Wow, okay, so I’m awful, and it’s been a couple months since the whole SW insanity, but my memory is pretty good, so here we go. In the last episode, our daring adventurers had spent far too long than should be necessary in Sydney for a Melbournite, har har.

This was the first time on the entire trip where we’d had a Sidewave before a Soundwave, so it was weird not having to get up early to drive to the middle of nowhere, blah blah blah. We live just down the street from the venue, so it was a nice stroll after lunch to scope it out. We walked past Chris Conley from Saves The Day, which was pretty cool, though I don’t think I really saw anyone else from any other bands wandering around. Now, we were originally going to go to the Emery/f2f/BT show, but face pulled out, so we went with IPS/TLJ/BHG. (I think we actually could have gone and seen Nine Inch Nails, but I think it sold out or something. In retrospect I’m not entirely sure if we picked the right show, I’m still kind of weighing up the sheer awesome of IPS/LTJ against the pwnage of NIN, hmm…)

The day dragged along pretty slowly and there were a surprising number of stupid people in Melbourne. I think we brought the stupid back with us from Sydney or something. (Man, I’m such a hater. Really, Sydney isn’t that bad, there’s just a ridiculous amount of stupid people and it smells funny.) We said hello to Dan P. Carter again, very quickly got to say hey to Jesse IPS before they bolted ’cause they were late.

Now, I feel so bad for IPS. Because they put on probably the best show so far, but nobody else apart from Naja and I, and I think maybe a girl to my right, was into them. They were spectacular and their lights setup worked really well inside the Billboard. Slightly blew my eardrums out but it was absolutely amazing. (The Billboard’s a lot smaller than the Forum, and I was stoked for it.) LTJ were rad but I got kind of crushed and somewhat pwned by my anxiety so we moved out to the side and chilled and breathed and whatnot, which was good, then we checked out the merch (this is where I first learned that IPS merch sucks), and decided that BHG weren’t really worth bothering with and it would be more fun to hang around outside with a bag of original cheese Twisties and see if we could catch an elusive ska band.

We ended up chilling out with IPS on a smoke break, and missing getting puked all over by Evil Jared, so I think it was a good choice of ours to leave early. We said hey to Roger and buggered off home, trying not to get too pissed off at the fact that everyone in Melbourne had suddenly become an epic douchebag.

The Melbourne Sidewave was pretty cool before we’d even gotten through the gates! We took the tram out to the Showgrounds, and met up with lots of friends, doled out plenty of sun cream (today was the hottest so far since we’d started, and hell yeah, it was bakin’. I went to pee while Stealing O’Neal (a local band) were playing, and caught up with people during Madina Lake, though from what I could tell from the girls behind me, they were nice people and gave them free tickets and stuff. Less Than Jake were up next and played very well, as always Chris was an entertaining douchebag and Buddy cut a little bit more out of my heart to make room for him. I think after that we went for a wander to scope out the venue and got autograph tent tickets, where we got to say hey and I thanked Vinnie for following me on twitter (without me adding him first, no less!)

Finch were on before face to face, and though I’m not really fond of them, they were okay. Between sets, Trever actually came and sat down on the edge of the stage and made sure I was okay after the other night and was all concerned and had considered stopping the set and stuff, I pretty much died from epic love right there, I love Trever Keith so much. Not only is he one of the best singers I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to, he has a heart that is proportionate to the rest of his tank-like body. They played an amazing set, especially considering it was kind of a shitty time in the middle of the day.

After that we got some delicious, overpriced, chilled lemonade and went to check out IPS again. Their stage was the only one in the shade, which was awesome, and there was hardly anyone there, again, but at least that meant that the conditions were perfect for gettin’ down. (Dancing, not sex, you pervs.) It was a pretty awesome, set, not as good as the night before, but still great, and I worked up an epic sweat and felt great for it. We took a quick wander through the misting tent to cool down, met up with some more friends and grabbed some overpriced food and watched BHG again but it kind of blew. We were proper exhausted so Naja took a nap and the rest of us forced ourselves to stay awake through Alice In Chains in the bleachers. I probably would have loved AIC in my mid-teens but I wasn’t feeling them that night.

We were still knackered when Nine Inch Nails took the stage, so we stayed in the bleachers and it was really kind of amazing. The dust had been kicking up day something wicked, so between the killer light show and these immense clouds, it really looked like the end of the world was going down in front of us. Beautiful. We mustered up the energy somewhere around March Of The Pigs to go down and mosh, and skipped the very last song just so we could get a headstart on leaving. I really, really love NIN, but I also love getting home before the crush of a few dozen thousand smelly sweaty Aussies, and we were going to see them again the next night anyways.

