Y
ou can never escape disarray and sporadic
happenings at a festival, and the Bryon leg
of Falls Music and Arts Festival over the New
Year break had bucket loads of the stuff.
Sure there were lumberjack hipster beards to
rival the bushiness of Todd Terje the Norwegian
disco king, and an army of flowery summer
print playsuits forever in you peripheral vision,
some silent disco loners flailing by themselves,
oblivious to the hordes walking back to their
tents, felt hats in every coffee queue, and even
one Tommy Franklin sighted dancing away on
the hill at dusk.
And yeah there was the by-the-book security
who didn’t mind letting 50 foot totems in, but
confiscated essentials at the gate like my red and
white polkadot umbrella that was a handy extra
barrier between the retina scalding sunshine and
my melanoma scar but hey, I suppose I could
have stabbed someone with it at the height of
Spiderbait’s set when Kram fell to the floor after
some brutal rock drumming where he painfully
popped a rib.