So when I decided that I’d be going to the United States for a second time, I realised I was in a tiny bit of a pickle. I had bought tickets for shows during the week of Coachella - namely Tiesto at Festival Hall and Shadow & Cut playing The Hard Sell at the Palace. I wasn’t too worried about Tiesto, the event had sold out and I had no trouble getting rid of the ticket for the show. But I really wanted to see The Hard Sell. When I really started get Jurassic 5, I tried to get into as many of their side projects as possible - one of which was Shadow and Cut playing this brilliant set full of mashed together 45s called Product Placement. I fell in love instantly and bought the CD (Product Placement On Tour) along with the DVD and was stunned at the performance the two talented DJs put on. When the tour was announced, my jaw dropped. I bought a ticket for the Melbourne the day they went on sale, and prepared myself for an audio-visual feast, watching the YouTube videos from the Hollywood Bowl set they played.
So when I decided that I would return oversees for another year, I did what any rational person would do - I bought a ticket for the Sydney show along with a cheap return airfair on Jetstar. But figuring the concert would go late and that I would want to go to the footy the next day, I decided to get the first available plane to Melbourne (6am) and didn’t bother booking a hotel. I was going to stay up all night and have one of the better times of my life.
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- Author: Mike
- Filed under: Randomness
- Date: Monday, April 21, 2008
Welcome to a fresh look lamerslame.net. I’ve been letting this blog go for the past few months due to some external pressures, and while I have been writing for the site I just haven’t been publishing the stuff. So over the last week and a bit I’ve been cleaning up the look and feel of the site. Lamerslame is now running the latest version of Wordpress - 2.5 and has a brand new theme to go with it, which in my opinion looks a great deal better then the previous model. The blog also has a clean new database to go with the new install of Wordpress, which will hopefully fix a few of the minor issues plaging the previous version of lamerslame.net
I’ve also been thinking about the way I have been writing on this blog and have decided to make some changes. Rather then the lengthy, play-by-play trip reports I’ve been putting up; shorter, meatier pieces will go up fairly often. At the same time, I’m going to make a return to some of the content that I haven’t been writing about for a great while - television, sports, poker and whatever else is floating around my brain.
Over the next month or so I have a fair bit of past content to cover (which will include finishing my USA 2007 trip), but will be heading back to the States tomorrow for my second visit to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival in addition to a nice little package of other music shows. For all the latest stuff I’m up to - check the Upcoming Events section at the bottom of this page, and click the RSS feed link at the top to subscribe to the site.
Stick around - we got plenty more coming!
- Author: Mike
- Filed under: Music, Travel
- Date: Monday, March 24, 2008
The last day of a festival is usually the best day. Either you’ve grown sick of being in grass fields full of overgrown idiots or all your favourite acts are playing on the final day. For me at the Falls Festival, this was a bit of both. Promising personal favourites such as Busdriver, Jose Gonzalez, Regurgitator and Girl Talk, I was going into 2008 either with a big fat smile on my face or vowing never to return to the sea side. With heats predicted to reach 42 degrees in the daytime, I was going into the new year with a big fat smile on my face (and a sweaty body to boot) or I’d be vowing to never visit the seaside town again. Which is it? Only one way to find out (and it’s the hard way unfortunately). Let’s get on with it.
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- Author: Mike
- Filed under: Music, Travel
- Date: Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The women, one of six behind the counter in the express lane at the local Foodworks looked depleted of energy when she informed me that the maximum cash-out from an EFTPOS transaction was $200. The ATM’s located in Lorne had ran out of a cash, so there was a rush in the store to by a few items as possible (for me it was a bottle of Coke, bottle of Sprite and the daily newspaper, pricey stuff as you can imagine) and then withdraw as much cash as you could. Despite the Falls Festival being in it’s fifteenth year of operation, it almost seemed like the seaside town couldn’t handle the sell-out crowd. If anything, it really points to getting a few mobile ATMs on the festival grounds. But if all I cared about was money, I could of stayed in Melbourne and visited multiple ATMs around the city - the Falls Festival was all about the music.
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- Author: Mike
- Filed under: Music, Travel
- Date: Monday, December 31, 2007
About four months ago I decided that I’d go to a festival for New Year’s. Traditionally I don’t lot for New Year s, preferring to stay at home, drink and watch the fireworks from my backyard. When the rumours of Girl Talk, Gogol Bordello and Jose Gonzalez came up (amongst others), I stuck my name in the ballet and figured if I got an offer I’d take it, otherwise I’d just go to one of the other shows (Pyramid Rock and the Hip-Hop Showcase at the Corner Hotel were my two picks, in that order). Sure enough, I got the option to buy on the first day and took it up instantly.
So I worked out what I needed for camping supplies and saw the line-up announcements. No Gogol but the rest of the picks weren’t that bad – The Go! Team, Busdriver, Lior, The Herd, and a bunch of others that I’d hope I would discover. But as things got closer I wussed out and booked myself a nice hotel room just off the main street. While I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t write another entry until I finished my America trip report, I don’t want to put writing this off forever – so here we go, Day 1, even if it is Day 0.
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