Day 3: Brisbane
Yesterday we played at a mini festival in Brisbane, Australia.
Our work day began with an 8:45am lobby call. Emma was already waiting out the front with our ride, the Snow-White Pearl coloured KIA Carnival and we loaded our suitcases into the back before settling in to enjoy the first class luxury for eight that is offered by this Grand Utility Vehicle. We crawled through the Sydney’s western suburbs out to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport and thirty minutes later we had disembarked and we were inside the terminal and making life miserable for the Virgin Australia check in counter as we tried to fit our oversized baggage onto weigh scales that were not designed for this purpose.
With our equipment disposed of we headed through security and then to the Virgin lounge to enjoy a breakfast fit for a valued frequent flyer. It was all I could do to avoid raiding the enormous pot of crumbly scrambled eggs, but I restrained myself and headed for the cereal bar instead, retrieving many colourful chunks from the fruit salad bowl, and topping these chunks with yoghurt, granola, and raspberries. On the side I enjoyed a piece of fruit loaf, toasted, and slathered in butter.
The flight was short and smooth, and we landed in Brisbane airport to find a warm and humid afternoon awaiting us. Several fresh Smartcartes® were loaded up with our gear and we waded out into the thick tropical air outside the terminal and headed for the rental car office. Another KIA Carnival was ready to go, dressed in the identical Snow-White Pearl paint job, and fitted out with the identical first-class luxury cabin we had enjoyed so much while driving around Sydney. A Hyundai Staria was also waiting for us, a gleaming white van with futuristic headlights and a large rear compartment, seats removed to make way for cargo carrying. Our convoy set off on the M7 Airport Link towards the city, its members admiring the smooth surface of one of Queensland’s most prestigious motorways and enjoying the Carnival’s offering of triple USB-A charging ports and independent controls for front and rear A/C.
It was lunchtime when we pulled into the venue, a great glass hall that houses the Felon brewery, perched on a section of the Brisbane River that snakes through the Fortitude Valley. At one end of the hall were four huge stainless-steel tanks, doubtless full of amber liquid in some stage of the process that ends in cans and kegs. At the other end of the hall stood a stage and in front of that was an empty area filled with seating and tables, serviced by a nearby bar and kitchen. We were welcomed by a friendly man in an apron and we settled down at one of the tables to order lunch, grateful for the hospitality and the opportunity to rest and replenish before soundcheck.
Tristan disappeared a minute later, and eventually we found him in a faraway corner of the room with a plastic container full of coins, immersed in a game on one of the many pinball machines that were on offer; obviously he was drawn to the Metallica-themed one and he settled in to pay his respects to some of his musical heroes.
With our stomachs full of delicious Thai food, we made our way onto the stage for soundcheck, lethargic but content, setting up our equipment slowly and deliberately. There were a few moments of stress when we found out that the patch was fucked but patient investigation from Gabe and Jon corrected the mistakes that had been made by local technicians (someone had double patched, apparently, whatever the hell that means) and we were still left with half an hour to play through a few songs.
It was 3pm by this point – 8 hours to go until our set, so we returned to our vehicles and drove five minutes to get to the big smoke where we found our hotel tucked in between lofty skyscrapers, right in with the boom and bustle of this city’s downtown. As usually happens when we stay in Brisbane our hotel turns out to be a serviced apartment. Our rooms on the 9th floor of this 50 story tower had kitchens and lounges and washing machines, and Tristan and I even had a large balcony with a table and a view of the river. We didn’t second guess our family-sized lodgings, though, and sat down to enjoy the lounge furniture and watch a couple of episodes of our new favourite television show Storage Wars.
It gets dark early in Queensland, and it wasn’t long before the city streets had embraced the night-time mood and deployed vibrant lighting that played off the polished windows of downtown’s skyscrapers and caught the ripples and wakes that decorated the surface of the Brisbane River. In ones and twos we began to make our way across to the venue. Probably two twos and two ones if I remember correctly. I left first and my walking route took me along the river on the boardwalk, which was beautifully lit and packed with people looking their best - excited and optimistic about the potential stored in a Saturday evening. Gabe and Emma followed a few minutes later on electric scooters and crawled along most of the way, slowed by the thick pedestrian traffic.
Around 7:30 we arrived and found that the event well underway, having commenced more than three hours ago at this point. This was the second edition of a festival called Seasonal Fruit and it featured eight bands over the course of the afternoon and evening – plenty to sate even the hungriest of music fans. There was some brilliant music on the bill and I watched as much as I could, discovering the music of bands such as the The Belair Lip Bombs, MJ Lenderman, and Wednesday, for the first time. At ten minutes past eleven pm it was our turn to get up on stage. Our bodies said sleep, but our brains said rock, and rock beats sleep just as efficiently as it beats scissors. We headed out onto this beautifully lit stage to deliver an hour of music to several hundred people who thankfully had hung around to see us. The mood in the room was one of tired excitedness and we were filled with admiration for this audience who somehow still had energy to give at this point in the evening. The next 60 minutes were full of fun and joy as we bounded through a classic festival setlist, sticking for the most part to our fastest and loudest songs, with a few of our most medium songs in there for balance and respite.
The house lights came on quickly after we finished and as we packed down our gear it began to rain gently outside, a refreshing gift for the exhausted audience filing out of the venue.