Good Vibrations 2008 @ Riverstage, Brisbane (10/02/08)

Check out the photos here.

After weeks of almost incessant rain, the weather gods shone on Brisbane on Sunday for the Good Vibrations Festival, and thankfully gave us all a beautiful day. I have never seen such a well thought out, planned and catered to event, in the most perfect of settings, in all my festival-going years. Taking over almost the entire city’s botanic gardens, there were ample portaloos, heaps of great food stalls, plenty of cool shady places to sit and chill, free water taps and ice tea and awesome stage set-ups. Other considerations included the rubbish collectors who kept busy all day picking up discarded cups and keeping the place looking beautiful, just making the whole experience so much better. The downside of it all was very short set times from most of the acts, that meant some hard work for one ITM reporter (who’s now regretting the choice of thongs), who probably ended up walking an accumulated fifty kilometers over the ten-hour period.

Snaps to Steve Lind for filling in the gaps between headliners and playing a grand total of almost two hours on the Good Vibrations stage, and to Aniki who did the same down on the Roots stage. Can I just say that Aniki rocks! Nobody else can manage to mix up a set of the widest variety of genres so successfully. Quite often I found myself unable to drag myself away from these infectious dance-inducing tracks to cover other acts on at the same time. But with five stages and a variety of other music spaces dotted about the gardens, my top picks were the B-Live tent with its’ magnificent golden chandelier suspended from the ceiling and its showcase of vinyl demons, followed by the Chinese Laundry stage; the strictly dance stage where the fluoro bunnies and rainbow kids were hanging out for most of the event. The Star Bar set in the gardens café never really managed to grab my attention, but it looked pretty as I walked past. The second largest stage was the Roots stage which catered mainly to the hip-hopppin’ fraternity. Some cross-sound between it and the Star Bar caused a few problems that might possibly have been avoided if it had been set further back.

Logistics aside, what about the music? At times I felt like I was hearing non-stop episodes of So You Think You Can Dance as, apart from a few standout performances, it was generally all very pop-commercial electro house. The award for the most-played track of the festival has to go to the one act that failed to show for this event with Kanye’s Stronger and several replays of Daft Punk’s original track heard across many of the sound spaces throughout the gig. I arrived as My Ninja Lovers were cranking the mellow summer vibes on the main stage to a very small audience in the blazing hot midday sun, before wandering up the hill to the B-Live tent. From midday onwards Sampology had me transfixed with a heavenly b-boy set that they supposedly “threw together last night”, and that included some totally crazy beat-boxing, superb scratching and every old skool anthem that ever was.

Traveling from the UK, Radioclit kept the heat up in the B-Live tent while down at the Star Bar, Audun was spinning some mellow sounds to the chilled out crowd while even further down in the Chinese Laundry stage Jason Morley was cranking out some serious techno beats. Brisbane favourites Vinyl Slingers were awesome, opening at 1.30pm with Crystal Method’s Get Busy Child and finishing off their funky daytime set with Ganggajang’s Sounds of Then (This is Australia) _and the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations. With their trademark striped T’s and daggy shorts, the Winnie Coopers brought some quality Aussie hip hop to the Roots stage, and back at the Good Vibrations stage the Resin Dogs were giving the Hilltop Hoods orchestra collaboration a run for their money with an accompanying string section and a full brass “Horny Dogs”, and by then a steady stream of late arrivers started filling the venue up and hitting the dance floors with gusto.

TV Rock’s set from 3pm was rather uninspiring cheesy techno with long breaks that lasted just a little too long to keep me lingering. Back at the B-Live tent the Bag Raiders kept the old skool 80s marathon going, with a theme that continued throughout the day as everything that was 80’s was once again cool. Thievery Corporation brought some ambient tunes to the main stage with their exotic blend of sitar, bongos and vocals but the mellow start to the set was a bit to relaxed to hold the attention for long of this ADD kid in need of a boogie. I made the long haul back down to the Laundry to dance my socks off to 16-Bit Lolitas, where I heard Chemical Brother’s Hey boy, Hey Girl yet again. That’s OK, it is a great track.

By 5pm the B-Live tent was so packed to overflowing for Kid Kenobi & MC Sureshock that it was causing a traffic jam outside, as everyone wanted their dose of harder, faster tunes. Soon after that Scotsman Calvin Harris impressed with a very tight show, despite a “disco-related injury” sustained in Melbourne leaving him unable to dance. He played all of his popular hits including Acceptable in the 80s, The Girls and In the Industry, and all the girls were happy as the sun began to set on a gorgeous day and a cool breeze brought welcome relief to happy sun burnt faces. Not long after DJ legend Sinden took over from Surkin at the Laundry stage at for a rocking long set while Pharoahe Monch brought some serious US hip-hop back to the Roots Stage. After being told that Simon says “Get the Fuck Up”, I took a quick bolt over the hill to the Main stage only to find The Rapture finishing a lot earlier than posted.

Several Aniki deviations ensued before it was the time I had been dreading all day: 8.30pm and I was going to have to choose between headliners Cypress Hill, turntablist extraordinaire and long-time favourite of mine A-Trak, and ITM favourites High Contrast & MC Wrec. Oh, the dilemma of it all! A few back and forth trips and A-Track was clearly the winner of the night. Even old faves Cypress Hill’s energy levels weren’t giving me as many good vibes as this crazy scratching genius and his blinged-up guest, Kid Sister. They rocked it hard in the B-Live tent right until the end of the night when the plugs were pulled. And then, it was all over for another year, but what an awesome event it was! Thanks Good Vibes for getting it so right!

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lukedougherty says...

on February 15th, 2008

hit the nail on its head! other then daft punk - the festival of summer! a trak, surkin, titsworth, radioclit, cypress were all far too good! get the b live tent to more festivals! that thing rocked.

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