What I Learnt From BluesFest 2010:
The long weekend didn’t get off to the best of starts with my car dying on the way out of Brisbane. Despite getting it serviced last week and being told that it was in pretty good shape, there was a massive oil leak under the bonnet and the engine died (seems a bit dodgy to me that it happened on the first journey after the service if you ask me). So had to get a tow truck to take us to the nearest service centre (which was almost opposite where the car had broken down but required a 6km trip round trip in order down to the next junction to get over to the over side of the road and back up again), where they told me what I already knew, that the car was going nowhere ever again. Phoned the wrecker’s yard to come and pick up the car, transferred everything from my car into a taxi which then took us to Avis to pick up a hire car so we could get on our way. Had some good times with the car; it got me from Sydney to Exmouth in Western Australia and back again, as well as several Sydney to Brisbane trips, but living so close to the city and with a combination of public transport, cycling and walking, it didn’t really get used much and so I don’t think I’m going to really miss not having a car now.
After taking the scenic route via Stanthorpe on the Thursday and setting up camp in Ballina on Friday, I managed to get to the site too late for Dr John and The Lower 911, a real shame as he was one of the acts I really wanted to see, having already missed his first set of the festival on the Thursday, so The Swell Season was the first band of the day, at a leisurely festival start time of 17:30 and on the second day of the festival at that.
I’m probably not going to write a whole lot about the bands as it just didn’t feel that I really got to actually “see” much. Refer to Points 2 and 3 above; so much time seemed to be spent waiting backstage in the media tent and it was such a physical challenge to photograph so many of the bands that it just became a really unpleasant experience.
Friday was a good day though; The Swell Season were good, The Avett Brothers excellent. The thrill of seeing Buddy Guy was dampened by the struggle to get photos in a rammed photo pit and it was a similar experience for Jeff Beck even though they split the photographers into two groups, each getting two songs to photograph. Despite everything I’m happy with the photos, especially the Jeff Beck ones as I was really disappointed with the photos I got when he played at the BCC last year. And I also got the benefit of seeing most of his set this time around, instead of the three songs at the BCC before being escorted out of the venue.
Photos from the rest of the festival are on their way and more photos from the Friday are on Flickr.
John Butler Trio
Jeff Beck
Blue King Brown
Buddy Guy
The Avett Brothers
The Swell Season
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