Off we went again, and hopped onto another plane, this time headed for Radelaide. I mean, Adelaide. But it’s kind of a shitty joke that I liked from the first time I heard it, so it stuck. I’d been to Radelaide before, for Lagwagon, and eh, it was okay. People like to hang on shit on it but I’ve been in worse places. It’s very sleepy. We took the same stupid overpriced bus into the city, and when we asked the driver if he knew where the venue was, he just kind of barked at us and didn’t give us an answer. So we went way too far into the city and had to walk back like two miles, suckage.

It was freaking hot. Like, hotter than Melbourne easily. And without a single cloud in the sky; I was applying sun cream every 20 minutes just to feel like I wasn’t burning, seriously. Also, this venue from freaking tiny compared to the others; they were all at showgrounds, this one was in a park! LTJ’s stage was empty right up until they started playing, and Jesus H. Christ, I wish that I’d packed a neckerchief, or, you know, an oxygen mask. It was such an epic dustbowl because of the moshpit that I couldn’t breathe, or see, for most of their set. But then Buddy started throwing tacos at people. It was a pretty rad little set, better when Chris and Roger made everyone run to halfway across the park because the dust settled for a few seconds.

There really wasn’t that much to do that day, so we spent a lot of time in the shade and hanging around as far away from the sun and dirt as possible. I went a few shades darker than my already ridiculously brown festival tan just from dust, I swear. We met Mike Herrera who peddled us a DVD, and LTJ again just because, and watched one of the dudes from Madina Lake get ridiculously ignored by fans. Rival Schools played some time in the day and that was lovely just to chill out in the shade to. IPS played a decent set but it was incredibly hot, and the sun beat down on us all day thanx to the stage layouts, that I barely had the energy to rock out. (Oh, but I did. Nothing less than love for those guys.)

I got bizarrely owned during Chiodos‘ set by 15 year old girls. I’m not into them in the slightest, but it was the triple trouble of Alkaline Trio/New Found Glory/Face To Face coming up, so I dealt with it. Alk3 were okay as usual, one day I promise I will see them as headliners just so I can fully appreciate them instead of waiting for them to finish, same with NFG. Face put on an excellent show, especially considering the crowd was really weird; most people left after NFG, and there were some epic tools behind me, but it was worth it, f2f, regardless of the physical and emotional damage I recieve from the shows, will always be worth it.

Nine Inch Nails were the closers, again, as always, and it was, as always, beautiful. This time, we stood right up as close to the stage as we could, and bristled all over. For a lot of people, that would apparently be their last ever NIN show. (I’m not entirely sold by the wave goodbye business, but I’m still nipping at the heels of the two UK shows they’re doing as part of NIN|JA. I don’t have a ticket yet but hell if I am not at least turning up and buying one off someone… but I digress, this is about the past, not the future!) I have nothing but fond memories of every time I’ve seen NIN and this was no different. This was the first time I’d seen Robin Finck up close, and it was very cool. (I think I might be an Aaron kid when it comes down to it, but Robin has his place in history and deserves to be celebrated!) Some of the guys from Dillinger Escape Plan came up to do Wish, and that was cool. I don’t like DEP much, but it was pretty awesome to see those guys’ best moments of the lives happening right in front of me. Seeing at least a dozen people brought to tears (as well as myself) from Hurt was certainly something. I was very moved from that show indeed.

The walk “home” sucked until we went to our favourite place in Radelaide which is the Gilbert Place Pancake House, open 24 hours a day(!!!!), where we made ourselves suitably sick on awesome before wandering back to our hostel. It took me a good ten minutes to wipe off all the dirt I could without having a shower (on account of I didn’t have a towel). The beds were ridiculously comfortable, I highly rate the… hostel I can’t remember the name of any more. But it was good. We caught a relatively cheap taxi back to the airport, flew home, got dropped back, let the world stop for a few minutes. It was one hell of a trip… I’m certainly not adverse to doing it again, and Soundwave lineups tend to be awesome, but given how the company behind Soundwave went into liquidation before the festivals even started this year, I don’t know how certain a Soundwave ’10 will be. But if it does, and if I go, you’ll be first to hear about it!

So where I last left you was hanging around in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in New South Wales. Now we’re hanging around in the middle of bumfuck Sydney in New South Wales. (That’s really kind of harsh, but I just don’t really like Sydney. Being, essentially, from Melbourne, I think it’s kind of expected of me, but Sydney’s kind of bleh, personally.)

