National Folk Festival - Day Four - 23/03/08

Easter Sunday!

We had another late start - youngest bro drove over to my place to take me back to pick up my car (vodka, remember?!), then we drove back to mine to get a tshirt because it was the warmest it had been so far.

We stopped for some Gozleme (obsessed, much?) and headed into the Budawang to see the Young Voices of Melbourne which were okay, but I think I like there to be some baritone in a choir - and that's just not going to happen in a choir of children under twelve years of age. I think it also helped to explain where some of the crazy parentless kids came from - there were a lot of them wandering around all weekend:
Post gozleme we caught the end of Jim Conway's Big Wheel and saw THE WORST SHIRT IN THE WORLD (enjoy, Mick!):
After they finished we snatched a seat on the floor at the front for the Spooky Men's Chorale. They must be popular because the entire place was packed out - but I didn't find them all that good. It mustn't've helped that they had to turn the air conditioning on in the Fitzroy when the sound was terrible to start with - but we couldn't really hear what they were saying and it was really, really packed in there and really, Really, REALLY uncomfortable on the floor! Luckily a lot of their fans left after their show, so we were able to get a seat for (guess who?!) Rory McLeod!
The dodgy sound meant he was twenty minutes delayed in starting which was a real shame - he didn't get any extra time at the end of the show to make up for it. But, again, a fantastic performace - he's just so passionate and personable!

We headed out for a bathroom break and a slushee, then headed back in to the Fitzroy and caught the end of Truckstop Honeymoon (who featured Rory McLeod for a song!) and who were pretty entertaining - will hafta catch them next year:
From there, we sat in for Round Three of the Infinite Grease Competition, which was, um, enlightening. There were only seven bands, I think, as a few had dropped out - the Brindabella Chorus went first and I think they were our favourites of the session, the Spooky Mens Chorale also did one that sounded a lot better than their performance earlier in the day (probably helped by the air conditioning now being off), followed closely by the Ballpoint Penguins who were pretty funny (and political - go Canberra!):
And then - the worst performance of the whole festival! Perhaps luckily for them I didn't catch their names - they did this thing where they had two guys pretending to play instruments but weren't mic'd properly and were only making noises occasionally and completely randomly, then a girl came out that had a sideburn drawn on one side that sang the wrong words, out of time, and not entirely in tune, THEN they got a guy in a fairy costume to run along the back:
Youngest bro laughed all the way through, tears streaming down his face - it was just THE randomnest, most terrible thing I'd seen the whole time, completely NOT what I was expecting! Youngest bro maintains that everyone was just too embarassed to laugh, but I can't say I'm sure they meant it to be cringeworthy - it was like they just gathered a few half-stoned people off the concourse and paid them $50 to get up on stage!

After that total abomination I grabbed a baked potato, youngest bro grabbed a bourbon and we watched the second half of David LaMotte with Liz Frencham:
The only thing that can equal mumsys love for Liz Frencham is her perceived distaste for David LaMotte. Personally, I thought he was alright! He is a little bid 'Weird Al' but he did an amazing instrumental with his guitar using echoes that was pretty awesome to witness, he kept the kids entertained and he and his wife have made a charity thing called 'change' that has donated something like $45,000 to schools overseas that get no government funding - they don't have textbooks!

We stayed seated for Genticorum who of course didn't dissapoint! Their music is so bright and cheery and they have really engaging english translations for the stories of the songs they're about to play. They were selling CD's after the show, so I hung around and got me one, got them all to sign it and got completely tonguetied and only managed a 'thanks, thanks a lot' *sigh* can you blame me thought? Here's a coincidental montage picture I managed to take, showing the sexier 2/3rds of the band (but they're ALL super talented) playing with the banjo player from The Duhks:
On that note we headed over to grab some Hari Krishna meal and then over to The Mallee to see what may have been the last ever performance of Allez-gator, a rock and roll show featuring guests from the festival whilst the wooden floor reverberated with dancers. It was fantastic to see so much energy so late at night, and that the majority of dancers were just young people out to dance to the music (rather than professionals - although there were few of those as well!). At about 11pm the impact of another full day (and a warm one at that) hit us and we headed home.