‘Leave the World Behind’, ‘One’ and ‘Miami 2 Ibiza’. They were amazingly good (take that Norman) and finished off with ‘Save the World Tonight’…
…My conclusion is, with the right amount of alcohol, drugs and comrade protection you may have a great time at Future’s but I will not be attending again, at least not in Adelaide. I like to keep a nice distance between all that trash and alcohol abuse and it’s called changing the channel.
Future Music War Correspondent Mi.Nantes
My feet were bloody aching, I’d honestly had enough and I felt like I had survived something as averse to relishing an awesome day out. You could have followed me to my car from the red dust trail prints I left behind me and it was soooo orgasmic climbing into the shower jeans included.
Food for thought.
