With a four day break idle minds soon find a myriad of bizarre things to ponder, the first being the Byron Bay Bluesfest. Parts of this post first appeared in The Weekly Review.
Milling around Byron in August you can’t help but notice something wafting through the air … music. Sit at Main Beach as the sun goes down and you’ll catch an impromptu jam session of bongo, didgeridoo and sax players, and that’s months before the Bluesfest begins.
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| Thanks to BluesFest |
Winner of the 2010 Australian Event of the Year, the Bluesfest has also been named one of the top five finalists for international event of the year, along with Britain’s Glastonbury Festival.
Director Peter Noble has previously described the five-day, all ages event as a “gumbo mixture of madness and fun”, adding that the spirit is one of being “globally united anti-mainstream. It is at heart a family event. We strive to be inclusive of everyone while remaining a festival that holds no more than 18,000 people per day.”
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| Thanks to BluesFest |
The wide definition of the blues has seen the main stages blitzed with blues, funk, folk, reggae, alternative, surf, and world music. Meanwhile the relaxed backyard atmosphere, legendary guests, and good sound quality has seen top artists knocking on the door. This year the line up included: John Fogerty; The Specials; The Pogues; Ziggy Marley; and Buddy Guy to name a few.
According to latest reports key stand outs have been …The Pogues (playing Dirty Old Town), Buddy Guy, John Fogerty, Cold Chisel (playing Choirgirl, and the crowd singing along to every word of Khe Sahn … well it’s almost unAustralian not too isn’t it?), and our own John Butler Trio rocking the crowd to close out the day … for Perth locals lucky enough to have JBT in our own backyard, we wouldn’t expect anything else really… always brilliant live see earlier JB post!
With John Butlers’ Revolution and Gonna Be A Long Time playing on my laptop, while looking at pictures of all those caravans I’m left to ponder two things:
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Whether my van man and his entire extended family have made their way to Byron. If so here’s hoping someone’s alerted the Guinness Book of Records about the high probability of traffic jam history.
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I really must make more of an effort to get there next year, or at least once in my lifetime. After all as someone called Waffles reminds us … “enjoy yourself it’s later than you think, enjoy yourself while you’re in the pink … the years go by as quickly as a wink, enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think – The Specials.”
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Safe trip home to all the Bluesfest patrons.
Awesome
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Worth going
