Back at the Flamingo Stage, The Rapture sound, look and feel like a band that’s well past its prime and who are not really enjoying the experience either.

I can’t remember ever seeing Fatboy Slim play before but he’s another of the day’s disappointments. He takes an almost student disco approach to his set, playing a bunch of classic tracks but dropping snippets of his own songs into them. It’s like a slightly less cheesy version of the Jive Bunny Megamix.

LCD Soundsystem have been one of my favourite bands over the last few years. The heavily Bowie-influenced This Is Happening album was probably my favourite album of 2010, there were fantastic at last year’s Big Day Out (even if they clashed with Grinderman and I didn’t get to see their whole set) and watching the stream of their mammoth, almost 4 hour last ever show at Madison Square Gardens one Sunday morning in my living room was one of those special moments (along with Coachella Live) that I really experienced the power of the internet’s possibilities and worried for the future of still photography when compared to video’s capabilities. As I wrote in my post for last year’s Big Day Out, I have all the time in the world for James Murphy; he’s almost like a role model for older people in the music industry. So I was always going to head over the DFA Stage to catch a bit of him and fellow LCD-founder Pat Mahoney’s set. Although it wasn’t specifically advertised as a DJ set, it’s what I was expecting, even if I was secretly hoping that it would be a new musical project. As you’d expect it was just a couple of guys playing some songs. Pat Mahoney smokes a lot, James Murphy walks around a lot, leaving Pat to do most of the “work”, at least in the early part of the set that I see. It is weird watching them laugh, joke and chat with each other on stage. It’s even weirder looking out and seeing that they’re playing to a small audience of LCD obsessives and casualties from the day seeking solitude in the quieter space at the very back of the festival site. Unlike everyone I’ve seen today, they do have some turntables and a box of records. Having watched Ruby Rose “host” the Flamingo Stage through the day I’ve noticed that while she might have a fancy pair of gold headphones around her neck, there’s nothing much going on in terms of any beat matching. Indeed as she was lining up Sweet Child Of Mine as her next song, she kept playing it through the PA (and not in an obvious drop-in of the main riff). I could be wrong, as it’s impossible to see from the photo pit, but what she plays sounds like it’s been pre-recorded on a laptop. Further evidence would be that there’s little in the way of an ongoing mix, more a case of fade out the track playing, fade in the next track over it. Naboo from the Mighty Boosh would be proud. As ever, taking photos of people DJ-ing on a dark stage from a photo pit doesn’t result in anything of much aesthetic value so I don’t end with anything of Murphy and Mahoney that’s worth showing.

There’s no sitting on the fence when it comes to The Wombats; you either love them or you hate them. I fall into the second category. I just find them annoying and irritating and don’t like their sound or their songs. To make matters worse they’ve become another one of those bands (like Friendly Fires a few hours earlier) that promoters keep bringing back to Australia on far too regular a basis.

Up until they had been announced as Future Music’s headliners, I’d never heard of Swedish House Mafia. I don’t move in dance music circles and these days I don’t keep much of an eye on the charts, not that it’s hard to do in Australia (or the UK these days I guess) when there’s no televised run-down of the charts. I did hear them a few times a day thanks to another one of my week-long listens to Nova for a blog post I was considering doing but in the end didn’t write (so I listened to Nova for a week for no good reason, feel my pain). It sounded like fairly generic house music, nothing special or memorable and left me scratching my head as to why they were headlining. As for Skrillex during the afternoon, everyone has gone to see them and it’s another long fight through the masses to get to the entrance to the photo pit. Although the only contract I had to sign today was for the band (it was nothing contentious and I remember some stuff about not using the photos for posters and t-shirts in there) it turns out that only an exclusive selection of the photographers hear today were deemed special/important enough to have been offered the chance to photograph them. So there’s a check in the photo pit of everyone’s laminate to find out who they’re photographing for and the anointed few get an additional photo pass stuck to their arm and their name crossed off the list. Those not important enough are apologised to and have to make their way back through the crowd.

For a band that don’t have instruments they take their sweet time setting the stage up and in the meantime we just stand there and wait. We watch a couple of guys carrying another guy who looks like he’s trying to eat his own face off up the photo pit and they deposit him near the dirt track road where a few paramedics arrive a minute or two later and start attending to him, watched by four or five police officers. Given the unpleasantness of the day, including the carnage outside the festival even before it had started, I was looking forward to reading about it in the papers (and their websites) the next day and especially looking forward to the statistics for arrests and those requiring medical attention but other than a few social photos, there’s not a mention of the day in either the Brisbane Times or The Courier Mail. It might be Brisbane’s daily paper but I get the impression that The Courier Mail avoids reviewing gigs that they can’t sit down at. Either I am a bit taken aback that something like Future Music could happen in Brisbane (and actually be in Brisbane rather than down at the Gold Coast), have acts of the calibre and status that it has, be attended to by what I’m guessing is well over 30,000 people and none of the papers review it, either from a music point of view or as a news story of arrests and casualties. Maybe the police didn’t manage to find anyone on drugs the whole day…

So we wait and we wait and finally the lights go down,

Although there’s a big white sheet covering the front of the stage, before it went up it offers a glimpse at the stage set, with a big cube prominent. Having seen this I decide that I’m going to head for the middle of the pit and wait for a massive entrance of hopefully lights and pyrotechnics. The curtain drops and I realise that I can’t see anything. All I can see is the cube, with an occasional hand in the air from one of the band. Quickly moving to the side I realise that it’s no better and wherever you are in the photo pit you can’t actually see anything. To make matters worse, it starts to pour down with rain just before the band starts. For all the rigmarole of making us sign contracts, and only those publications deemed worthy being allowed to photograph, the long wait and the band starting well behind time, and the driving rain, trying to photograph Swedish House Mafia is just a colossal waste of time. With the band starting so far behind time I don’t stick around and head out, back along the access road rather than fighting my way out of the crowd (which looks like it’s the biggest of the day, even more than were there for Skrillex) to the Flamingo Stage for New Order.

The difference couldn’t be more marked: whereas a few hundred metres away Swedish House Mafia are playing to tens of thousands, New Order have drawn a crowd that doesn’t look like it’s going to trouble four figures and at a squeeze could probably fit inside The Zoo. It’s far and away the smallest crowd of the day at either of the two main outdoor stages. Jessie J played to more people. Tinie Tempah played to more people. The Rapture played to more people. Even The Naked & Famous played to more people that have come to see one of the pioneers of electronic dance music. It reminds me of the similar situation seeing Kraftwerk play here at Doomben for Global Gathering a few years ago and seeing the band and their stunning show play out to a few hundred people in a significantly less than half full. Thanks to the late running Swedish House Mafia the band have already started before I get to the photo pit, opening with Crystal and following it with Regret. Frustratingly, the band are playing in the dark; it’s only later when watching them from out of the photo pit that you can see the full effects of video images being them. On top of the darkness, it’s also frustrating that drummer Stephen Morris is completely hidden behind his drum kit, making it impossible to get any photos of him.

There were really only two acts I want to see at Future; New Order and Aphex Twin, and the organisers have scheduled them both up against each other, both starting at 9pm and both finishing at 10pm. I knew that photographing Richard D James from the photo pit would be a waste of time, which was why I headed to New Order at 9pm but with the aim to head over to see a bit of Aphex Twin somewhere in the middle of the set. New Order start playing Ceremony as their third song, and as the lighting doesn’t improve, I decide that this is the time to head over to The Likes Of You tent and see some Aphex Twin

Despite having listened to Aphex Twin for almost 20 years, I can’t remember ever seeing him play live. He’s one of those acts that I can pinpoint the time and place when I first heard him; my housemate playing Ambient Works at about 6am after we’d gotten back from a house party that went on all night before being busted by the police telling everyone to go home. Good times. Although going to photograph New Order was the sensible choice, despite the lack of light, Aphex Twin’s light show is far more impressive. He’s playing raised up and sandwiched between video screens behind him and in front of him, you can barely make him out as he’s just a distant shadow in the middle of all the visual overload. On top of all this there’s all the lasers and light. It’s a really impressive sight and not only that, it sounds superb as well, with the sound as clear as a bell too. I couldn’t tell you anything he played but the combination of lights and music has stunned the half-full tent into awe.