The next morning was absolutely amazing for one reason in particular: breakfast. Oh my god. I am not a morning person, I am certainly not a breakfast person, but after nearly three days without real food I was actually starting to fantasize about a cooked breakfast. We went to this little café that we rocked up to when we saw Lagwagon in Sydney earlier on in the year and had massive bitchin breakfasts that kept us painfully full until… lunch. We were going to two Sidewave shows in Sydney, tonight’s was innerpartysystem/Less Than Jake/Bloodhound Gang. Weird fucking lineup. I figured it must have been an East Coast thing or something. That, or the Soundwave promoters suck. (More on this later.)

It was probably around 11am and there were already a couple chicks hanging out. For the Bloodhound Gang. We were freaked. Turns out they’d been there since 6. Seriously. And one of them, like, cried when they met the band at the signing tent the day before. Um… there’s nothing wrong with being that devoted to a band, but really, the BHG? I don’t get it, but, whatever. People from Sydney are kind of weird. I got a quick tour of the nicer parts of the city, some sushi and cupcakes (from two places right next to each other on Pitt St and pretty much the best things there) and trundled back, chatted to Daniel Carter (ex-A bassist, lovely man) for a bit, and then spent a while remembering why I didn’t like Sydney (mostly just down to idiot teenagers who think getting trashed on cruisers at 4pm is the most hardcore thing ever, et cetera ad nauseum.)

Boring boring boring waiting, oh hey it’s innerpartysystem! They played really, really well and it was great seeing them without hearing death metal doof-doof-doof-doof in the background. I freaking love this band. (I just realised I think I’m writing in a different tense to the previous article. Oh well. Roll with the punches.) They were not insanely received, sadly, but the lineup’s so weird that people there for LJT/BHG really didn’t understand it. Boo hiss. Less Than Jake made up for the slightly soured audience by far. I forgot how much I loved seeing LTJ. (Maybe because this was the first time since the start of Soundwave that I’d actually been able to see them.) BHG are pretty rad, again, Jared does a Jägermeister bong, holds it down, I’m not exactly impressed but more slightly fearful that he’s partially made of asbestos or something.

After the show was kind of hilarious, LTJ disappeared fast into the night but we got to meet Jesse, Jared and Kris from IPS (and watch Kris very drunkenly slide down a stair railing). They’re really sweet dudes. We fucked off back to our hotel, I got to have a shower, slept like the dead. Yay.

OMG FACE TO FACE TODAY, OMG was pretty much what ran through our minds for most of the day, because holy crap, Face To Face. (Although, technically ‘face to face’, they don’t capitalise. I’m not going to capitalise from here on in because I don’t like capitalisation either.) We rocked up a little early to see if there was anyone there already and… there were, and we were like, wow, and then we remembered it was in fact Billy Talent headlining. But most of the kids hanging out there were really nice people, a couple Californians and a girl from Melbourne were especially cool. We had sushi and cupcakes again (actually, I had katsu curry because they do amazing katsu curry at the Sakura on Pitt) and went for occasional strolls to pass the time. We got to say hey to Trever and Danny from f2f (f2f is an acceptable abbreviation) and oh my god I totally got a bro-hug from Trev, pretty much the manliest moment of my entire life right there. Apparently we were cool to the other kids for not freaking out in front of the band. I think it’s just really weird freaking out in front of the band. (I did have a bit of a squeal of joy later though.) Trev and their tour manager dude gave us tickets even though we had them, which was cool because one of our friends didn’t. They’re such nice guys. Man, all the bands I like are nice.

So Emery suck and their fans are all emo bogan douchebags. Just so you know. (Sorry if any of you actually like Emery. But they sucked.) face to face were kind of ridiculously good. Roger was absolutely owning, again. Wicked shit. However, then kicks in the bad voodoo again. I have anxiety (as I have written about before) and one of the triggers is, well, getting kicked in the head by crowdsurfers. And it kind of happened, again. I was out of it for nearly the entire time but I got told by my girlfriend that security was utter shit and I was left curled up on the stage side of the barrier for a good while before she got out and pulled me off to the side herself, they started to kind-of help when I was actually out of the way. Good going, guys. Nice to see your first aid skills are top notch. Blah.

We watched Billy Talent from up in the seats, I really hope BT don’t have epileptic fans because wow, strobe lights. I really want to like BT but maybe it’s just because I was in a shit mood from having an anxiety attack but I couldn’t get into them in the slightest, and I was really fucking angry at a dude that broke one of my friends glasses and was, I think, the dude that set off my attack. I don’t fucking like crowdsurfers. He had the misfortune of trying to surf over a dozen girls who let him drop to the ground and proceeded to kick the shit out of him though. This is what happens when you kick people in the head. They will kick you in the head right back given half the chance.

