day one: mud, mud, glorious mud!
i bought possibly the last pair of gumboots at number one shoe warehouse in gisborne. after months of drought, gisborne hadn't really prepared itself well. which is why not only $2 had sold out of disposable raincoats.
my first impression of the festival was that it was giant. i had a bit of a flu so was worried i would expire walking up the hill to the markets. but ever the trooper, me and my gumboots made it.
i spent most of my time at the rhythm stage (the main stage) but had a bit of a boogie with the young kids at the cellar stage. which, frankly, was the best looking of all the stages (i'll come to that a bit later on).
the first band i wanted to see was santogold. you should probably know i basically discovered Santi White. i saw her in NYC in 2007 (incidentally on her birthday) when she opened for bjork and the klaxons. and as i was watching them i just knew they were going to be huge. even though she didn't even have a record. that's me... talent scout.
fast forward to gisborne and there she was - wowing the teenagers. she even had a group of drunken male fans who had a sure fire way of getting her attention: throwing stuff on stage. i didn't actually see them doing it though. sadly. anyway, despite a sore throat (or something) on her part, she killed it. the highlight for me was her cover of the clash's guns of brixton. which she changed to guns of brooklyn and then to guns of gisborne. i was the only person in my area who knew the song. so i get extra points for turning into a music geek. choice.
santogold: 7.5/10
this is the view from the hammock. luke pritchard is shown on the screen near the centre of this shot. to the left is one of my legs, complete with gumboot.anyway, the kooks were pretty good - but i'm convinced luke pritchard was a bit tipsy - or just amped by the gisborne crowd. either way it wasn't a flawless performance. one of the best moments was sway - from the konk album. and naive, obviously.
kooks: 6/10
i call the lead singer franz. even though i know this isn't his real name. but calling him franz makes my fantasy where he rescues me from my work-a-day life and we go and live happily ever after in some austrian castle seem more feasible.
franz was awesome. at some point some cock threw an empty cider bottle at him and even though it hit him right on the temple he just kept on playing, like it wasn't a thing. what a hero.
the band were good too. i danced like a maniac (when i wasn't avoiding the boys who were LITERALLY peeing next to me in the crowd), they played the fallen (my current favourite ff song) and it ruled. they also introduced some new songs (ulysses is the only one i can remember, but there were more) and did two encores. if they were any better i probably would have exploded with delight.
franz ferdinand: 9/10
day two: earache! and political consciousness!
day two brought more illness for me. so i had to sit back on a hammock the entire time. like an invalid. but who can complain when this is your view. i lay through cut copy and couldn't really tell you whether they were good or not. i was sickly after all and saving my energy for the night's headliners....um, this was pretty much the most awesome thing you could ever see. it started with a little dude in a skeleton hoodie/suit rarking up the crowd. but LO! the little dude was actually flavor flav!
surprisingly flavor flav seemed (a) cogent and (b) energetic. and he leapt across the stage with much more energy than i could muster. they played the entire "it takes a nation of millions to hold us back", including the intros etc... and i couldn't help but cursing not committing this album to memory in advance. but, public enemy are so sampled that basically thought i knew every song, and pumped my fists in approval.
flavor flav and chuck d gave shout outs to the maori people (and i responded, obviously). and even brought tolaga bay hip hop dancers on stage to perform. they were great. and flavor flave wore one of their tshirts. you can read more about the powhiri for public enemy here. i also think that chuck d called the gisborne crowd the 'whitest' he's ever seen. but as i have already said, i had earache. my hearing = not so good.
once they'd finished the 'it takes a million...' album they threw in a few old favourites. and i got to yell out the words i would only say in jest "elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me....". in a word, sublime.
public enemy: 9/10
dj nu-mark also played and i enjoyed it for about half an hour before retiring to my luxury lodgings in muriwai.
day three: goodbye two thousand and great.... hello two thousand and fine!
day three was a bit thin on the ground in terms of acts, if you ask me. but it was the busiest yet. all the girls dressed identically and the boys getting high on energy drinks. ah! youth.
anyway, you should probably know i love p money. so he was the obvious choice for me. before p money i went and checked out the cellar (where he was playing)...
it was a stunning stage. set amongst pine trees and at first not that busy. so i hung out at the futureshock stage and went and got my glowstick on....
p money was as awesome as i'd imagined. he played to the crowd somewhat. and by the time i returned to the cellar the crowd had grown from around thirty to around two thousand people. and they were mostly nineteen years old. so there were party classics. but when it went off, it went OOOOOOOFF. and by that i mean it was gangsta mixed with some 1990s nostalgia. right up my alley. towards the end he played everything, which is one of my songs of 2008 and i enjoyed every moment of it.
p money: 7/10
after p money i went to watch carl cox. who was good. but not gangsta enough for me and i longed for more p money in the end. so i went back to my luxury lodgings to enjoy the rest of my new year's east coast holiday.
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