I stay for a bit, take a few photos of the lasers and the pulsating video screens but then have to make a decisions as to whether to stay and see more Aphex Twin. I don’t know why but I decide to head back outside and back to New Order. Maybe it’s because I know a lot more of their songs and at least will be able to recognise then, maybe it’s a choice of a live band over one guy with a laptop, maybe I just feel bad that New Order are headlining but only playing to a few hundred people. I guess I’ll never know if it’s the right or the wrong choice but one thing I do know is that having walked out and chosen a spot in the open space about half way between the mixing desk and the stage, the heavens decide to open again and it rains fairly heavily for the remainder of their set. It’s depressing watching a band in the rain but as the stage is offering no shelter and as you can visibly see the rain being blown onto the stage, it must be even more depressing to be in such a legendary band, play to a tiny crowd and also get rained on. A stage hand runs out after every song to mop up the water on the stage but in the end Bernard Sumner tells him that he’s wasting his time and not to bother. The band are ok but I guess given the circumstances they’re never going to put on their best performance. Although the elements make it a miserable experience, it’s frustrating in a way that they only get to play for an hour and don’t fit many songs into that. I find out afterwards when checking out the online setlist that I missed all of Bizarre Love Triangle while over seeing Aphex Twin. I then get to see them close out with True Faith, 586, Blue Monday and Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. I had hoped that after all these year’s Sumner would have dropped the “Love, love will tear us apart. C’MON”s from the song but sadly he’s still dropping them in to each and every chorus in the song.

With New Order only playing for an hour and playing at the same time as Aphex Twin, it’s annoying that once again Brisbane gets to miss out on anything in the way of sideshows. Both acts play additional shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Given that both acts play to small crowds, it’s clear that they’ve been the wrong choice of headliners for Future Music and an audience that would much rather have the latest big name DJs play rather than any heritage acts. Sadly almost everyone who’s come to Future would rather stand and watch Swedish House Mafia plug in their iPod and press play. It’s also clear, possibly because of the festival’s reputation and what else is on offer during the day, that having the two acts play hasn’t brought much in the way of an additional crowd, one that was unlikely to have come specifically to see the two acts. I can’t believe that it wouldn’t have been different if Brisbane had had the opportunity to see either or both acts at a side show in the city.

And so a thoroughly miserable day comes to an end. Will I be back next year? Yeah, probably. I probably will have forgotten just how depressing the experience was and how angry it made me feel having to endure the Future crowd for a day. Plus they’ll probably announce a band or two that I just can’t resist wanting to see. At least next year I’ll be better prepared for what to expect from a trip out to Doomben.

Future Music Festival is more than just the vileness of the masses, there’s also some live music taking place and some photos to be taken.

Hanging outside the festival and watching the midday carnage of people being attended to by the medical services, isn’t my idea of fun but, as with the last time I came to Doomben, I have trouble finding the right place to pick up my photo pass and get into the festival. The box office sends me one way, the gate sends me all the way back in the opposite direction, all the way up the road and around the corner, only to find that there’s no sign of the Guest Ticket Office up there. Eventually I find it, just inside the entrance to the VIP gate and just in time as seconds later the heavens open and it starts pouring down. Having found my way into the festival I know find myself in the grandstand hoping that it stops raining so that I can get out and about. However, every time it looks like its subsiding, a few paces out from the shelter of the building makes it start back up again. In the end it’s getting too close to a time when I need to be in a photo pit at the other side of the festival and so I get my rain jacket on and make rare use of the rain cover for my camera. In practice a proper jacket for a camera sounds like a great idea. In practice, and especially in the humidity of a Queensland early autumn, it’s less of a good idea as the plastic keeps steaming up, making it impossible to use. The last time I used it was at last year’s Sunset Sounds, when the humidity in the protective coat was so great that it fogged up the camera’s viewfinder from the inside and didn’t clear for days afterwards. Luckily the humidity isn’t as bad today as it was back then, just days before the January 2011 floods.

Although I’ve seen Jessie J less than two days previously, I’m keen to see and photograph her again and see how she does in a festival environment. I’m a bit surprised that she’s on so early, starting at 1:45pm. She’s looking less like a stripper today, going for an all-in-one body suit rather than having her underwear on show and pretty much takes off from where she left at the Riverstage. She’s bubbly, talkative and entertaining. Amazingly the rain stops during a snippet of Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry that’s she segues into in the middle of one of her songs. Michael Franti would kill for that ability.

I’d never heard of Gym Class Heroes before today. With a name like that, and so soon after Soundwave, I’m expecting to be your average pretty boy tattoo mainstream pop bands masquerading as a rock band. There’s lots of tattoos, green hair and pointy guitars on show but instead they’re just your average mainstream rap/hip-hop band. Apparently they’re the Number One single in Australia this week. That would probably explain why there’s such a big crowd here to see them, why everyone knows all the words and why I’ve never heard of the before. The early part of the day is annoying as the live acts all start at the same time. It’s a case of chose one to photograph, miss out on the other. I would have liked to have photographed Chase & Status but there’s no way to do it, although I catch a bit of them as have a walk around the site, now that the rain has stopped and then head back to the Mazda2 Flamingo stage for The Naked & Famous. Over the last year and a bit they’ve been in competition with the likes of Washington, Cloud Control and Kimbra to be the band that plays every festival and they look like a band that’s tired and fed up with playing the same 45 minutes. They play to a much smaller crowd than the one that was here before for Gym Class Heroes. As I’ve seen them plenty of times of this period, I’ve already made my feeling known on the band, so won’t go through it again. I don’t stick around but hear that they have a load of sound and technical problems for much of their set, something I’m sure will make them want to play another 45 minute set with minimal soundcheck at some other festival in a week or two.

The plan is to quickly go to Hercules & Love Affair on the DFA Stage and then come back to the Las Vegas Stage for Skrillex. Coming around the corner into the main arena, it’s clear that it probably just isn’t going to happen as Skrillex has drawn a massive crowd and there just isn’t going to be enough time to get to the DFA Stage and then fight my way through the crowd. So instead I decide I’m going to have to skip Hercules & Love Affair and fight my way through to the photo pit. It would have been a hard task at the best of times but it’s made even harder trying to squeeze through with a camera bag. The nearer to the front, the more packed it is, the worse it is. Even though I’m moving up the very far side, there’s next to no space. It takes over 10 minutes to cover less than 200 metres and Skrillex has already started before I get into the photo pit. From a photographic point of view, it’s the typical DJ problems in that it’s hard to make someone stood behind a big table looking at a laptop screen ever now and then look good. You have such a limited view and it just looks boring in photos; if you’re photographing from the photo pit, how do you make people stood behind a table and looking at a laptop screen look exciting? It would have been great to have photographed from onstage as the real interest and excitement is in the crowd and it’s a sight to behold. It’s an incredible experience and I’m not sure if I’ve seen anything like that (at least at an Australian festival) with such a mass of people, as far as the eye can see, just going mad for it. It’s not just those in the D-ring, it’s everyone on the other side of the outer ring and from the pit it’s even everyone over in the mini-grandstand. People just going completely nuts. I guess everyone is peaking.

There’s no way any of the photographers want to fight their way back through the crowd so after hanging around at the side for a bit and watching the crowd a bit more (after that initial excitement Skrillex has peaked and doesn’t really go anywhere new) we decide en masse that we’re heading out via the access road at the side of the stage whether we’re allowed to or not. It’s strength in numbers and no one challenges us to tell us that we’re off bounds and need to go back and out through the crowd.