Afterwards, we waited around so one of our friends could meet BT (cue many jokes about what a nice boy Billy was from Naja and I, we’re great people)- she was staying in a hotel a block away from us with her dad, and he really wanted to go and get some sleep so we offered to hang around and chaperone her back to her hotel. BT are nice guys, stoked to have played with f2f, we ended up accidentally getting a picture with their drummer. Kind of awkward for us but not a bad night I guess. f2f had flown the coop like bats out of hell so we missed saying thanx which sucked, but eh, always a next time, we live for next times. We notoriously have bad luck at f2f shows so it wasn’t that big a deal.

next up- Melbourne Sidewave/Melbourne Soundwave/(R)adelaide Soundwave!

The revolution won’t be televised, but they’ll be doing a signing at 3.10!

Brisbane Soundwave/Sydney Soundwave

Soundwave is an Australian music festival that has been around for a couple years now. It kind of existed for a few years before that under a different name, but that was in Perth and nobody really cares about Perth. This year, Naja (my girlfriend) and I went on an epic nomadic journey that encompassed pretty much the entire 2009 Soundwave experience. Apart from Perth, because nobody really cared about Perth. (That and it’s ridiculously expensive to fly out there.)

Some time early on a Saturday morning in February, we hauled our asses from North Geelong to Avalon Airport and a few hours later end up in Brisbane. Brisbane is sticky but has good public transport. There’s a train than runs from the airport pretty much right to the venue’s doorstep. (It would actually run to the venue if Soundwave wasn’t on, how neat is that?) The queue is kind of massive but we’re through with our bags cloaked and hanging out with our friends in front of Stage 2 within half an hour because of killer organisation. (This doesn’t sound important, but trust me on this one…)

Stage 2 is occupied by Forlorn Gaze who have to be seen… and heard, to be believed. During FG’s set, tragic news befalls us. (Turns out I think it was all Chris’ fault?) Big sorry feelings for Brisbane, who also missed out on a Goldfinger headliner show because John Feldmann won’t fly coach. We were kind of freaking out because dear sweet Roger Manganelli is supposed to be playing in another band over Soundwave, and if he’s not here… oh boy.

Having nothing better to do on account of there is absolutely no Jake (considerably Less Than Jake) to be found, we headed over to Stage 3 and found the ever-so-handsome Mike Herrera of MxPx doing an acoustic set of MxPx/Tumbledown songs. What a dude. MxPx are Soundwave veterans and were doing it back when it was Gravity Soundwave in Perth so it makes sense that Mike was there. (I think Yuri is looking after his baby and Tom… I don’t know what Tom was doing so that he wasn’t there.) After that we hung around and caught a few Saves The Day songs before going for a wander to check out the rest of the stages, eat Nutella sandwiches and watch Goldfinger from the bleachers. I keep seeing these things called Dagwood Dogs being sold about the place and it turns out they’re like corn dogs-on-a-stick but they look like roadkill. I never ended up eating one, and thinking about it, it was probably a good thing.

Oh, and there are signing tents! So we lined up to get tickets to fawn over The Bloodhound Gang, gave props to a dude from the Riverboat Gamblers who was wearing a Black Fag: Jealouth Again shirt and I decided that Anthony from Bayside kind of definitely looks better with bleached hair. The BHG are really nice guys. Jimmy Pop gives me a kiss on the cheek and I left the tent thinking everyone I’ve ever met from Pennsylvania is really nice. Speaking of, they put on a good show and there’s nothing quite like a few thousand slightly sunburnt people singing I need to find a new vagina. Jared performs his regurgitation party trick and we see his Aussie flag undies for the first but certainly not last time. Between them and your new favourite band were Rival Schools over on Stage 3 and it was really cool to just chill out in a big car park watching cool dudes play cool music.

INNERPARTYSYSTEM ARE YOUR NEW FAVOURITE BAND. They’ve kind of been my new favourite band since October but I finally got to see them play and they’re amazing. So there. Stage 5 is kind of in a little clearing all of its own with benches and a summer house, and there were these big trees facing the stage and all these kids watching the bands in the trees. Very cool. Say Anything were on after them, running late because of Bemis as usual. I really like SA but Max is such a diva. They were like 20 minutes late and we caught a couple songs but they weren’t so great that night and seeing as they didn’t pull Trever Keith over for an off-the-cuff rendition of People Like You Are Why People Like Me Exist I lost interest and we popped back over to Stage 3 where all the action and awesome is.

