Best Music Event - who won?
Calling all stage-ravers, festival-fiends and stalwart supporters of pet sounds! Who or what was your most spifflicating music event, one-off spectacular or regular night of 2009?
Parklife is the duck’s nuts of Sydney song circuses. Their friendships with the likes of The Cool Kids, Empire of the Sun, Lady Sovereign, MSTRKRFT, Metronomy, Canyons, The Rapture and Sleater Brockman means a killer bill every year and their skill in transforming Sydney’s most famous “people’s park” into a sound swampland for all ensure we’ll never get sick of them.
When Spunk throw a charity gig it aint, as the title would suggest, just another night. Sarah Blasko, New Buffalo, The Middle East, Holly Throsby, Jack Ladder, Firekites, Machine Translations, Songs, Megastick Fanfare, Sherlock’s Daughter, Fergus Brown, Ghoul, Parades, Caitlin Park, The Holy Soul, Johnathan Boulet + more. That list speaks for itself and earns every them a well-deserved SMAC finalist nod.
Head to La Campana in Sydney’s pulsating Spanish Quarter and you step into a time portal that flips you back to the finer sonic elements of a yesteryear you’ve only dreamt of as a Mad Men wet dream. Jingle Jangle’s monthly night had a 1920s-60s music policy that made our hips swing wildly, our skirts fly above our heads, our Brylcreemed hair stand on end and our definition of rock ‘n’ roll hit the hot deck and writhe around squealing “Awopbobaloobopawopbamboom!”
While ATP has been a staple of UK and US festivals for some time, 2009’s cherry-busting Nick Cave-helmed music mash was Australia’s first real artist-curated festival. The culture vultures at Sydney Festival handed Warracknabeal’s favourite son and Australia’s finest songwriter an open brief, an empty weekend and the city’s coolest venue in Cockatoo Island, the former gaol and shipyard turned Art Alcatraz. Never one to disappoint on home turf, Cave and his Bad Seeds conjured one helluva party with an incredible line up of Spiritualized, The Saints, The Necks, Bridezilla, Fuck Buttons and the best (and classically Sydney) post-gig ferry trip home imaginable!
Gay Bash deserve a medal for undertaking the civic duty of transforming pockets of Oxford St and Kings Cross these past three years. Instead, they get a 2009 SMAC nomination. Gay Bash’s semi-regular foray into flamboyance offers a dolled-up diversion from Oxford Street’s boorish banality and reclaims the streets for Sydneysiders who like dressing in skin-tight leather and partying to incredible music.
Brian Eno in bed with the Sydney Opera House is impressive enough. But using their unique musical union as a circuit-board to ignite Vivid Sydney, a music, light and ideas festival with a twist, was wondrous. Sound svengali Eno pulled every string in his eccentric orchestra, herding Battles, Ladytron, Lee Scratch Perry, Jon Hassal and Reggie Watts to Sydney’s stages for a Music Event as impressive as it was diverse.