Friendly Fires have become one of those bands that Australian festival promoters bring over to play at least once a year. The band were here for last year’s Good Vibrations and the year before’s Splendour. No doubt they’ll be back again next year, if not before. They’re always good value, mainly thanks to singer Ed Macfarlane’s hilarious dance moves. Unfortunately I only get a couple of songs to enjoy his skills, needing to head off for Die Antwoord. Die Antwoord were an interesting band to watch when they played last year’s Big Day Out and good to photograph and they’re the same here again at Future, both Ninja and Yo-landi giving the photographers a lot to work with. At the end of the third song I get ready to move out on when a guy walks on from the side of the stage, sunglasses on, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, arms up, giving a double victory sign. There’s a micro-second spent wondering if this is part of the show before Ninja runs over and aggressively starts to push him back to the wings. He walks back onto the stage to the cheers of the crowd before deciding that he hasn’t finished yet and vanishes back off stage again, leaving Yo-landi to carry on by herself. Looking over the fence the stage intruder is being dragged towards the back entrance to the tent stage by three security guards.  I lose sight of them before finding out what his final fate is but guess that it’s not part of the performance.

I had hoped to get across to the Las Venus stage for Tinie Tempah but by the time I finish at Die Antwoord, there’s just not enough time to get all the way around to the main stage. Instead I wonder over to the DFA Stage and see a couple of Holy Ghost’s songs. They’re an obvious DFA band, the trouble is that they sound a bit like a poor man’s LCD Soundsystem.

Photographically, Slipknot are the band of the day. They’re just a photographer’s dream; the aesthetics, the on-stage dynamics of their show, great lighting and a crowd that’s going nuts on the other side of the barrier. Musically, I’m less sure but then again Slipknot are just another one of those 90s bands that just completely passed me by and I know very little about. The three songs seem to last a lifetime and I wish I’d changed lenses to get some wider-angle shots, maybe even have got my fisheye out for the first time of the day. Thats’ the trouble when you’re unfamiliar with an act’s catalogue; you never know how long those three songs are going to last. It’s amazing that I didn’t use the fisheye at all, considering it was bought in the first place for a previous Soundwave. It’s just a cheap fisheye and the quality of the glass isn’t great but because it’s a cheap fisheye the settings are all manual, but with all my other ongoing camera problems, not using it gave me one less thing to think about. I watch another song out of the pit and the stage looks even more impressive from slightly further away, rather than the limited angle you get from down in the photo pit.

A lot of the other photographers stayed at the main arena for the rest of Slipknot to wait for System Of A Down. Later on I hear that one photographer was taking some shots of Slipknot with all their pyrotechnics going and got told to stop by the festival’s media rep. Although the general contract we all had to sign was generally reasonable in that it didn’t have any copyright’s grabbing clauses, as well as the no photographing Limp Bizkit or Marilyn Manson, there was a clause specifying no photographing of bands from after the first three songs. I can’t remember seeing this clause before and it looks like the latest iteration of the standard photo contract, as year-on-year the conditions are becoming more and more onerous; give an inch and they’ll take a mile. It’s a fairly stupid contract clause as although the photo pit is good for (largely) unobstructed close ups of the acts and the front rows of the crowd, being able to photograph outside the pit allows you to get much wider shots of the band on stage and crowd watching them. A wide shot of Slipknot with their pyrotechnics going? Why would you look to prevent someone taking a photo of that? Expect to see this clause become common over the next year or two.

After Slipknot I head back to Stage 3 for The Used, who I can’t remember a whole lot about, and then to Cro-Mags on Stage 6. Having missed Underoath earlier in the day due to the late-running stage, there’s been no real improvement in stage times over the day and I only stay for one and a half songs of Cro-Mags. Seeing their name on the bill was just a blast from the past from when I used to read Kerrang in the mid-1980s, a time when Kerrang actually covered metal and before it started covering the the indie rock bands that NME and Melody Maker covered in order to survive. Not sure what it is now but back that it was a fortnightly publication which seems amazing considering the music that it covered. Playing at that time of the day on one of the smaller stages and clashing with much bigger names they were always going to be playing to a tiny audience. But even though playing to less than 100 people, the crowd still manages to get a 5 or 6 person circle pit going.

When the festival was announced I wasn’t sure how it would do with System Of A Down headlining. Most legs sold out so I’m guessing that either SOAD are a big drawcard or there was enough going on at the festival for people to want to buy a ticket. As with much of the bill, SOAD are a band that outside of a few songs just passed me buy. Although the photographers have had to sign a general contract covering the whole festival when we picked up our passes, SOAD ambush us with a contract in the photo pit that we have to read and sign with only torch light to help us out. It’s a fairly “standard” contract although the more I think about it, the more I think I shouldn’t be signing anything that restricts usage to the named publication. It will be interesting to see what the likes of Mojo and Uncut do in twenty years time when they want archival photos of acts. I’m guessing they’ll just get them all from Getty. Having signed the contract, photographing SOAD is a bit of a waste if time; the band play in the dark, with more backlighting that front lighting, and stand so far back from the front of the stage that it’s hard to see them from the pit. Stay for my allotted three songs and then just go.

The original plan had been to got to Angels and Airwaves next but walking through the tunnel under the train line, I come out the other end to the sight a lot of fire and flames over on Stage 4, where Lamb Of God are the alternative to Stage 3′s Angels & Airwaves. With the lighting in the tent having been terrible all day I change my mind and decide I’m going to get some fire and flame action. The band playing before Lamb Of God are some band called Watain, of who I know absolutely nothing, not even the name. The look a bit like Dimmi Borgir from last year’s Soundwave and are doing the full Scandinavian black metal look but with added fire and upside crosses. It’s ridiculous but looks great. As I’m expecting the band to be finishing up, I photograph from the sparse crowd but get closer and closer to the barrier until I suddenly spot a few photographers in the pit and decide that I’m going to sneak in as well. It turns out that security let them for three songs despite it being well outside the first three. However, by the time I get in there I don’t get much time to do anything much. The band keep going though despite being well over the time that they were due to finish and Lamb Of God were due to start. In the end it gets too late and I make my final move for the day to Stage 7 for Sisters Of Mercy.

Having been over to Stage 7 a couple of times during the day I was surprised that Sisters Of Mercy were playing at such a tiny stage. It seemed almost embarrassing that such a big name act would be playing such a small enclosure between the trees, right at the far end of the festival site. However, getting there and expecting it to be rammed, expecting all the goths-types in Brisbane to be there, it’s a complete shock just how sparse the crowd is; a few hundred people and nothing that wouldn’t have troubled the majority of Brisbane’s medium sized venues. Although I’d left Stage 4 and not seen the late running Lamb of God, Stage 7 is still running way behind time. Late running stages have really been the story of the 2012 summer festivals and I can’t remember any festivals being as bad as they have this year in previous years. Nothing at Soundwave is as bad as the 50 minute late M83 of Laneway or the 45 minute late Kanye West at Big Day Out but it’s still an annoyance to have to miss bands because of late-running stages and then hang around for other stages to start.

I had already predicted that it was probably just going to be a wall of dry ice and impossible to see much that was happening on stage, let alone photograph it, and this turns out to be an accurate prediction. Occasionally you can spot Andrew Eldrich and it’s a good job I already knew what to expect as it might have been a shock if I was expecting the Eldrich of the mid-1980s videos to appear on stage rather than the bald, bearded, 2012 version. Although he looks more like a stereotypical middle-aged biker these days, it’s more of a surprise that he’s wearing what looks like a green and orange fluoro shirt rather than being decked out all in black. He still sounds in really good voice though and the band sound like I’d expected they would sound; Docktor Avalanche is still there but is now laptop based rather than whatever basic drum machine was used in 30 years ago. It’s been a long day and so I only stay for a bit of the fourth song and don’t stay for the whole set, needing to get back and get started on editing photos.