Well, almost all the action and awesome. We ended up accidentally catching the end of Chiodos’ set and I don’t like Chiodos (they don’t even get b-tags i don’t like them that much). New Found Glory weren’t bad (although I still maintain that Jordan Pundik is too old for this shit) and Alkaline Trio had the slowest roadie in the universe. One day I will see Alk-3 when they’re not before the band I really came to see and I will probably enjoy their show a lot more. I mean, hell yeah they’re good but there’s always the nagging omfg get off the stage already voice in the back of my head chanting over I won’t have to quit doing fucked up shit.

And then oh my stars, it’s Face To Face! I hadn’t seen f2f since before my birthday last year, in which I nearly broke my nose, Naja most certainly broke her hand and I had a couple of nasty panic attacks (and again the day after at The Bamboozle Left when no other than Alk-3 was playing before them, alas). Their usual bass player, Scott Shiflett (listen to viva dea h…) is sick as a dog and couldn’t make the flight out to Australia so they pulled in Roger from Less Than Jake and he kicks ass. Seriously amazing. My love for him increases twofold. Things are rad. We catch the free train out to the suburbs and stay at a friend’s house, and his mother lets us shower and sleep in a real bed and gives us a taxi number so we can get back out to Brisbane Airport four hours later, good times.

The taxi cost us an arm and a leg and we bitch about it for a few minutes, then we almost lose one of our friends’ tickets- we’re not even in Sydney and the dark cloud of failure that hangs over the place is already cursing us! At least we’re then in the company of awesome friends and a rental car and we head over to the fucking Eastern Creek Raceway, get lost for a couple hours, finally make it out to the middle of bumfuck nowhere Blacktown and then, and then we get seriously wailed on by The Curse Of Sydney Soundwave.

So last year’s Sydney Soundwave was reportedly the worst festival in Australia in 2008 due to hideous organisation. (And we figured, since they had it all sorted in Brisbane the day before… we figured wrong.) This year, it ain’t much better. We stand in line for three hours and miss Mike Herrera, Less Than Jake (and man are we pissed for missing LTJ two days in a row), Bayside, Riverboat Gamblers and Goldfinger. We are not pleased. There’s a second entrance that nobody knows about. The venue layout is nothing short of dire, meaning there’s a tiny bottleneck right next to the metal stage, and all six stages are lined up so sometimes you can hear the other stages playing around you very loudly. Oh, and they have taps for free water but nothing to put it in. Enough crabbing on about how shit the Raceway is, we catch Straylight Run, 20 minutes of IPS and then trot on over for the BHG. (I like bands from Pennsylvania who can be abbreviated to three letters, it seems.)

We end up catching most of Dillinger Escape Plan and I still don’t like them. Well, that’s not true, I like one or two of their songs. It’s just that I also like full use of my ears and digestive system and apparently one cannot have both. Once I’d felt like barfing out my intestines from superhxc double-kick we raced plastic bottles along the barrier and saw BHG again and it was better than Brisbane which was nice. We caught some of Billy Talent and then waltzed over for Rival Schools (still awesome), New Found Glory (still pubescent), Alkaline Trio (who still need to fire their exceedingly slow roadie, he might realise he’s fired next week) and Face To Face (still better than you). Trever announces that because of the response at Soundwave after two shows, f2f are coming back to Australia next year. Naja and I break a few glasses from squealing. Life is awesome.

next up- Sydney Sidewaves/Melbourne Sidewave/Melbourne Soundwave/(R)Adelaide Soundwave!

Going on a five-month sabbatical to the other side of the world doesn’t mean I can just abandon my post as a writer for the heavenly scripture that is Two Beats Off! – so I am taking it upon myself to write home about Things That Rock Here, in fairly regular installations.

(Now, by no means am I here because I am rich; I’m just lucky that an unnamed acquaintance gave me the airmiles for a return ticket. To be honest, if it weren’t for the fact that my girlfriend lives here, I probably would never have visited. As it stands, here I am!)

I’m living in Melbourne until mid-April, and I have to say, I’m very stoked about it. Melbourne is awesome.

The scene here is wicked. And so far, I can say only rivalled by Wollongong, some 500 miles up the coast in New South Wales and has a ridiculously cool handful of bands that remind me why I love punk rock. Saying that, Melbourne is home to some fantastic musicians and some lovely venues. (I’ll write about the venues soon, but there are still a good few I haven’t been to yet and just need an excuse to check out.) That’s not to say every band here is awesome because some of them are kind of awful, but I guess it’s the same everywhere you go. However, my girlfriend insists this lot are fine:

Yidcore

Local Resident Failure

Subject To Change

Commissioner Gordon

There’s so much more to this city – to this country – but there’s a lot of time ahead and a lot more fun to be had, so keep yourselves busy with this for now!

~sfx