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Fleur Blüm

~ writer, performer, musician

Fleur Blüm

Tag Archives: Sydney

Poetry and travel

30 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by toearlyretirement in Travel, Writing

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NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, Poetry, Sydney, Writing

For the last thirty days I have been participating in the NaPoWriMo challenge. I have undertaken this challenge the last few years, and have found it valuable if not always easy.

This year I followed the prompts for each day, all except for the final day as I’m up in Sydney visiting a friend and didn’t have access to the poetry books at home to do a cento. Also, a cento seemed like a lot of work choosing lines from other poems to collate into a new one.

It has been strange travelling in this COVID-conscious world. The daily case numbers in Sydney are comparable to Melbourne, but mask wearing up here is much less common than at home. I guess we’re all still a bit traumatised after our two long lockdowns.

It was strange thinking about getting on a plane to come up here, but once I was there waiting to board it seemed normal. Most people were masked in the terminal, maybe 75%, and they were very clear on the plane that masks were mandatory. It was fully booked, so I wasn’t used to being so close to so many people, but I coped.

I’ve written a few good poems as part of this year’s NaPoWriMo challenge, and a few that might not make the cut. I’m sure you’ll see a few on this blog in the coming months and maybe in the next poetry chapbook I release (no dates for that, it’s still in the concept phase).

I hope you’re all doing well in the change of seasons; the weather has been varied to say the least. At least up here in Sydney I don’t need to worry so much whether I have a jacket and umbrella with me.

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Follow the Leader

18 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by toearlyretirement in My Journey

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Conference, day job, Inspiration, Leadership, McKinsey, Procrastination, Self development, Sydney

Last week I attended a three-day leadership conference in Sydney, hosted by McKinsey & Company. I was nominated by one of the General Managers at work, and they paid for my travel and accommodation. It was 300+ people from all over Australia and from a variety of companies all coming together to learn how to be better leaders.

I’ve struggled with the idea of feeling like a leader. Ever since high-school I’ve been in positions of leadership, both at work and in the community. I tell myself stories about why; I was the only choice, no one else would do it, whoever made the decision didn’t know I wasn’t qualified.

I want to stop telling myself those stories. I want to believe I deserve these roles. At the closing of the conference participants were asked to talk about what they would be taking home. I stood up and said I need to re-frame my idea of ‘leader’. I have often had people in my life for whom I acted as an advocate. I have had people in my life who were willing to do what I suggested. I’ve had people who followed me, and I feel a responsibility to those people. This is a big part of what makes me a leader – taking due care of the people who are following me, relying on me, trusting me to take care of them. I use my strength, my skills, my energy to help others.

My mother has had numerous positions of leadership throughout her life and I think she feels much the same as I do. I’m proud of her, she has set an excellent example of leadership and community service. The roles she’s had have made me more comfortable accepting the roles I’ve been given.

Sometimes I wish I could give up my ‘day job’ and make money off my creative stuff, but there are parts of it that energise my other pursuits. I learn new skills, I develop new networks, I earn a living so that when my writing, or performance, don’t make any money I’m not resentful or stressed out.

The biggest lessons I took from the conference were about leading myself. They were things I can do to be a better leader, but also a better person. So I’m now going to try to focus on three things:

  • Eat that frog (stop putting off the hard stuff)
  • Be present (do one thing at a time)
  • Be kind (to myself first and to others)

It feels wanky using my blog to talk about this stuff, probably because I’m still not 100% comfortable, but as one of the participants said to me afterwards : ‘You are a natural leader. It’s time to take the next step.’

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Shortlisted!

17 Saturday May 2014

Posted by toearlyretirement in Art, Music, My Journey

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Adventure, Art, Artist Date, Australian Photography Magazine, Canon 1100D, Inspiration, Oxford Arts Factory, Serrina Sims, Sweethead, Sydney, Troy Van Leeuwen

A few weeks ago I entered a couple of shots into an amateur photography competition run by Australian Photography Magazine, mostly just for fun. They sent out an email announcing the winner a couple of days ago, and I only just opened it up to have a look at the shortlisted photos.