As in previous years, Soundwave was good, if really hard work. It’s not getting any easier the older I get and it’s definitely getting more painful. It took days to properly recover from carrying around 10kg of camera gear all day this year, it almost felt as bad as the post-Splendour at Woodford exhaustion of the last couple of years. For me, the line-up wasn’t as good as it’s been in some of the previous years, with the headliners and bigger name acts not being my generations bands (SOAD, Slipknot, Manson, Limp Bizkit). I saw a few bands I liked and a few more that I enjoyed photographing so I got enough out of the day to have made it worthwhile, although I think I would always find something somewhere in the day whatever the line-up. It’s a real shame that Soundwave Revolution didn’t happen as that was more or less my dream headliners in Van Halen, a band I feel destined never to see play live despite being one of the biggest and most important bands in my life, and Alice Cooper, who was more or less there at the start of my musical journey. The rain didn’t spoil the day; I managed to be undercover during all the heavy showers and other than the photo pit at Stage 4, the place didn’t turn into a mud bath. As expected from previous years the set up was good and other than late running stages the day ran well. For the most part the idiot quotient was low although it always annoys me that people chose to stand on the stairs and the access ramps to watch bands and you need to fight your way through them to move to different stages. It becomes tiring after a while and I wish they’d get more security to keep these areas clear. Still, bring on next year.

There’s another small window of opportunity between bands so I make my way down to check out Stage 3 for the first time, where Underoath are due to start at 3pm. By 3:15pm the band still haven’t started and so I end up going back to the main stage for Bush. The crowd has visibly shrunk from the one that was there for A Day To Remember, the audience frenzy has subsided and it’s a whole lot more subdued; people stood nodding their heads in time is about as active as it gets. Were Bush even that big a band? They were always regarded as grunge also-rans coming late to the party in the UK and the main interest was with Gavin Rossdale being from the UK but moving to the US and forming the band there. He’s still looking in good shape although he reminded me of Darius from Popstars/Idol. The songs are fairly tepid and middle of the road. After photographing I head up into the stand and listen to the rest of the set, which includes a ill-advised cover of The Beatles’ Come Together, which wasn’t even that good a song to start with. It’s strange watching from the stand as not only is the sound quiet all the way from the stage but there’s also the sound from Stages 4a/4b, coming over the top of the stand, so it makes it all sound like one big mess. The stand is reasonably full although I think people are sat there in case of another rain shower passing overhead rather than being sat there to watch the bands on the main stage.

Although there’s the typical ban on bringing alcohol into the festival, security must have been lax judging by all the empty spirit bottles strewn over the festival site. Sitting in the stands brings one of the day’s more unpleasant moments as a drunken lout brandishing a mostly drunk bottle of JD constantly verbally abuses a girl in full goth set up sat a couple of rows in front of him. He’s so obnoxious that anyone sat vaguely near him and his group gets up and moves away. Even after his group are left sitting in their own space he continues to rant and ends up dropping the bottle on to the concrete, where it smashes. Eventually the group moves and he decides he’s going to stamp the broken bottle glass into smithereens. I’m left secretly hoping that he cuts his foot to ribbons in the process and probably aren’t the only one.

Having downloaded some of my memory cards onto my laptop (not having a working LCD screen and not being able to review and delete any photos to clear space makes festival memory card management a difficult prospect) it’s a short walk from the stand back to the main stage for Bad Religion. As the day goes on the walks between stages becomes more and more difficult as people decide that they’re going to watch bands from the staircases and access ramps. It was also an observation at last year’s Soundwave and as the day goes on I wish they’d employ more security staff to keep these areas clear. Bad Religion play some old school West Coast punk and within a few minutes you can see where all the nineties US punk bands got their ideas from. The most noticeable thing visually about the band is how pasty they all are considering they come from California; they look like they haven’t seen the sun in decades.

From there I head back to Stage 3 for Cobra Starship, who I’m guessing are just about the only band on the bill today who have been played on commercial radio; I can’t imagine Mastodon, Slipknot or Sisters Of Mercy getting much airtime on Nova. It’s no surprise that they’re lightest band of the day although surprising how full the tent looks given how much they stick out from the rest of the bands on the bill. Not only does their set include the only keytar I see during the day, I realise when editing the photo that it’s also the only female musician I see on stage out of the 22 bands I end up photographing. Although there’s a few others that I miss (Tonight Alive, Cherribomb among them), metal still remains very much a boy’s club. As if to prove the point, the next port of call of Trivium for some aggressive angry man music. This is followed, after a quick trip to see Dashboard Confessional, by more of the same in the form of Mastodon. Originally I wasn’t sure if I was going to have enough time to get across the site to photograph them, but Limp Bizkit’s ban on photographers makes it easier as I don’t have to go via Stage 1 beforehand. Everyone I know loves Mastodon, even to the extent of only going to Soundwave to see them and them going home. I must be missing something as nothing really jumps out at me, although some of the twin guitar harmonies sound pretty good.

I think I might have seen Thursday before [and a quick check confirms that I photographed them at 2008's Soundwave]. I can’t remember much about them from that day four years ago but today they’re one of the highlights. With their break-up having been previously announced, they comment early on that it’s their last tour and really play like it’s the last time they will be playing to their Brisbane fans. There’s a lot of energy on stage and although soundwise I’d probably put them with a lot of the other bands playing Soundwave, for someone not familiar with them, they just seem to have a much better set of songs than those other bands.

If Thursday are a pleasant surprise, The Dillinger Escape Plan are the surprise package of the day and one that wasn’t even going to be seen the day before. The original plan was to photograph Marilyn Manson on the main stage at 5:55 and then stay and watch a bit more of his set than just the first three songs. However, “requesting” that there would be no photography, with the threat of being removed from the festival if you were seen photographing him from anywhere in the crowd, I, along with a whole bunch of other photographers give him a wide berth and head for Stage 7 instead. I know absolutely nothing about The Dillinger Escape Plan other than they’re playing at roughly the same time as Manson [although their 40 minute set stars 25 minutes later than Manson] and I can go and photograph without and restrictions and threats. The other option would have been Machine Head on Stage 4 but I decided I’d had my fill of Stage 4 bands during the afternoon. As soon as they hit the stage vocalist Greg Puciato greats the crowd with “Fuck this shit” and a couple of seconds later he’s in the photo pit stood on the barrier and leaning over the crowd to sing. Even though he’s the obvious focus, the rest of the band are also putting on a performance from the confines of the stage. There’s so much going on you just don’t know where to look and what to photograph.

For the second song Puciato is back on stage but singing from the speaker stacks at the side of the stage and for the third song he’s back in the photo pit but this time going further (or being dragged further) into the crowd. There’s not a massive crowd but but at one there’s two other people crowd surfing with him. When he gets back to the photo pit he clambers up via a table at the side of the stage that’s being used to hold cups of water for the crowd and he just starts picking up the trays of four drinks and hurling them at the crowd, which gets the photographers on that side of the pit running as fast as they can for shelter. Being stood on the other side I know that I’m going to be ok and not likely to get 4 cups of water headed in my direction. It’s just amazing stuff really, this is what you want to see at a punk show and this is what you want to see as a photographer. The real shame, the annoyance, frustration and disappointment is that being Queensland at the end of February at 6:30 at night it’s dark and playing the smallest outside stage the lighting leaves a lot to be desired. The onstage lights are very strobe-y and of course there’s nothing lighting up the crowd other than ambient and spill from the stage. I would have so loved to have gotten a really good set of photos from their set but just couldn’t do it (with all the camera problems not helping either). Looking at photos from the Sydney and Melbourne legs it’s not hard to get envious that playing at 6:20 in NSW means bands playing while it’s still light. It’s similar with Big Day Out where all the darker inside tent stages at the Gold Coast become outside stages when they get over the Queensland border.

