Perth Music

It was the final major music festival of the summer but plenty of music fans young and old made it down to The Esplanade to attend the first V Festival to be held in Perth. With the fairly clear sky, you could hardly tell that there had been a deluge of rain that had fallen in the previous two days in Perth but there was still some mud pools around. The crowd wasn’t as packed as the previous festivals this year but that just made it more enjoyable for the faithful. There was also a noticeable age spectrum in attendance with the younger fans eager to see the newer bands and the older fans eager to see some of the 80’s and early 90’s bands playing.

On arrival it was great to see a large, happy crowd getting ready to see indie/electro act Cut Copy on one of the two main stages. As soon as they started playing, girls started dancing and the band seemed just as happy, smiling and waving to the first few rows. Given that Cut Copy’s second album, In Ghost Colours, debuted at number one on the ARIA charts just the week before V, they had every reason to be on top of the world. Radio friendly hits Hearts On Fire, Lights And Music and So Haunted were definite crowd favourites.

The next band up was The Jesus & Mary Chain which saw a shift in crowd demographic and considering they formed 24 years ago it was no surprise. There was a buzz of excitement for the band that just reunited last year after a 9 year break but the excitement didn’t last too long. It was great to see the band that made distorted indie music popular but unlike the late 80’s it isn’t as unique as it once was. After a couple songs the indie tunes all started to sound the same which was great for diehard fans but for newer ones the intrigue was quickly lost.

Alternative darlings Modest Mouse were up next and a blistering set exploded onto the Perth foreshore. The crowd looked like it almost doubled in size as the Washington based band played a great set of older songs as well as a bunch from their 2007 release We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. As soon as the band played Float On the crowd were in total reckless abandon and it was great to see. Frontman Isaac Brock gets almost as crazy as the crowd and it started to look like there was a competition for who was more wild. For me, Modest Mouse were the first band of the day to be in rock festival mood and pull it off perfectly.

Just like Spinal Tap were the first band to turn their speakers up to 11, Queens Of The Stone Age definitely turned it up a notch in Perth. It was dirty rock at its best and Josh Homme owned the crowd as the band played hits such as 3’s and 7’s, Little Sister, Go With The Flow, a fantastic and rocking version of No One Knows as well as the drug filled Feel Good Hit Of The Summer that had a cameo of Amy Winehouse’s Rehab in the middle.

It was then time to go back to the 80’s when Duran Duran came on stage to play to the very enthusiastic crowd. Formed 30 years ago, Duran Duran didn’t look tired or rundown or even stressed out as many older bands usually do and singer Simon Le Bon seemed a happy man. Even if some of the younger members of the crowd didn’t know the band, they definitely knew the songs. Girls On Film, Ordinary World, Planet Earth, Rio, Notorious were all played and loved by the crowd and when Le Bon asked “Are you hungry Perth?” and played Hungry Like The Wolf there was a frenzy of dancing.

Brazilian electo/pop girl band CSS had a packed crowd on one of the smaller stages half way through Duran Duran’s set and there was a lot of joy int he room. With a bunch of helium balloons placed around the stage, the set looked more like a party than a festival act. There was dancing, there was hand claps, there was synchronized arm movements and there was sexy and fantastic songs played.

The Smashing Pumpkins were the main headlining act of the day and as soon as Billy Corgan walked on stage, the crowd erupted. It was great to see Corgan smiling at the crowd and the whole band looked like they were enjoying themselves (even without founding members James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky). Opening with 90’s hit Tonight, Tonight, the entire front 20 rows turned into a mosh pit of movement. Next up was the first single from the Pumpkins Zeitgeist album Tarantula, followed by Mayonnaise, Porcelina, Cash Car Star, Crush, Today (dedicated to all the DJ’s of dance music who Corgan “Fucking hates”), a solo, acoustic version of 1979, a few more newies in That’s The Way, Set The Controls and United States. There was also a rocking cover of Britney Spears’ Piece Of Me that most of the crowd didn’t recognize until half way through and the sky also lit up with fireworks thanks to a wedding in King’s Park. An encore of The Everlasting Gaze and a blistering version of Bullet With Butterfly Wings finished a set that left fans very satisfied and proved why The Smashing Pumpkins are one of the greatest rock bands in the last 20 years.

Click on photos for bigger versions.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Gig Reviews, Music Festivals, Photos. 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.