To my surprise, my photo was right in the middle of the list of 23 shortlisted images! I’m so pleased!! I was surprised because they didn’t notify me that my image was on the shortlist, and while I didn’t win, it’s one of those things that makes you feel validated as a creative artist.

The Blues - Sweethead at the Oxford Arts Factory, Sydney, 6 March 2014

The Blues – Sweethead at the Oxford Arts Factory, Sydney, 6 March 2014

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Epic Night of Epicness – A Review

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by toearlyretirement in Music, My Journey, Travel

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Adventure, Alessandro Cortini, Art, Brody Dalle, Dean Ferrita, Ilan Rubin, Inspiration, Jon Theodore, Joshua Homme, Michael Shuman, NIN, Nine Inch Nails, QOTSA, Queens of the Stone Age, Robin Finck, Serrina Sims, Sweethead, Sydney, Trent Reznor, Troy Van Leeuwen

Featuring: Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, Brody Dalle and Sweethead.

It’s Thursday 6 March, 2014. The day starts with me getting up at 6am. I stumble around in the dark (yeah it’s dark then, who knew?), get all my shit in order and head out the door of my house at about 6:45am towards the train station. What follows is this:

Walk to train.
Train to city.
Bus to airport.
Plane to Sydney.
Train to city.
Walk to hostel.
Go for lunch.
Accidentally buy shoes.
Then come back to my room for a little lie down before heading to the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

If you are planning to see these guys play during their current tour DO NOT READ ON! Seriously, spoilers and stuff. Trust me when I say going in without preparation will make it so much better.

The gig officially starts at 7pm with Brody Dalle and her band. Being a bit of a nerd, and believing that you should give support acts your time, I turned up very early. I had time to have a bit of a chat with some of the staff behind the bar, with the ushers, with the guy who checked my ticket at the door. I was clearly one of the very few seated audience members who thought being early was a good idea. The standing area (mosh pit) was about a third full, but the stands were conspicuously empty.

As a result of having a chat with the usher, he offered me a seat upgrade. What a stroke of luck! I ended up being five rows from the front of the seated area, off to the side (but at a better angle than my original tickets). Score!

At bang on 7pm Brody Dalle and her band strode on stage. There were still very few punters in the audience, but to their credit the band seemed unphased by this.

Brody Dalle and band performing at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 6/3/14.

Brody Dalle and band performing at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 6/3/14.

Dalle herself is a fantastically rock front woman. She has a killer vocal style which sits somewhere between singing, screaming and growling. I honestly don’t understand how she can talk normally and still produce such intense, guttural sounds. She is slim, blond, and knows she’s kicking ass. Her stage presence unquestioned. I was not familiar with Dalle’s body of work, but I feel like this is something that I should address at my earliest convenience.

The set list is as follows:

  • Die on a Rope (The Distillers song)
  • Dismantle Me (The Distillers song)
  • Rat Race
  • Don’t Mess With Me
  • Meet the Foetus/Oh the Joy
  • Ghetto Love (Spinnerette song)
  • Underworld

Following her set, the roadies cleared the stage and started putting up new equipment. It had not been announced who, out of NIN and QOTSA, would be playing first, by all accounts it was going to be decided by coin toss, but the keyboards and synthesisers on stage made if pretty clear that NIN would be on first that night. I was exceedingly excited. I have been a fan of NIN for a long time, ever since a highschool boyfriend introduced me to their work. I’ve listened to Trent Reznor’s singing, screaming, yelling and crooning to soothe me to sleep on more than one occasion after a bad day. I’ve bounced up and down to them at parties, and more recently I’ve used their newest album, ‘Hesistation Marks’ as motivational music at the gym. Something about Trent’s cold, controlled fury and industrial beats really helps when I’m doing weights!

Nine Inch Nails perform at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 6/3/14.

Nine Inch Nails perform at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 6/3/14.

So at 7:50pm, when the smoke machines covered the stage and the lights went down announcing the band’s presence on the stage, and Reznor’s legendary self at the front I screamed and whooped and bounced and was generally filled with nervous anticipation.