Working in an office block that overlooks the RNA showgrounds, I get to see the festival site take shape over the week leading up to Soundwave. However, come Friday afternoon, even as a veteran of far too many wet Glastonburys and Readings, looking out of the office window at the dark mid-afternoon skies and the driving rain, I find myself really not wanting to go and photograph Soundwave, especially as the forecast for the Saturday is for thunderstorms and more driving rain. Looking out of the window and listening to Billy Bragg, it could easily be a cold, wet November afternoon in London.

Come Saturday and I almost break the habit of a lifetime and get to a festival early. Close but no cigar. I realise that I’ve forgotten to bring my marked-up timetable and map and so have to go via the office to print out new copies and plan my day again in pink highlighter. Carrying so much extra gear, I also take the opportunity to drop off a load of additional wet weather clothing I’ve brought. If it gets bad I can always run back the five minutes to the office and pick it up.  Despite the forecast it’s not raining at the moment and I’m hoping I’ve got enough to keep me and the camera dry unless the day really takes a turn for the worse. When I get into the festival, the conditions are a lot better than I thought they would be. Stages 1/2 are good and it’s only Stage 4 where you really need something that’s going to keep your feet dry. I don’t envy some of the security working Stage 4 all day who are wearing trainers and stood in a few inches of water.

I pick up my photo pass knowing in advance that we’ll be told that there’s to be no photos of Marilyn Manson or Limp Bizkit. Seeing the contract, it “requests” that you don’t take photos of either of the two acts. It’s an interesting use of “request” as the clause goes on to say you’ll be removed from the festival if seen photographing during the two acts.

I get to Stage 4/4a a few minutes before Chimaira are due to start, but although there’s a band playing on the other stage, the stage where Chimaira are due to be playing is already set up for Black Dahlia Murder. I’m not sure what happened to Chimaira and so instead go and see Zebrahead in the Stage 3 tent to fill time. The tent already has a healthy crowd but fills when there’s a sudden downpour. The rain has stopped by the time Black Dahlia Murder start and I catch a couple of songs before wandering over to check out the other side of the festival and Stage 5a/5b which are inside one of the showground buildings, similar to those used for Laneway. Even though this time around it’s a brick building, the sound isn’t a whole lot better than the corrugated iron cattlesheds used for Laneway. I see Attack!Attack! who are more of the same generic emo for teen girls.

I head to Stage 1 for first time today for Steel Panther. Despite never having heard of them before, there’s a massive crowd and everyone knows all the words to all the songs. They’re fun to photograph but I don’t have my eye in and manage to miss every jump shot on offer as well as missing the showing of naked female flesh being freely offered from the crowd that the band (at least most of it). From there it’s back to the inside Stage 6 to kill some time seeing a band called Kill Hannah, who I’ve chosen to see based purely on their name and having an old friend called Hannah I can report back to. The band aren’t much good and I wonder how many people have come to check them out because they’re either called Hannah or know someone called Hannah that they can share their experience with later. From there it’s back to Stage 1/2 for Lostprophets but despite trying hard to impress, it’s all a bit boring, even more so when you’re following the comedy 1980s hair metal stylings of Steel Panther. Unsurprisingly it comes over as and overtly serious and overwrought.

Watching You Me At Six back on Stage 3, the old man syndrome really comes into play: All these bands sound the same. Even the day after this year’s Soundwave, the majority of the the bands have blended into one of two categories; the first is the all-tattooed pretty boys who are well acquainted with hair styling products, who jump up in the air a lot, and play to a front row that’s largely young and female. The second category is the gnarly old guys, often greying but always with some form of extreme facial hair who play hard, fast, loud aggressive music for young angry dudes to fight to. The day after the festival the specifics of the songs played by You Me At Six, The Used, A Day To Remember, Attack!Attack, Kill Hannah and Lostprophets have all merged into one. The same thing has also happened to any specific musical memories of Black Dahlia Murder, Zebrahead, Trivium or Mastodon. I guess I should either do more research to begin with, take notes or use Twitter (rather than trying to preserve battery life so my phone can record my position via GPS throughout the day.

Having not been to Stage 7 so far and wanting to check it out during daylight hours before I head back there later, I make a detour to see Motionless In White. I know absolutely nothing about the band and it’s only the combination of some spare time and the awfulness of their name which is taking me to investigate. However, the roadies are still putting the drum kit together at the time that the band are due to start playing and although I hang around for a bit longer, I end up leaving for the main stage before I get a chance to find out what they’re like.

I’m a lot more unfamiliar with the far side of the festival site so trying to get to the photo pit is a lot more difficult thanks to barriers and no gaps to get through. Eventually I wind my way all to almost the back of the arena to find a gate to go through. I know nothing about A Day To Remember other than the crowd that have come to see them is massive, easily the biggest until the sun goes down. Afterwards I lose count of all the people wearing the T shirts of the band that they have obviously just purchased from one of the merch tents. I’ve been to a fair few festivals over the last 22 years but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a merch tent with some an extensive array of t-shirts as here today. It’s just a wall of t-shirts stapled to the back wall of the tent, it goes so high you can barely make out the actual designs and the lettering on the t-shirts at the very top of the display.

Disappointingly Feist (6:20pm start) has decreed that there will be no photographers in the photo pit during her set. I would have liked to have photographed her but in protest go and see Twin Shadow instead. I do go back to catch the last couple of Feist’s songs and snipe a few last-minute photos from out in the crowd.

I only spend a couple of songs with Twin Shadow (6:25pm start) before heading to Toro Y Moi (6:40pm start) who end up running really late running. It’s now entered that phase of the festival where I’m feeling tired and am really over it. By the time the band start I don’t really want to be there any more. I photograph the first couple songs but then find my exit blocked by a security guard who won’t let anyone out of the photo pit until the end of the third song. It’s maddening as although there had been a big crowd for some of the acts earlier in the afternoon, Toro Y Moi haven’t exactly pulled a massive crowd and the way out from the photo pit is largely unhindered. Instead I have to wait at the side of the stage while the band play another lengthy piece before I can get out.

I saw and photographed The Horrors (7:40pm start) when they played at MBV’s ATP Nightmare Before Xmas. It was a nothing gig, which was a bit of a surprise as they played the week after winning NME’s Album of the Year award for Primary Colours. I’m not a bit fan of bands where the singer stands there leaning heavily on his microphone stand with his arms folded in front of his face, as last seen when The National played at Harvest. It just looks like you don’t really care and are bored. On top of that I was fairly surprised that Primary Colours won the award, or was even placed anywhere near the upper reaches of the list, as to me it was a pedestrian affair that was little more than the sum of the band’s influences.

It was frustrating to photograph them at ATP as they played with no front lighting and only occasional strobe back lighting. Armed with that knowledge, I’m expecting the worst from their Laneway appearance and get what I expected. Although there’s something to be gained by after-dark shows, in that however bad the lighting, there’s just something about the photos that makes them better than photos of sets during the daytime: there’s a mix of lighting effects and the drop off into darkness that you don’t get when there’s little difference in the daytime exposure over the whole stage area.  However, photographing The Horrors is still a frustrating experience, exasperated by the long day. For much of their set I feel that I’m just standing that glaring at the band, rather than taking photos; waiting for better lighting that never comes. Performance-wise, it’s the same as at ATP and a couple years on and with a new and very acclaimed album, I still don’t really get the fuss.

I don’t know what it is about The Drums (7:50pm start). They’re a band that’s so wrong and by right, and years of experience, I should loathe, and yet both times I’ve seen them, I’ve come away enamoured with them. As I wrote the first time I saw them at Splendour in 2010, “Can’t decide if I like The Drums or want to punch them in the face. There’s something so irritating about them, their image, their haircuts, and especially their OTT tambourine playing and yet their faux 80s, faux English indie sound and them just really wanting to be The Smiths just gets through to me. Maybe it’s nostalgia for 80s English indie bands and not having listened to The Smiths for a while“.

