Craftypics's Blog

Sorry about the delay in getting this one up. It’s been sitting in Draft status..anyway on with Sundays review.

Sunday was always going to be the busiest day with a pretty full lineup of Music as well as some guest speakers that would draw crowds. It was fairly obvious why they scheduled Cate Blanchett to be on nice and early so the lines to catch the bus from the Belair Train station area were already pretty long and that was before Midday. I had concerns given the previous days the only buses I saw running from there to the festival were the small city of Mitcham buses but thankfully they had some large buses interspersed to move the larger crowds on Sunday. It ended up only being a 15 minute wait before we were on our way.

The first event was the discussion on which Cate Blanchett was on the panel of speakers and as expected all seats were already taken. I took up a position mid way down the tent on the side but unlike the other speakers the festival management insisted that all Photographers were only allowed down the very back of the tent and could only take photos of Cate for 5 minutes.

Got my shots and headed off to catch the Kronos quartet play again. Despite a few technical glitches with the PA system whilst the quartet had to wait for the tech guys to fix it, it was a great and varied performance.

Next up were the Catholics on the Karka stage. I quite enjoyed them with their Jazz influences and stayed and watched quite a bit of their set and cracked my first beer for the day.

Back to the Internode stage for the Emma Donovan band. The two backup singers added a lot to the sound and they really looked like they were enjoying being there. Paris Wells was the next act back on the smaller Karka stage. I’d heard of her but didn’t really know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised and she looked the part on stage with bright red lipstick, blonde hair and massive earings swinging from each ear.  Konono #1 from the congo was a bit of a surprise. Being mainly percussion and  rhythm based I was hoping for some good beats and wasnt disappointed. They had many in the crowd up dancing at the front of stage. I found that after about 15-20 mins that most of their songs sounded very similar to the ones they had already played, however this didnt matter to the swelling crowd of people that took off their shoes and danced in the lush grass.

The Tallest man on Earth was one of my Sunday highlights. Up on stage by himself with just a guitar I could see why some reviewers regard him as being in the same mould as “Dylan”.

Great sounding songs, good lyrics and a stage presence that you could just feel as he strutted around. I had to leave early to start heading down to the Internode stage and caught the end of Rod Quantocks talk ” Bugger the polar bears this is serious “. Rod is one of the funniest guys around and even catching only 10 minutes of his performance I left with a massive smile.

One of the headline acts was Rickie Lee Jones. She may have a few more wrinkles that she had 25 years ago but still has an amazing voice. She played a mix of some old stuff and some of hr newer material, and I wasnt at all surprised that she didn’t play here most famous song ” Chuck Es in love “. People I spoke to afterwards who were massive fans were mesmerised by her performance.

With the night approaching I went back to the Karka stage to see the Shanghai Orchestra again play on the smaller stage. They were playing mainly solo parts and it wasnt that conducive to taking photos so I grabbed a glass of red wine and sat on the fringe area listening and relaxing.

With the night drawing to a close it was back to Stage 1 for the final 2 acts. The Kronos quartet again this time with 2 speakers ( one on each side ) who read quotes as the Kronos quartet played. It was quite effective. Rain started to lightly fall which was actually quite welcome at the end of the evening. When the Kronos quartet had finished the stage was cleared and a piano rolled in for the final act – Abdullah Ibrahim. The crowd had thinned by this stage with many weary or having to leave to get connecting buses/trains but for those that stayed he put on a great show. It was fairly laid back  Jazz influenced music but it suited the final event. There were a few kids that headed down the front and danced around with streamers. It was entertaining for a little while but personally I found it quite distracting as we weren’t there to watch their “performance”. I didn’t stay for the whole of Abdullahs set as after three nights and 2 days of lugging 10 kg of camera gear around I was bushed so I bid farewell to the park and headed home. Sundays schedule of bands was pretty packed unlike Saturday when their seemed to be periods of nothing much happening. I would have liked to have had time to listen to some of the speakers, however being there as a photographer meant I spent more time at the performances. I mean How many photos can you take of speakers ?

Would I attend again – definitely.  Is there room for improvement – definitely.

See you in 2012 Earth station

You can see the full Galleries for each day HERE < Click

When an event is run for the first time you always expect a few things to crop up and sure enough they did, but before going into some suggestions for improvements, let me start by saying I enjoyed the first night of the event.

Having lived and grew up in Belair, the event was literally being held in “my backyard”. I had asked a few days earlier on the Earth station facebook page whether the shuttle bus was going to run internally to the park off Sheok Road and was advised that the shuttle bus was going to be only going through the main Upper Sturt rd entrance. Imagine my surprise when I turned up at the train station bus pickup area to find they were going through the Sheok road entrance. The buses running through were City of Mitcham Mini buses which had very small capacity ( about 20 people ) so it took over 45 mins to get on a bus despite being near the front of the ever growing line. We got to the event and headed straight to the Karka stage getting there just as the opening speeches were being made.

