Tales of Woodford: Day Five (Wednesday) – Part Two

Now, where was I? Ah yes, waiting for The Quills to play.

I want to avoid saying purely negative things about this band, but it is difficult. Things got off to a bad start when they came onstage with ridiculous, pretentious hipster outfits (and one of them had a laptop) and then the singer launched into an "inspirational" and pretentious introduction to the band or their recording process or something like that. I'm not sure. I wasn't really listening. The music turned out to be fairly generic pop-rock of the kind that makes me a happy ex-Triple J listener, and in no way vindicated their pretentious schtick. (Did I mention I found them pretentious?) When the second or third song was a mellow tune incorporating samples that sounded like painful mic feedback I gave up and went somewhere else.

The Ellis Collective, on the other hand, were one of my Woodford highlights.

Their website describes their sound as "bloke folk", which is accurate as well as rhyming. I appreciate it when artists sing in their native accent and, while a broad Australian accent can be grating in song, Matty Ellis' is not that kind. Instead, backed by strings and perfect vocal harmonies, it's a sound as immediately and endearingly Australian as the Lucksmiths'. That Lucksmiths comparison can be stretched further: while the Ellis Collective deal less in whimsy and more in melancholy, both bands excel at portraying small pieces of ordinary people's ordinary lives.

Refreshing and wonderful. I was only sorry I hadn't made time to see them earlier in the week as well.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the final of the band competition. All five bands had pulled together pretty great performances in the space of a few days, but the winners - the Woodford Weatherers - were probably the best band overall, most of the other groups being "star performer" + backup people."¹

In the evening I went to see a group called On the Stoop, but instead spent fifteen or twenty minutes watching them futz around trying to set things up and do a soundcheck. By the time I gave up and went away there was still no sign that a performance was likely to occur. As a result I caught the very, very end of Mic Conway's National Junk Band's set, and discovered that I should probably have been there for the whole thing. Some guy playing a singing saw, fire breathing and fire swallowing,²³ and a stage full of bizarre contraptions. Ah well.

The Kin were next up on the Grande stage, but fell somewhat flat. The audience tended to encourage the brothers' diva tendencies, and the magic of their previous performance was absent. Plus, the sound at the Grande was still terrible.

I had plans to head back for the tent for a brief nap, then wake up in time for the three minutes' silence at 23:30 and stay awake until midnight. I set an alarm but must have turned it off without even waking up properly, because I missed the lot.

1. The above pictures from the band competition are not of members of the winning band, they are just the pictures I like best. [↩]
2. I saw fire swallowing being taught on the Totally Rad Show a few months ago and now I really want to try it myself. Delicious, delicious fire. [↩]
3. Damn, I can't attach footnotes to footnotes using my current plugin. I was going to mention that TRS is past its prime but still often worth watching. [↩]