The funny/stupid/bizarre thing is that after each time I’ve seen them, I’ve gone straight out and bought their latest album but to huge disappointment. After Splendour I went out and bought their debut album, The Drums, and it wasn’t up to much. A few days after Laneway I go out and buy their second album, Portamento, and it’s worse than their first album. And yet the band manage to be so good live playing those same songs from the albums. I’m not quite sure how that works; just a band that works better live than it does on recordings, I guess. For some unknown reason, the sound seems slightly better when they play; I’m not sure if it actually is but they sound better than some of the previous acts on The Zoo & BIGSOUND Stage. On top of that, although the lighting is tricky to deal with, the photos I come away with are among my favourites from the whole day. That they put on a performance, and through it have a better aesthetic, could help explain why they come across so much better when they play live. Unlike a lot of the band playing today’s Laneway, they also have an advantage in that they have a singer in Jonathan Pierce who only sings and doesn’t get distracted playing an instrument and so can work the crowd (and the photographers) better than some of the other acts have.

All of which brings us to the day’s headliners and the clash to end all clashes, a four-stage epic pitting M83 (9pm start), Washed Out (9pm start), SBTRKT (8:55pm start) and John Talabot (9pm start) against each other for the audiences attention. There’s three reasons why I choose to photograph M83; first, I’ve liked what I’ve heard of them and their very 1980s synth pop, second, they’re playing the biggest stage, with the biggest lighting rig, which I’m hoping will benefit the quality of the photos and thirdly, with them playing on one of the three stages nearest to each other, the plan is to quickly photograph them, then go and photograph Washed Out and then John Talabot. Getting photos of four of the headline acts seems unlikely but I feel confident that covering three of the four should be do-able.

And of course, as has been well documented, M83 start 50 minutes late. I didn’t expect Kanye West’s festival lateness record from only six days ago to be broken so soon but it at least someone told us from the stage what the problem was (even if they were lying about Kanye starting being one minute away). At Laneway there is no communication at any point in those 50 minutes to tell us what’s wrong or when the band might actually start. Watching the stage from the photo pit, there’s little in the way of activity. A few stagehands come out and look to be fiddling with one of the lights but nothing much happens on stage in regards to the instruments. Maybe it’s another in-ear monitor issue as was hinted at for Kanye, but nobody tells us anything. Not even the usual chants of ‘bullshit, bullshit’ provoke anyone running the festival to communicate what the issue is and so everyone waits 50 minutes none-the-wiser. Of course when M83 do eventually start, they play in the dark for the two songs that I can be bothered to stick around for. Having started almost at the time when they were due to finish, by the time I’ve photographed a couple songs, all the other bands on the other stages have finished. In retrospect I should have gone and done what some of the other photographers ended up doing and gone to photograph the other headlining acts instead of waiting. By the time they’d done this and come back to the Windish Agency Stage, M83 still hadn’t started anyway. But instead I use the logic that as there’s little onstage activity and as there’s no communication to explain the delayed start, it can’t be going on much longer. Packing up my bag afterwards, I’m fuming at how the day has ended.

Laneway survives because it puts on a load of the last year’s newest and hippest acts; bands that have released their first album and gotten positive reviews from the likes of Pitchfork and generated some first-album hype. In that regard, there’ll always be a demand for a Laneway-type festival, even if you never hear much from ‘those’ acts ever again. A lot of the problems with the festival lie with the venue, which offers little other than the fact it’s a usable space. Nothing other than knocking down the corrugated cattle sheds and rebuilding them is ever going to improve the sound in the spaces that made up the majority of stages this year. That one of the outdoor stages moved inside this year due to the rain doesn’t help matters, but if you get slim pickings from promoters, and festivals are the only chance you have of seeing so many bands, making sure the experience is an enjoyable one is paramount; appalling sound is the ultimate insult. One observant photographer noticed the number of people wearing a certain music college’s t-shirts and questioned whether students of said college were doing the sound for the festival. It raises a number of questions as to what may have been done to help keep costs down and what impact this may have had on the poor sound and the slow changeovers and soundchecks over the course of the day that meant sets being truncated.

As with most of this year’s festivals, numbers at Laneway were down on last year. The main outdoor stage at last year’s event was much bigger than what would have been this year’s Alexandria Street stage if it hadn’t have been moved inside. You wonder if it had sold as well as last year whether the move inside would have been happened given the size of last year’s audience. There will always been a demand for the niche that Laneway serves so you’d expect it to be back again next year but it should probably focus its efforts on improving what it’s got and the potential that exists for the festival in its current form more than expanding it into new countries.

The next three stage clash of the afternoon pits DZ Deathrays (3:35pm start) against Laura Marling (3:50pm start) and Girls (3:55pm start). I was always going to see DZ Deathrays and the fact that (a) I’ve photographed Laura Marling before and she was boring; and (b) Girls start five minutes later, meaning I can spend another 5 minutes with DZ Deathrays, makes it another easy decision. It’s great to see how well DZ have done for themselves. Having seen them long before the ‘Deathrays’ got added, they’ll always be DZ to me. They pull a large crowd and a pit full of photographers but then make it really difficult for them by playing in little front lighting and a whole lot of strobe lighting. The Zoo & BIGSOUND stage is in another one of the corrugated iron-roofed cattle sheds so once again it doesn’t do the bands playing any favours. Back at the Eat Your Own Ears & Young Turks Stage, Girls get a mid-set call from Teenage Fanclub who want their sound back (not that it was ever really theirs to begin with). The band decorate the stage with flowers, possibly to help hide the fact that they’re fairly pedestrian and not very exciting.

Having mainly been a day of clashes and overlapping acts to this point, Active Child (4:35pm start) finds himself playing with no competition from other stages and playing to a packed room. Even more than that, the crowd are absolutely mad for him; it’s the most number of girls-on-their-boyfriend’s-shoulders of the whole day. Quite why the hipsters are out in force to see him is a bit of a mystery given that he’s basically a male version of Enya. All the reviews afterwards refer to his angelic vocals, but since when have choirboys ever been cool, at least to anyone that’s under the age of 65? It’s strange.

Active Child get 30 minutes of exclusivity before the next round of bands on the other stages. With a choice between The Panics (5:05pm start) and Anna Calvi (5:10pm start), once again it’s an easy decision to make. The Panics are just one of those bands that I just don’t get and fail to understand their popularity. They’re a band that talk good influences but sound like a really watered down version of the bands they obviously listen to. Being on so many Australian festival bills, they’re also one of those bands that I end up seeing a bit of far too often, probably more often than bands I actually like and want to see, and so they get a regular chance to impress me but never have. As well as never grabbing me with their songs, they always seem really disconnected from the crowd. Anna Calvi is the easy choice to make and one of the best decisions of the day. Being one of those artists that I knew only be name, having read countless column inches about her (mostly on The Guardian’s website) without actually hearing or actively seeking out anything by her, she’s a definite highlight of the day, even if she is playing to one of the smallest crowds of the day at the Eat Your Own Ears & Young Turks Stage. It’s a crowd that’s so small it’s disheartening, especially as it means that everyone has gone to watch The Panics. All the reviews I’d read about her compared to to PJ Harvey and although she’s got a deep voice and there’s gothic overtones in the music she plays, it’s a bit of a lazy observation, based more on the music journalism rule that you can only compare female musicians with other female musicians. There’s a lot of Nick Cave in her voice and her songs, and there’s an obvious Morricone reference throughout as well; it’s all very cinematic. Throughout her guitar playing is exquisite and flawless; she’s easily the best guitarist on show over the day, although she doesn’t have much in the way of competition when compared to all the rudimentary indie guitarists in the majority of other acts playing Laneway.

