Inspiration: Livid Festival
Created: Mon 13 Oct 2003 18:45
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When I think of the Livid Festival, my mind fills with images of crowds of people slurping on sugar cane on a hot, hot day. Of stomping across the grass whilst shielding my eyes from the sun, and waiting for the next band to start. At least, that's what the image of Livid was in my mind, up until yesterday. After managing to scab free tickets (thanks Norm!), I headed off to Rod Laver and Vodafone arenas to check out how Livid has coped with the move to Melbourne.
The event was held in this strange location in case of rain (Melbourne being Melbourne). The thing is, it isn't exactly set up to cater for one event being on at what is essentially two separate venues, so there were just temporary fences put up around the place, and detours from the number 70 Rod Laver tram stop halfway around the world and back to the front of the Rod Laver again. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Once you got used to it, though, the walk between stages wasn't so bad, and it actually worked a lot better than I thought it would have.
The thing is, though, that this concert obviously didn't sell well at all. Someone has certainly got egg on their face right about now. Maybe us Melburnians just aren't interested in an early spring festival, or maybe it's because they weren't selling sugar cane. We arrived late (5pmish) and checked out Boysetsfire, and the room was less than half full. Still, they filled the room with some tremendously loud noise, and spoke of the likeness between the September 11th terrorists and the CIA, and about how we can all make a difference.
We then went to see Liars (room less than a third full), who were all over the place. I have their They threw us all in a trench and stuck a monument on top album, but none of the songs sounded like anything from it, and they appeared to be mostly making things up as they went along. Bit of a disappointment, really. Yeah Yeah Yeahs (over half capacity by now) made a welcome change with their frolicking about on stage, and their structured songs.
Before the day was done (yes, it was quite a short day for a festival, but I am so old now that this was more than enough for me) I also caught snippets of Dexter (I saw him a coupla weeks ago, too - he can surely make a room bounce), Linkin Park (just had to see what the atmosphere would be like), and White Stripes (whatever). By this stage of the night, the crowds had actually started to fill out, but it was still possible to find a spot to stand without having any sweaty bodies rubbing up against you. Will Livid be back to Melbourne next year? Judging by yesterday, no.
Muchos gracias to Chris Taylor (Yeah Yeah Yeahs and White Stripes) and Andrew Ballam (the others) for the use of their photos, as my camera is off holidaying in Adelaide without me.
There are currently 24 comments for this entry.
also: millsy has a weird mouth. once you notice it, it's all you ever notice about him.
Posted by lou (site) on Thu 16 Oct 2003 21:34 #
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Commenting has been turned off because of my inability to cope with the ridiculous amount of spammage I was receiving. Sorry!
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