Simon Rumble’s blog

Holly and I have been going to this incredible festival as often as possible since 2018. It's like no other festival: amazing people and vibe, single stage with a really diverse lineup of bands and some kooky traditions.

It's the best festival I've ever been to in Australia. Not the gravitas and lineup heft of Glastonbury but certainly captures a lot of the vibe, better in a lot of ways even. Not easy for us to make it from Sydney, involving finding hosts for our kids, flights, car hire and getting tents and the like all the way there.

This year we had to deal with serious heat. 37 degrees every day and on the Saturday night it was still 30 at 10pm. Seriously hot, so there was a lot of sitting around sipping drinks and hoping it'd cool down a bit.

Strange traditions

One of the funny traditions of Golden Plains is The Boot. To show their appreciation of a show, attendees hold a boot aloft above their heads. Charlotte Adigéry was very confused until some of the crowd explained what was going on. People also dress up in crazy stuff. And weirdest of all, you're allowed bring furniture to the festival, so there ends up being a whole array of couches at the back of the crowd area.

The sunsets from the hill beside the main stage are spectacular. A big crowd forms on the hill as the sun goes down with cheers, claps and hoots of appreciation. They're really stunning sunsets.

Bands

Last night Holly, Rachel and I managed to get out for some live music. Amazing after all this time.

The band we saw was local act EGOISM who we've been trying to see for a while. The earlier booking was for a December show that got cancelled with the Northern Beaches outbreak. Finally we got to see them at Mary's Underground, previously known as the famous Sydney venue The Basement.

It was weird going to a gig with all the checkin business for COVID. We were shown to a table and had to stay seated for the whole gig. Deeply weird. But rather civilised. Like a cabaret!

Better yet, Mary's stocks Heaps Normal, my favourite booze free beer.

EGOISM were great. Tightly performed their tracks, were fun with banter between songs. More polished than I'd expected. Their harmonies are really quite something.

Support act Ultracrush were good fun. Started off jingly jangly then went a bit shoegaze. Enjoyable show.

John Peel famously took the needle off The Undertones' Teenage Kicks and immediately played it again, it was such a perfect pop song. He was, of course, absolutely right.

I had the same reaction hearing Eli Paperboy Reed's Cut Ya Down the other night on FIP. Theoretically it's a problematic piece of music: it's a take on a traditional gospel song and retains all its fire breathing god bothering ways. It's also a white guy (a Yankee no less!) doing his take on a juke joint jam. But holy crap is it an amazing piece of music. Have a listen.

I've been to four gigs by The Cure now:

• The great set but terrible seats in terrible venue for the Wish tour at Sydney Entertainment Centre.
• Incredible epic set in Hyde Park in London on a warm Summer evening with support from Mogwai.
• Awesome gig at Sydney Opera House in 2011.
• Last night's gig at Olympic Park. A huge 3 hour set which is pretty amazing for a bunch of old dudes.

The Cure remain one of the most amazing live bands. Incredible to see them again. Had a fantastic time.

http://www.last.fm/event/1973836+Russian+Circles

Just put my votes into Triple J's Hottest 100 Australian albums of all time.  I just hope Farnsey and Barnesy don't make the top 10!

An amazing gig in an amazing venue. The Cure playing their first three albums at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. Brilliant. Over three hours of brilliance. After missing out on tickets when they sold out in about two minutes, we were lucky enough that a friend heard of some extra, last minute tickets turning up. And they were good tickets, off above the side of the stage.

Last night Holly and I had a grandmother looking after Louis and tickets to a gig. Date night! Lots of fun was had.

Two gigs in one week! At Opera House for Blonde Redhead. Support were ghastly. Enjoying the view before main act.

To be honest, the gig was a bit disappointing. I shouldn't be too surprised given the band have one amazing album and not much else worth listening to. But it's such a great album! As it happens, they played only one song from the great album and the rest was pretty crap.

I dreaded it every time they put their guitars down to play their keyboards. Every one of these tracks seemed to consist of meandering FM synth pads pushed through cathedral reverb. Not helped by the sound in the Concert Hall seeming to kill any mid frequencies from the music.

Wish I'd gone to see Sufjan Stevens instead now, though we had a nice night out anyway.