I wasn’t that convinced when I first heard the Cults album; it seemed like a typically hyped up hipster album with little in the way of substance. But over the rest of the year, every time one of their songs popped up on shuffle, they really grew on me and it would often mean switching off shuffle and going straight to their album for a more in-depth and longer listen. As such, they were one of the bands I was most looking forward to seeing at Laneway although this was mixed with apprehension that they would be terrible live. Having been constantly disappointed every time I’ve seen Best Coast, I was expecting them to follow in a similar fashion and not be able to do justice to the album. The trouble with Best Coast is that the best things about their album are the reverb and the harmonies and as they don’t do these live, they come across really flat and with similar strengths,as well as the more intricate electronica going on underneath, I was expecting to find similar failings with Cults. But although Cults start late and finish early, so it feels like they’ve barely played, and although the sound in the iron cattle is horrible, they really shine through. Having seen their setlist on the stage, I notice that they’ve got a song that they’re playing about half way through called ‘Sad Song’. I don’t recognise the name but assume that we might be getting a taster of new songs. When the time comes,  Madeline Follin announces to the audience that they’re going to play a sad song and they start into You Know What I Mean. It leaves me wondering whether the text on the setlist was just a crib to introduce the song as according to Wikipedia it’s her favourite song on the album. It is a highlight of their very short set as it’s probably the song that most shows off Follin’s voice, and and underneath the awful sound she sings it to perfection and really hits all the high notes cleanly. Cults end up being the only band of the day that I see for the whole of their set. As well as enjoying their performance, I also really like the photos that I took of them. As with Big Day Out, I’s still using a camera without an LCD screen and can’t review anything until I download the photos onto my notebook. Today is a lot harder than Big Day Out due to everything being inside and the lighting being less than ideal.

I only catch one act playing the Young Turks Sound System stage all day; Glasser (6pm start) and only do so as I’m passing through the room on the way to somewhere else. It’s way after the first three songs but given that there’s only about 50 people there, I rattle off a few frames from the crowd and get back on my way.

This year’s Laneway Festival was another one of those occasions when I didn’t scribble down any notes afterwards. In part this was due to the always unwise reasoning that makes me think I’ll easily remember everything that happened over the day and in part because it was hard to come away from Laneway thinking much happened. Ultimately, Laneway was a good line-up of bands blighted by a number of major issues; poor scheduling, poor time keeping, poor sound and poor weather. Coming through Valley Metro on the way to the festival site, the most hipster guy ever is overheard bemoaning “I’ve never been more disappointed in my entire life”. It’s possible he was responding to the lack of coffee options at the station but he might as well have been summing up the whole festival in advance.

If the lunchtime overlapping of Cage The Elephant, Parkway Drive, Best Coast and Dune Rats was an annoyance, the worst clash of the whole day has to be the one between Mariachi El Bronx on the Hot Produce stage and Battles on the Essential Stage, with only five minutes between the start times for the two acts. Given that Mariachi El Bronx start first and Battles’ songs generally last a while, starting at the Hot Produce stage is the obvious choice. Throughout the day the Hot Produce stage has been a bit of an oddity in that it’s a tiny stage, tucked away in the far corner of the Parklands with a mix of Australian and overseas acts. You can’t help but wonder how it must feel to be in a band that’s come all the way to Australia only to find themselves playing to a tiny crowd from a tiny stage. As Mariachi El Bronx set up and soundcheck, lead singer Matt Caughthran quotes Wayne’s World 2 with “If you build it, they will come” as he surveys the handful of people gathered in front of the stage. Thankfully a larger crowd does come after the band finish their soundcheck and leave to change into their mariachi outfits. They sound good, obviously a whole lot different to The Bronx but I see less than two songs as I really want to go and photograph a bit of Battles.

Going to see Battles is the right decision as they turn out to be pretty much band of the day and are stunning. The two previous times I’ve seen the band, at The Zoo and at ATP in Minehead were both with the original four-piece line-up. Seeing them as a three-piece for the first time I had some misgivings as to whether they would be as good without Tyondai Braxton but his loss hasn’t impacted on the band anywhere near as much as I had expected. Ian Williams plays with two keyboards set up on either side of him, playing each with one hand but, as ever, drummer John Stanier is the main point of focus. Having photographed them at their sold out Zoo show from way back in the crowd (as there’s no photo pit) and watched them from afar at ATP, this is the closest I’ve been to him since he played another Zoo show with Mark of Cain back in 2007. It’s amazing to be able to get so close to him, his drum kit set up at the front and in the middle of the stage, and watch him play. The effort he puts in is astounding and he’s about as good as they get. The next day I go out and buy a copy of Gloss Drop, which I hadn’t gotten around to getting. I love it when you see a band and have to go straight out the very next day and buy some of their stuff. Although I go and photograph Kasabian in the middle of Battles’ set, I make sure to get the photos I need and get back to see the rest of their set as quickly as I can.

It’s been a hot and sunny day but it quickly clouds open and the heavens open within seconds of Kasabian starting. Some might say that it’s devine retribution. They might be one of the UK’s current biggest acts (somehow) but the majority of photographers decide that it’s just not worth the effort and take shelter as much as they can underneath the stage. Those who decide that the band are worth photographing grab anything they have to hand to wrap around their camera and give them some protection from the torrential rain. Having been mightily unimpressed by Kasabian when I saw them at the Riverside, they’re just as empty and soulless as they were last time, although the weather doesn’t hep their cause. It’s a good excuse to get back to the shelter of the Essential Stage tent and the rest of Battles.

Having missed Kitty, Daisy & Lewis when they played the first day of last year’s Sunset Sounds (when I was still en route back from the UK), this time around I only get to see two songs of theirs before I need to leave for Soundgarden. Kitty, Daisy and Lewis look good, sound good and I really would have liked to have stayed to see and photograph more of them.

The first (and possibly only time I think) I saw Soundgarden was when they played at Gateshead Stadium, opening for Guns n’ Roses on their Use Your Illusion Tour in 1992 along with Faith No More. Before they played they did a signing in Volume Records and I got some stuff signed including my 12″ picture disc of Jesus Christ Pose. The back cover is divided up into four, with a photo of each member of the band in each quarter. Chris Cornell ‘managed’ to sign the wrong photo meaning that Matt Cameron then had to sign the photo of Chris Cornell. I don’t think Kim Thayil had any problems recognising his own image… As might have been expected on that tour, both Soundgarden and Faith No Nore were better than Guns n’ Roses. Almost twenty years on, I’d summarise that Soundgarden are good but not great. When I saw them at Gateshead they finished with Jesus Christ Pose, Cornell sliding the microphone stand under the strings and holding the instrumental crucifix aloft at the end of the set. Tonight they play the song really early on (the fourth song) but Cornell’s voice just sounds shredded and without being able to hit those high notes as clearly as he once could, they don’t do justice to it. He mentions that it’s the last Big Day Out, which at the time seems unlikely, especially given the recent sell-out to C3 but possibly more likely given some of the post-festival fallout and comments. Maybe next year there’ll be a complete makeover and a change of name? He also says that next time they come to Australia they’ll be here with a new album. I guess I hadn’t really paid much attention to the reformation and had just assumed it was the typical money-grab get together for all times sake. Although he says that tonight is just a ‘greatest hits’ set from the band.

The official start time for Kanye West comes and goes. About 20 minutes after he was due to start, the road crew start putting a line of foldback speakers across the front of the stage. I didn’t notice any being there prior to this so am calling BS on the excuses being given after the festival about the speakers getting wet in the rain and needing to be replaced. At the time I thought that the delay must be something to do with in ear monitors, which would make more sense. When they start putting the foldback speakers I estimate that it’s going to be at least another 15 minutes until the show starts and consider that I should go and photograph Noel Gallagher and then come back to see if anything has started on the main stage. The only thing that puts me off doing this is that Gallagher is playing on the Green Stage, the furthest walk from the main stage and as it’s directly behind the main stages, you’re not going to hear if anything has started there until you come back around into the main arena. In the end, West starts 45 minutes late. After the long wait, it’s exactly the same set as he played at Splendour. All the photographers at sat watching the stage for something to happen and it’s only when I notice the same elevated platform rising above the stage that he used at Splendour and start taking photos that some of the other photographers near me realise that it’s started.