The NIN setlist was as follows:

  • A Warm Place
  • Somewhat Damaged
  • 1,000,000
  • Letting You
  • Terrible Lie
  • March of the Pigs
  • Piggy
  • Sanctified
  • Came Back Haunted
  • Me, I’m Not
  • Copy of A
  • Survivalism
  • Only
  • Wish
  • Burn
  • Gave Up
  • The Hand That Feeds
  • Head Like a Hole
  • Hurt

The highlights from this set were the entire arena yelling ‘fist fuck’ in Wish and Trent’s dance moves (an honourable mention should also go to the manskirt that he was wearing). I also very much enjoyed that several of the songs played were remixed versions, and the audience were required to pay attention to find out what the song was. These were moments of uncertainty followed by a collective cry of recognition from the crowd. In addition to being generally awesome, Trent jumped down off the stage and touched the crowd and the mosh pit lost its shit.

I took a few photos, but I made a conscious effort to enjoy what was happening in front of me. In an age where I can see a concert through the lens of a camera basically any time I want I wanted to savour the experience of actually being near one of my all time favourite performers.

Once the set was finished, with ‘Hurt’,  a song choice that seems to be a signature of NIN but none the less has pros and cons (pro: it’s a fucking amazing song, con: everyone felt a bit deflated by Reznor’s emotional rendition of a difficult song) there was another short interval in which the stage was completely reset.

NIN had a fairly empty stage; they had low hanging lights, used a lot of smoke machine and used the lights to carve trails through the smoke. The effect was pretty cool, if occasionally a bit too heavy on the smoke so that the band members were obscured. QOTSA had a massive screen behind their set, they had big red, retro-looking speaker stacks on the stage, and they had laid what looked like shiny red linoleum on the floor. If not for the fact that I was there, I wouldn’t have believed it was the same gig.

On the screen behind the stage a huge countdown introduced them. As the band walked out, Joshua Homme had some serious swagger going on (although as a rock star wearing a leather jacket and a guitar it would be hard not to swagger). It was very attractive. They then dove straight into a powerful set which was full of their great songs and had everyone in the house going off tap. The mosh pit was writhing like a living organism and a couple of times when I looked over a circle had appeared in which some patrons were clearly dancing with considerable vigour and the others decided to give them some space. I worried that someone had started a fight, but I think it was just good natured overly excited dancing.

Queens of the Stone Age perform at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 6/3/14. This is during the epic jam.

Queens of the Stone Age perform at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 6/3/14. This is during the epic jam.

The QOTSA setlist is as follows:

  • You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire
  • No One Knows
  • My God Is the Sun
  • Burn The Witch
  • Smooth Sailing
  • …Like Clockwork
  • If I Had a Tail
  • Little Sister
  • Fairweather Friends
  • I Sat by the Ocean
  • Make It Wit Chu
  • Sick, Sick, Sick
  • 3′s & 7′s
  • Better Living Through Chemistry
  • Go With the Flow

Encore:

  • The Vampyre of Time and Memory
  • Feel Good Hit of the Summer
  • A Song for the Dead

The highlight of the show was the epic jam that happened in the middle of one of the songs (I think it was ‘3’s &7’s’, but let me know if that’s wrong), the song lasted for about 15mins. The band would be jamming away and they’d go to a quiet part and the crowd would think they were done and cheer, but they weren’t done.

I’ve read some reviews which were of the opinion that QOTSA played a better gig. I have mixed feelings about that analysis. Sure, QOTSA had a more pronounced crowd response, but I would argue that their music is better suited to rocking out than NIN. Additionally, Reznor has said in interviews that he has been striving to make the shows interesting for him to play as well as interesting for us to attend. I think that part of that manifests as a slightly experimental, and as a result more challenging concert experience. Additionally, for this show anyway, the audience were much drunker by the time QOTSA got on stage so that probably helped too. I should probably mention here that I’ve been a NIN fan for longer than QOTSA so I guess I’m always going to think they’re amazing.

It was now 11:30pm but my night was not over! After the last song of the QOTSA encore, I gathered myself up and headed up to the Oxford Art Factory to see Sweethead; a band composed of two guitarists, Troy Van Leeuwen and Dean Fertita and the drummer, Jon Theodore, from QOTSA and singer Serrina Sims.