I caught the start of the first performance by Frank Yamma and David Bridie and then headed down to hear some of Stephen Pekars talk.  My Family decided to join the Bat workshop run by Simon who was surprised at the sheer number of people joining him, but said it was amazing that so many other people thought bats were cool.  I myself had a bit of a look around the site and then headed to the Keynote by Roy Neel. I was quite surprised to see only a handful of people at his keynote address. I think most people had left the Karka stage and either gone off to try and find bats or were getting some food. I think the organisers should have had Roy on a stage straight after one of the performances so that the crowd were already there.

A quick listen to the start of the talk by Mike Sandiford and then back to the Karka stage for Vika and Linda Bull, who put on a great performance which had many of the kids in attendance down the front dancing.

The main act of the evening and indeed the only act on the main stage was the Kronos Quartet accompanied by the Adelaide Chamber singers who were positioned down in front of the stage area. They would have been praying it wasnt going to rain because if it did they would have all been drenched. One can only assume that the organisers hadn’t checked the Freight Train Schedule as 5 mins into the performance the Adelaide – Melbourne Freight train came screeching around the hill to the North of the stage and drowned out much of the subtle music for the 3-4 minutes it took to pass. I got used to the humming/droning of the generators behind the stage area, but there were 2 people a few metres back to me that just talked throughout the performance despite a few glares from myself and other around us. These two were not kids, nor young adults, they were middle-aged and should have known better.  They even increased their talking volume when the music and singing on stage got louder. Really if you want to talk to each other at such a performance PLEASE move to the back or side of the stage area.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Kronos quartet and before you know it the night was over. I was a bit concerned about the bus trip back to the station as the line was quite long, but thankfully they had much bigger buses acting as shuttles on the return trip and we were back on the road again to the station after only a 10 minute wait.

There is room for improvement and hopefully the organisers will have a Debrief and take on board some suggestions from those attending to make the festival bigger and better next year. Two more hours and I’m back there again. Memory cards have been formatted and batteries charged up.  Check the gallery tommorow and there should be at least a selection of images from the Saturday session.

You can find the Full Gallery of images up HERE

Only 1 more sleep to go until Womad Earth station kicks off. Unfortunately my request to get site access to get some timelapse of the stages being set up was ignored but never the less I’ll be there from tommorow capturing some still images of the event to share. I’ll try again next year with a request for site access for some timelapse footage.

Fridays music lineup is highlighted by the Kronos Quarter performing Sun Rings. Other live performances on Friday are by  Frank Yamma & David Bridie as well as Vika and Linda Bull. Should have the first photos up Saturday morning

I pulled my bike out of the shed and went for a Ride to the Earthstation site at lunchtime. Looking good and the location is nice and green with the recent rains. Some photos of the site taken today 20th October are up HERE

The Streets of Adelaide graon to the sound of Zombies yet again with the Annual Adelaide Zombie walk heading from Rymill Park to Light square. Lot’s of great costumes and makeup as usual.

Full Gallery of images is up here

The Lineup and Schedule for Womad Earth Station in Adelaide has been announced. The Event is aimed around sustainability and envirnmental issues and will be held at Long Gully at Belair National Park

Looking forward to seeing both the bands and the speakers that will be attending. This is the first year it has been run so it will be interesting to see how the format pans out. There’s a great lineup of artists with many of them familiar to the regular Womad crowd as well as some big names that as far as I know havent performed at a Womad event in Adelaide

The proposed schedule looks pretty good with plenty of stuff to do on all three days and tickets are available for single days ot the whole weekend. There is also limited camping spots available but fortunately for me I live very close by and could even walk there if I was fitter. Hoping to bring you all Photos from the event if the media accreditation gets approved.

Yet another show I’ve been looking forward to seeing – Gomez ( I had yet to see them live ) but love their albums. The Show at The Gov was sold out which was a good start. No crowd barrier but the Gomez Crowd was fairly friendly in letting the 4 photographers move around the front of stage during the first 3 songs. The lighting though wasnt the best with lots of horrible Red LED lights illuminating the band. It was a very solid show although at times the band members looked a bit weary which isnt overly surpising given their heavy tour schedule with Adelaide right near the end.

Photos from the gig are up here

You know the Thebby is struggling for ticket sales when you enter the concert hall and the black curtain is across the top set of seating. Despite the pretty small crowd there were 2 bands performing that gave as much energy and commitment to the shows as I have ever seen. First up starting almost right on 8pm was the Grates with lead singer Patience Hodgson doing her rather “excitable/maniac” dancing around the stage that makes a Grates show a great show. Lots of crowd favourites although with the early start the crowd didn’t really start filling in until the set was almost over. I was glad I caught the whole show. Patience even headed down into the crowd for some crowd surfing which is something she appears to be doing quite often on her current tour.

Main act on the bill was The Hives from Sweden. Entering the stage all dressed up in B&Ws with Tophats they soon had the crowd moving playing a selection of songs from the older albums as well as some new stuff that was well received. Overall a night of pure energy from both bands. It was just a shame that a lot of people missed seeing this show. Hopefully The Hives will return to Adelaide sometime and maybe a bigger crowd will turn up