There is a photo contract for Kanye West that we get ambushed with prior to being allowed into the photo pit, and which I don’t think there was six months ago at Splendour, but it’s not too bad as far as photo contracts go, and weirdly even specifies that the copyright for the photos resides with the photographer. Unlike Splendour, we’re only allowed to photograph from one side of the stage, which means the photos have little chance of being as good as they were at Woodfordia. With the full length of the pit available to us then, as well as the space that went out into the audience for elevated platform, photographing on the Friday at last year’s Splendour was a delightful experience. It was a shame when they returned the barrier to it’s normal position on the Saturday. The downside of only being able to photograph from one side is that all the photographers have to squeeze into a small space. I get annoyed when see a photographer holding a Point & Shoot in the air in one hand while holding a drink in the other but then realise it’s Tyler The Creator from Odd Future. On closer inspection, I notice a few more of the band in the photo pit and also that the guy right in front of me is one of Das Racist. Looking up at the stage, there’s no side of stage area like there is at Splendour and so the VIPs are all in with us if they want to have the best seat in the house to watch the show. As the set is so late running, I don’t stay after the first three songs and head straight for the exit. He was one of the highlights of last year’s Splendour but a really late start when you’re relying on public transport to get back home doesn’t tempt me to see anymore. After all, I saw it all not even six months ago. Instead I’m straight onto a bus back and on my way back to the train station within minutes.

I don’t get to see any of Noel Gallagher but read reviews the following week saying that when he started playing, the audience wasn’t even in triple figures. Given that he’s played to crowds that would probably be greater than the total of the whole year’s combined Big Day Out audience, it’s a pretty embarrassing return if that’s true. I also read that he kept Oasis songs to a minimum but looking at his setlist for the day, half of the fourteen songs he played were by his previous band. You’d almost think the reviewer either didn’t know many Oasis songs or had made an early exit and made up the review…

There’s been a lot of criticism about this year’s Big Day Out lineup, in particular just how many acts have been quickly recycled from last year’s festival lineups. It does seem worse than in previous years as the number of quickly recycled overseas acts has increased but (at least to me) it’s always been a issue in terms of Australian acts playing every festival, every year. You only have to look at the Washington v Cloud Control battle for festival supremacy from last year’s festival season or the number of times that the likes of The Living End (playing here yet again today), Bluejuice playing here yet again today) and The Vines (amazingly not playing here today) play each and very festival each and every year. So it’s a quick return for The Vaccines, less than six months after they played at Splendour In The Grass. They’ve got a few catchy songs, there’s no argument with that, but away from the melodic hooks its ultimately it’s fairly bog standard landfill indie guitar music. You can understand why they’re popular, at least to the predominantly 16 – 24 year old demographic that’s packed out the Essential Stage tent today but it isn’t anything that hasn’t already been done before.

Odd Future are one of the bands I’ve really been looking forward to photographing today. I did get to photograph them when they played at The Hi-Fi in Brisbane last year but without a photo pass and had to photograph them from the crowd. As the place was so oversold and the downstairs so packed, I ended up deciding to photograph from the balcony, a million miles away from the stage and the photos weren’t great. Getting to photograph them today means being able to get a lot closer to the action. Heading to the Boiler Room for the first time this year, it’s noticeable that the tent is much smaller than last year year, at least half the size. It’s clearly a contingency for the lower tickets sales and the fact that for the first time in years, the festival hasn’t sold out. From memory, I don’t think any legs of the festival have sold out this year, with the Adelaide and Perth legs being downsized to save money (East Coast headliner Kanye West not making it any further west than Melbourne) and it’s already been announced that they won’t be going back to New Zealand next year. The tent may be a whole lot smaller than last year but it’s uncomfortably packed. From the safe confines of the photo pit it looks really terrible at the front but it does make for some good photos of the crowd. Unless they requested an early slot it seems ridiculously early for them to be playing; they’re the second international act of the day after Best Coast but surely have a higher profile than a lot of the acts playing after them, especially the Australian acts. As would be expected, it’s complete mayhem when the band actually start and although I’m not paying full attention, it sounds a lot better than the show at the Hi-Fi (although is probably not much of a surprise as the Hi-Fi is renowned for its poor sound). Photographing them from the front is hard work as there’s so much going on that you never know quite where to point you camera. It’s a case of really keeping your eyes open to watch what’s happening across the whole width of the stage. I often photograph with both my eyes open which I know a lot of other photographers find really weird but it gives you a wider view than if you’re looking down the camera viewfinder and with your other eye closed. There’s so much carnage and so many people coming over the barrier that the photographers all get kicked out of the photo pit after only two songs. With no LCD screen, I’ve got no immediate idea of how the photos have come out but when I download them and review them, I’m pleasantly surprised. There’s more I could have shown in this post but I was trying to be strict in the number of images on show (but still managed 39…) so they’ll have to go unseen for now.

Although it turns out I hadn’t seen Parkway Drive at Overcranked, I did see Amity Affliction there many years ago. From more humbler beginnings, it must be a whole lot different when the stage is adorned by adverts telling everyone that you’re sponsored by Monster Energy Drink. So much for punk rock. One thing the sponsorship deals haven’t brought is timeliness and the band are really late running although there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it as there’s little activity on stage after the equipment has been set up. As it turns out, late-running acts is one of the real stories of this year’s festival season. Although it just might be coincidence and “one of those things”, some have questioned whether costs have been cut at some of the major festivals by them using crews with less experience and possibly even those still studying at music colleges. However, compared to other acts over the summer, and indeed even later today, Amity Affliction’s delayed start is fairly minor. When they do start it’s nothing exciting and it’s too dark on the stage and a struggle to feel comfortable getting any good shots. The most memorable thing about the band’s set today is probably the Noel Gallagher comment (““It sounds like a dead turd“) and all the fallout from that.

There might be no Washington or Cloud Control at this year’s BDO, but instead there’s this year’s equivalent: Kimbra. Having seen her play at Splendour and Parklife it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about photographing her again. I guess at least she makes an effort with what she’s wearing but that’s the most exciting thing about seeing her play the same set of songs for the third time in less than six months.

I’m surprised by how busy it is back at the Boiler Tent for Royksopp, I didn’t expect it and presumed that the tent would have emptied after OFWGKTA. It sounds great but I don’t stay for very long, choosing to run across the festival site to the Hot Produce stage to catch a bit of Das Racist. It turns out to be a poor decision as Das Racist just aren’t very good. It just doesn’t work on an outstage stage (at least not as well as it would have inside a club-like venue and it doesn’t help that the three MCs roam the stage with a drink in their hand. It gives an impression of not really caring or being focused on the job in hand and to be honest it all sounds and looks fairly amateurish. It doesn’t compare to the Odd Future performance from earlier in the afternoon.

Instead of going back to catch the rest of Royksopp’s set at the Boiler Room as I should have done, I decide to download some photos and keep on top of my memory card management and so find some space in Essential Stage tent to do this. The main problem is that this coincides with Faker playing. Faker are basically everything that’s wrong with Australian music industry and Australian festivals. They’ve been dropped by their record label, have taken to giving their album away for free and yet are still being put on the bills for major festivals and today are playing a good time slot on what has traditionally been Australia’s biggest festival. Six or seven years ago the tent might have been packed, indeed they probably would have been playing on one of the bigger stages, but today the tent is maybe a quarter full and a large proportion of those are sat on the ground and don’t look to be that interested in them anyway. That the festival has sold so poorly this year and that there has been so much criticism of the line-up shows that someone needs to sort out the procurement of acts if the BDO is going to have much of a future.

There’s not much to say about My Chemical Romance. They have songs that go on forever to the point of boredom and, judging from all those in the front few rows, they have a really big female following. It’s never a good sign of a band when you feel bored of photographing them even before the second song has finished but the songs go on for so long that you feel there’s nothing left to capture.