Sweethead front woman Serrina Sims performs at the Oxford Arts Factory, 7/3/14 (technically, it was after midnight)

Sweethead front woman Serrina Sims performs at the Oxford Arts Factory, 7/3/14 (technically, it was after midnight)

I didn’t know any of the songs, and I’d only heard about the gig a couple of days earlier when it was announced, but I thought for under $20 it was worth checking out. I’m very glad I did! Sweethead are a tight bunch, they have consistently rocking tunes and Serrina does some excellent front woman work. From the black catsuit, to the thigh high diamonte heels to the repeated pouring of liquid over herself, she doesn’t shy away from the spotlight. I would have liked her vocal to be turned up a bit more in the mix but other than that it was a stand up show. The set was only 30 mins, having starting at 1am after already playing a set of well over an hour, you couldn’t blame them for keeping it short and sweet.

I have put a couple of pics into this post, but for the comprehensive set, check out my facebook album. My thanks also go to Tone Deaf for the setlists.

I’m not going to try to rate my night because I think trying to quantify it into something that simple looses all meaning, but it was, truly, one of the most spectacularly memorable nights of my life. Well worth the ticket price!

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Sydney – Part 3: Write Club

18 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by toearlyretirement in My Journey, Travel, Writing

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Adventure, Art, Inspiration, Mentors, Music, Sydney, Writing

Some of you may know that I aspire to be a writer, or at lease be better at writing, it is something I used to do when I was an emo teenager but that I forgot to nurture as I got older (along with a lot of things). Louise is a fantastic writer, really she’s very good, she wouldn’t admit to such things given how much of modest she is but it’s true; she is one of the people who truly inspire me to continue to write and develop my skills. Louise is part of a group who get together every so often to discuss their current writing projects, to get instant feedback on how things strike them, to have an audience to ask ‘did you get that bit?’ or ‘does this seem believable?’ or just to see how it sounds to someone who is not you. It also seems to involve drinking large quantities of wine.

When Louise invited me I was stoked; I was really excited to be part of a group of people who were trying to make their creative dreams reality but there was also a part of me that was terrified. I mean reading your work aloud to a real live audience (granted it was only three people) is really daunting. It’s not like blogging where your audience is completely removed from you, you get their approval when they click like or leave a nice comment but if they don’t like your stuff usually they just go away and don’t bother coming back.

There was a tiny, persistent voice in my head that said I was not good enough to read my stuff to these writers; that I was not good enough to call myself a writer; that they would all laugh at me, and not in the ‘oh yes that’s an amusing story’ way but the ‘you seriously think that’s worthwhile?’ way.

I went along anyway, terror and all, and made Louise go first, I wanted to see how the whole Write Club thing worked so I would know what sort of reaction to expect. She read some of her current project, which was darn good I must say, and we all said how fabulous it was, and gave her some impressions of what we liked and what we liked less, we gave her story ideas, and I gave her some examples from my life of people like the characters she was writing that might help her get a different angle of realism in there. I was surprised by how easy and relaxed everyone was, by how positive and encouraging the atmosphere was.

Then it was my turn. I chose to read a short story that I’d written; I had originally intended to submit the story to a writing competition but I think the deadline passed sometime between my writing it, getting a day-job and now. The story was supposed to be serious but the voice of the main character was quite silly. I was shaking as I read it aloud; I could feel myself racing over the words and hoped they could take it in even though I was going 100 miles a minute. I got to the end, which admittedly I was not happy about and the story turned sort of dark. The feedback was that the ending definitely wasn’t the right mood, and Louise suggested that I make it more comedic. Everyone laughed at the voice of the main character, and I had written her to be this ridiculous caricature so that worked well, I didn’t realise how funny I was until I had a (small) room full of people laughing at stuff I’d written. We talked about how I could rework the short story; changing the ending, or perhaps redrafting the whole thing from scratch and I felt quite energised.

To be honest, I don’t like the editing process. I have always been a writer who blurts things out, gives it a cursory look over for spelling mistakes and then doesn’t think about it again. I think this is something I need to work on. Louise for example works very differently; she finds getting something out hard, but editing easy, while I find writing easy but editing hard.

