BYRON BAY BLUES FESTIVAL
Byron Bay, 1st-4th April 1999
by Alex

The rave of the easter long weekend may have been offshore, but we managed to get the two main acts of offshore early in the bay at the byron bay blues festival. I managed to get a job working at the festival selling grog tickets, so not only did i see the big acts for free, i went home with $40 more in my pocket! gotta love that.

It basically pissed down the whole weekend, so i only went on the friday, but that was cool as it featured the two artists i wanted to see....the jon spenser blues explosion and ben harper. i got out into the crowds about 6.30 so all i saw was billy thorpe (pretentious wanker...can he give himself a bigger wrap! jack thompson also played harmonica with him...jack, stick to acting), jon spenser and ben harper.

jon spenser came on with all the glamour i expected. they rocked. very good stage act, great diving skills from half way up the lighting tower, great noise effects, just great in general. they played all the fave's, smashed a mic on stage and created the most annoying noise for 5 minutes, had the most amazing feedback machine that varied the noise of the feedback as he waved his hands around, and topped it off with a jam session and all round swearing session with blues legend r.l. burnside. great session.

but the majority of the crowd was there to see ben harper. he played two nights at the festival, thursday night was full of a bit of new stuff, but not too many songs i was familiar with. but fridays session started with an amazing rendition of another lonely day....ben was crying, i was crying. the possible highlight was ben causing a blackout in the tent after going nuts on the slide guitar during the glory and the consequence. The crowd kept clapping and singing in time with the drums still beating. when the power came back on, ben had the biggest smile on his face. he was so into it. he was on stage for nearly two hours, he was trully amazing, and easily the best festival act i have ever seen, and you can include livid, homebake, and the big day out with nirvana at the hordern pavilion in that.

other acts i had heard were great was paul kelly, angelique kidjo, and jeff lang. was well worth the $40 profit....

the only people i would like to thank are the pricks who stood up on chairs 15 metres off the front of the stage. i mightnt have paid for my entry but 10,000 other people in the tent did, and no one could see all because of you. what goes around comes around. karma will catch up with you all....other than that it was an awesome event. a great way to spend easter.