Perth Music

2008 saw the Good Vibrations festival try out a new location which many saw as a surprise, especially with the fantastic setup in 2007 at Belvoir Amphitheater. With a reduced temperature in the low thirties, the new location (Heirisson Island) ended up being a dusty and dirty area where thousands of music lovers descended upon to catch some of the world’s best musical acts. Many were there just to see ‘The Ego’ Kanye West, but there many great artists, bands and DJ’s playing all day.

After parking near the WACA and making the trek over the Causeway to Heirisson Island I made my way to the Bacardi Live tent and caught the end of a DJ set by the Bag Raiders. There were plenty of people packed into the B-Live tent, especially near the free water, and considering it was still early in the day, it looked like everyone there was enjoying the set. The remixes that were played were high quality and the dancing that many people were planning on doing for the next 8 hours was interesting, to say the least.

Next up on the main Good Vibrations Stage was American 20 piece band Thievery Corporation. Featuring a sitar, horns, bongos and almost a different vocalist on every song, the exotic bunch drew a larger and larger crowd as their set rolled along. Their style mixed Brazilian with Indian with Jamaican with styles that were somewhere in between and it suit the atmosphere of the festival perfectly. A huge hit for the band and a huge crowd favourite was Lebanese Blonde which had the crowd swaying and bopping back and forth.

Heading down to the Chinese Laundry tent, The Stafford Brothers were starting up their DJ set ready to remix and sample songs from the last thirty years. Their wasn’t as much dancing going on in the Chinese Laundry tent as the B-Live tent but that was mainly because the crowd were busy watching the DJ’s do their thing on the raised stage and just enjoying the Aussie producers/DJ’s.

Back on the main stage Calvin Harris‘ set was just finishing up and the audience seemed to be loving the disco sounds echoing around the island. The electro DJ that was discovered on MySpace only four years ago looked as if he was loving the Good Vibrations tour and at the same time fairly sad that the tour was ending.

After a short break New York’s The Rapture came on the main stage to a crowd that was getting dirtier and dirtier from all the dust and sand kicked up around the grounds. With a sound that fused electro and punk, the four piece thrashed out a set that was fierce and high energy. The crowd grew and grew as the set rolled along and it was obvious that the day was getting to the pointy end and the headliners were not far away.

As Cypress Hill walked on stage a buzz came over the crowd and the excitement was obvious. Before any song was played Sen Dog grabbed a mic and shouted out to the crowd “Roll it up, light it up, smoke it up” with about a third of the crowd responding by holding up cigarettes of all sorts. B-Real and Sen Dog were full of energy throughout their set which included hits such as ‘How I Could Just Kill A Man’, ‘Dr Greenthumb’, ‘Insane In The Brain’, ‘Hits From The Bong’ and ‘Rock Superstar’. Half way through their set there was a small intermission so a 20 foot tall inflatable Buddha with a pot leaf on its tummy could be inflated and the crowd loved it.

After a short break and with the stage being transformed behind a large sheet it was time for Kanye West, fresh from winning a few more Grammy Awards to come on stage. Heavily dressed in a jacket, a scarf and gloves West started off with ‘Good Morning‘, the first song from his new album Graduation, helped out by a couple of backup singers. The set was more of a performance than any of the other acts on the day and included a digital display background specifically created for Wests set, multiple costume changes, a female ‘robot’ controlled by West and one huge ego. During the song ‘I Wonder‘ West played the piano and announced he was “the number one artist in the world” but also joked that he only learned the piano for this one song because he thought it would be cool to play the piano in a rap song. After about 50 minutes on stage West announced that all of the previous songs were just part of the intro and it was time to start the show which lead straight into Gold Digger, Good Life, Diamonds From Sierra Leone, Jesus Walks, a tribute to his late mother and lastly Stronger. All in all, love him or hate him, West put on a show that proved his musical skill and ability to control a stage.

Photos from Good Vibrations can be found here at PerthNorg (Thanks to Noodlez).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Good Vibrations, Gig Reviews, Music Festivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.