Later I read two poems that I had written a few days before I went to Sydney; I had written them after a particularly excellent afternoon of losing myself in my favourite musical artists at home in my bedroom and I was feeling some of their genius flowing through my fingers. Obviously I was not coming up with stuff as great as my idols, but I thought it was quite good. I got some really great feedback for the poems, and not too many editing suggestions, so I felt like that was a success.

After the other two had read their work it was about 8pm and we decided that food was a good idea, and more wine (for the others, I actually don’t drink). We then wiled away the evening chatting about our lives, about our projects and what we’re doing, and music, lots of music; in particular the host and I bonded over some of our favourite artists and I took lots of random photos of stuff. Most of the photos didn’t turn out but I have put the good ones up in an earlier post (Sydney – Part 1).

I hope to be able to continue with my writing and with the encouragement and mentorship of Louise and the others to develop my skills further. I think it is important for us all to find people with similar interests with whom we can form a community. Now in the age of technology I think it is especially important to try to find someone who can work with you face to face on your art. Plus face to face can involve the consumption of mood enhancing beverages which always helps.

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Sydney – Part 2: Future Music Festival

17 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by toearlyretirement in Music, Travel

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Adventure, Artists, Future Music Festival, Inspiration, Music, Photography, Sydney

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey… well, not really, but I would like to give my review of the Future Music Festival. I will be doing this in Chapters, because I feel like it and I must apologise in advance for the poor quality of the photos, I decided to take only my smart phone with me so the camera (precious baby that she is) would not get damaged/lost. Also please note that this post is quite long, so, err, deal with it.

Chapter 1: Getting there.

I suppose I should premise this entry with some explanation as to why I would travel all the way to Sydney to go to Future when they have a perfectly good version in Melbourne; the reason is simple, the only person I knew who wanted to go was Louise, she lives in Sydney, so I decided that was as good a reason as any to go up there to see the show with her.

Now Louise lives in a lovely terrace house in inner Sydney so we thought we would start the day off with a big breaky at a local café – it was BIG and it was amazing. I had Spanish omelette with chorizo, feta and tomato with a side of bacon and avocado. I realise this is a lot of breaky but the theory was we wouldn’t need to buy as much of the horrible slop at the festival at grossly inflated prices if we ate well before-hand.

 

 

 

In order to get to the Festival we decided to get public transport. This seemed like a totally good idea and we jumped on the train to Central. When we got off the train we were greeted with this line of people waiting to get onto the buses provided by the festival to ship everyone out to Randwick Racecourse.

 

The line moved quite quickly and we were then confronted with a bus full of people who were many years younger than we, many of whom had started drinking (etc.) long before arriving at the festival.

When we got out of the buses at the racecourse we were instructed to walk through an enormous, long tunnel to get to the stages in centre. This would have been fine except it smelled strongly of horse excrement and a number of the other patrons had some difficulty navigating the whole one foot in front of the other thing.

Chapter 2: Getting into the groove

Once we were safely inside the event we realised that it was HUGE and there were not that many people there yet, it was about 1.30pm.

I snapped this shot of our fabulous orange armbands in preparation for the good times ahead. Also for those of you playing at home the next picture is what I wore, I also had magenta stockings with black fishnets over them and purple sparkly leg warmers. I was on FIRE (fashion wise)! We started off wandering around a bit, trying to get our bearings so that we could move efficiently from one stage to the next. Louise had kindly prepared an itinerary with locations before we left.

 

On our wanderings we found our way into the Paul van Dyk tent where there were about 30 people rocking out in front of the stage and probably the same number again taking refuge under the giant tent from the blazing midday sun. Louise informs me that Sydney had been pouring with rain for weeks leading up to my visit, but while I was there it didn’t rain at all. I like to believe it was putting on a show of lovely weather just to impress me. The vibe in the PVD tent was pretty chilled and the DJ was spinning some excellent tracks; he was a larger, geeky-looking guy but he was working the crowd like a champion. I felt like it was an appropriate start to the day’s festivities.

 

Chapter 3: Naked and Famous

Naked and Famous were the first band on the list we wanted to see, I had not heard much of their stuff before we arrived, but Louise assured me that they were awesome – and they were. I would call them a sort of psychedelic rock/pop group (although a true fan may correct me here). They were professional and had a really tight sound, which I thoroughly enjoyed even though I was not familiar with the music. Unfortunately we had to leave their set mid way through to move to the next set, I would however definitely encourage you all to look them up on the internets, they make good music.

