10 Bits Of Meredith Music Festival Magic


Melbourne-based Pedestrian team member Alice embarked on the journey to the 2011 Meredith Music Festival. Amidst a weekend showered with good vibes (and the occasional spot of rain) some festival highlights include the notorious nude steeplechase The Gift (NSFW picture warning), what would be one of the final performances by Grinderman, and exactly zero arrests. These are ten pieces of Meredith magic by Alice, who went to the festival as a Meredith virgin and left an absolute devotee…

1. Celebrating it’s 21st Birthday this year, the very first Meredith Music Festival took place way back in 1991 (duh) and tickets back then were around $20 each.

2. This year the surprise act was Ballarat’s spunky Yacht Club DJs, playing on Sunday morning in full clown attire.

3. The planets aligned (okay, the sun, a moon and Earth – to be specific) for a total lunar eclipse on Saturday night which was due to kick off around the same time Nick Cave finished breaking the hearts of a whole new generation of young girls. Because of the cloud cover that gathered during Ice House you couldn’t see it, but singing “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” (AKA the ‘National Anthem of the Moon’) with 10,000 strangers was just as good.

4. Best overheard comment: “Using the toilets here you pretty much follow the same principles being up really high: you’ll be okay, just don’t ever, ever look down”.

5. While 10mm of rain was forecast for this Meredith weekend, the weather surprised everyone by remaining down right pleasant and only unleashing the most atmospheric and cooling of rain showers early on Saturday evening during the predictably fun set from Ice House. Side not: Every Bunning’s in zone one had sold out of all regular Gumboot sizes by late Thursday afternoon.

6. The Meredith Gift nudie race first ramped up back in 1994 as entertainment because one of the bands were late to arrive, with cold beer as the prize. This year the race was called by a man who has arguably been Australia’s top sport’s commentator for over two decades, Denis Cometti!

Watch gift’s gone by here (NSFW):

7. In 1996, whilst working in Hanoi, co-founder of Meredith, Chris Nolan suffered a multi-organ collapse in his sleep which resulted in severe brain injuries, placing him in a coma for six months. At the insistence of Chris’s family, his Meredith co-organisers and the Meredith townspeople honoured his hard work and continued with the show. I hear Chris was in full attendance this weekend and we’d like to say a special congratulations to his mum, Mary Nolan, who was made a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia this year for her service to young people with acquired brain injuries.

8. Personal set pick of the festival would be Cut Copy‘s Saturday night rain dance but honourable mentions must be made to Explosions in the Sky who bought in the sunset on the first night, a super fun Joelistics show and NYC’s Gang Gang Dance. Viking rock band Barbarion, were insert-word-that-means-both-entertaining-and-bat-shit-crazy.

Barbarion:

Explosions In The Sky:

9. The Meredith Dickhead Policy is the foundation of the good behaviour of the crowd, which has the least arrests registered out of any major music festival. This year? Zero.

10. Number of people who locked their keys in their car: 27. Number of people who locked their keys in their car who work for Pedestrian: 2 (all of us).

Words by Alice and images by thebrianstormproject.tumblr.com. Main image by Kristy Milliken.

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