Chapter 4: Skrillex

There has been a lot of poo-pooing of Skrillex, I don’t really understand why, perhaps because he’s the flavour of the month, perhaps because he’s a total emo-kid, perhaps because he’s become so damn popular in such a short time, or perhaps it’s just radio fatigue – I don’t know. Louise and I, however, decided that regardless of his less than alternative level of cool we were super keen to see him play.

Skrillex did not disappoint! The crowd was massive, it would have been almost 80% of everyone there at the time jammed in front of the Las Venus (main) stage. Everyone was starting to rock out, I was jumping, Skrillex was rocking, and it was generally really awesome. The crowd, predictably was mostly the younger attendees and they were all focusing on the music and the good times; equally predicably there were some tossers in the crowd who thought it was a good idea to climb up the speaker towers, I thought it was fairly appropriate that any person stupid enough to climb a speaker tower several stories high while clearly very drunk who unfortunately fell off would be eligible for the Darwin Awards*

It was about this time and Louise and I really started to get into the vibe of the festival; started to let go and really feel the music.

Chapter 5: Die Antwoord

Skrillex had been amazing and we were pumped to see Die Antwoord next. I have been into these guys for a while now; they are a peculiar South African group that might be best described as rappers. Their main characters are MC Ninja, a very thin, very strange looking man covered in prison-style tattoos; MC Yo-Landi who is a tiny, blonde, pocket-rocket type with a very high pitched, almost cartoon-esque speaking voice and a very sweet singing voice; and lastly DJ Hi-Tec who spins the backing tracks.

Die Antwoord put on a show; not just a performance but a real audio-visual spectacular. They swear, they write filthy lyrics, they are down and dirty and they have a stage presence that is difficult to do justice to in words. They were inside the pavilion and it was almost completely dark inside. The atmosphere was palpable; everyone was really pumped to see them. I think being in the pavilion meant that the energy created in the audience was amplified and fed back to us; it was like being sucked into an amazing Die Antwoord vortex. Their set lasted only an hour but in that hour I jumped and danced harder than I ever have before. Both Louise and I commented afterwards that the hour seemed to last forever and they we were wishing they would be less awesome for a moment so we could catch our breaths! When it was over we all stumbled out into the light again, dazed, confused, feeling slightly naked and so, so happy.

Chapter 6: Foam Party

This is fairly self explanatory; there was a stage set-up whose sole purpose was to be the foam party. They had set up barriers and foam machines, they played phat beats that got the crowd psyched and then sprayed foam all over them at semi-regular intervals. It was quite mental.

At one point we looked into the pit, which was filled to about knee height with foam to see at guy writhing around on the ground. Firstly we were concerned that he was having some sort of seizure, but when he jumped up and went back to rocking out we realised he was just really getting into the foam. We decided not the get into the foam-pit as we were quite happy with out feet being dry.

Chapter 6: Fatboy Slim

Fatboy Slim is a veteran of the electronic music scene, he has had some excellent hits in the mainstream and has obviously kept up with walking the beat of regularly performing, however his set was vastly different to what I was expecting.

To start with he was remixing his own stuff with other artists stuff in a way I wasn’t expecting; he had the genius idea to pair his own Rockerfeller Skank with The Rolling Stone’s Satisfaction. It was not familiar to me this new mix versions, but at the same time there were awesome elements of the familiar thrown in just when I was losing touch with the set. Fatboy Slim is a fantastic performer and he was one of the few who didn’t scream into the mic trying to get the crowd pumped; he just trusted the music.

Oh and the visual display; that was trippy. At one point he had pictures of faces on the big screen (he was at the Las Venus stage so the big screen was BIG) that were merging into other faces, and the merges became faster and faster. Again it was one of those familiar/unfamiliar things; the merging face was a grotesque mask which would suddenly resolve into someone I recognised only to disintegrate immediately into the next merge. The highlight of the visual display was when an image appeared that looked like the home screen of a Mac, and it stayed there for a while. I commented to Louise that I wondered if it was going to turn into something or if something was broken. My question was answered almost immediately when the spinning rainbow ball of death started to expand, at first slowly but then faster, to fill the whole screen. It blew my mind having the whole screen filled with a rotating rainbow pinwheel.

Fatboy Slim’s set lasted for an hour and a half, but oddly felt shorter than Die Antwoord. One thing that really struck Louise about the set was that while Fatboy Slim was playing the sun was setting, adding to the awesome light/laser show he had put on.

Chapter 8: New Order

The last band we wanted to see was New Order. Louise and I have both been fans of New Order for ages and it was one of the main reasons I had wanted to go to Future Music. We were concerned, however, because they had received pretty lack-lustre reviews from the Brisbane show.

The downside to seeing New Order was that we couldn’t see Aphex Twin, another big draw-card of the event because they were billed at the same time. However the reasoning was that we knew more New Order stuff than Aphex Twin stuff and that New Order was less likely to tour again given that they were older and more volatile as a group. Plus Aphex Twin was in the pavilion and neither of us thought we could handle going back into the vortex of awesome.

New Order was professional, they were tight, they were clearly used to being on stage. Bernard Sumner was a bit grumpy (we thought perhaps it was past his bed time) and probably could have done with being a bit louder in the mix. At one stage it looked like he picked up a pair of ladies underwear that had been thrown up and tossed them on the speak stack with a look of complete boredom (because that stuff happens to me all the time, y’know?). The best thing about New Order was that most the crowd had clearly decided to see other performers so we were able to get right up close to the stage. We were also surrounded by older people who were slightly less drunk and slightly less aggressive/disorderly than the crowd had been at Fatboy Slim.

Again their visuals were amazing; during Blue Monday they showed footage of a person’s hand running through stalks of wheat, it was beautiful and poetic and honestly was nearly too much for my strung out emotions to handle.

Chapter 9: Getting home

After a day packed full with amazing sensory pleasures and hundreds of thousands of people** we were pretty keen to get home. The walk through the long tunnel of doom was horrible on the way out for an entirely different reason; some of the more boisterous members of the crowd decided that singing loudly was a good idea. Large numbers of drunk people singing in an enclosed space is deafening. It was also completely ruining the afterglow that we had from New Order. When we reached the exits we realised that we would have to shuffle back onto the buses to get back to Central with everyone who was now very loud and obnoxious. Neither Louise nor I thought we could tolerate the close quarters anymore so we decided to walk. The walk was only 5km, but after all day on our feet dancing our hearts out and with a huge crowd of others also walking home, the trip took us about two hours. We were exhausted, exhilarated and quite hungry. With all the hoo-hah and hassles that came with the festival I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! Long Live Live Music!

 

*No-one fell off.

**Apparently only 45,000 but still a freaking large number of people!

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Sydney – Part 1: Write Club – the photos

14 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by toearlyretirement in Photo Essay, Travel, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Adventure, Art, Canon 1100D, Inspiration, Mentors, Photo Essay, Photography, Sydney, Writing, Writing Group

I went to Sydney over the last weekend to visit my friend Louise (yes the same one from the Tasmanian adventure) and to attend the Future Music Festival. Louise, being the fabulous host she is, arranged for a number of other awesome activities, one of which was to attend a thing called Write Club. Louise originally started Write Club as a way for young amateur writers around Sydney to get together to have an audience for their work. The basic premise of the night is to read you works aloud, the others there will offer feedback, and there is drinking.

I am planning to write an entry on the Write Club experience in the coming days, however I thought I would start off the process with some of the photos I took there, there are a bit arty, if I do say so myself.

This is a photo of the table after the drinking had begun; I don’t drink alcohol so the San Pelegrino and the Pump are mine, the red wine was Arrogant Frog and was shared by Louise and the two other writers there. I actually just put the camera on the table and clicked to get this picture, I thought it was rather inspired.

This is quite representative of the topics of conversation after the reading had finished; wine and Radiohead. We were all Radiohead fans and the host of the event was playing some of their stuff on his acoustic guitar.

After two bottles of wine having been consumed they made a lovely photo.

This last shot is of Louise’s leg and hand – I thought the light in this was nice.

Additional posts about Sydney will follow including a proper rundown of Write Club and my review of Future Music Festival.

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