THE RIGHT PLACE, THE RIGHT TIME.
Haunting The Kite String Tangle at Groovin the Moo 2014
Around 4 hrs until Showtime
There’s some kind of small quarry piled behind the NQR and the Pet Barn across the carpark. My eyes roll from the paralysed excavators half-buried in copper soil back to the Caltex sign above me. We can’t be in the right place.
“Kangaroo Flat” I read slowly, tracing my eyes along the roof of a liquor shop. Matty, my traveling companion and inside man, emerges from the Caltex and we pull away from the small colony of weary shopfronts and continue up the highway.
“So is this Bendigo?” I mutter at the windscreen as we sail past a bleached necropolis of budget housing. ‘Lansell Plaza 300 Meters on Right’, ‘H.J.’s Drive Thru’, ‘Central Deborah Gold Mine’. The highway surrenders us to smaller streets, blanketed in brick homes and exhausted-looking front yards, until the mystic calm that hangs low over rural Australia has all but disappeared.
“Who are yous with?” the girl at the Artist Entrance asks us collectively. I make my way silently through all of the regular ‘I-Bet-I-Don’t-Have-A-Pass’ type neuroses before we collect our passes and park opposite a cattle run.
Around 3.5 hrs until Showtime
It isn’t until the infrastructure and roiling clientele of Groovin the Moo is inhaled first hand that the possibility of GTM as one of Australia’s most important festivals can be realised. Even if this importance is mainly extramusical. GTM is a festival that roosts in the very bones of rural Australia, the showgrounds, saleyards and racecourses that make country Victoria plausible, both fiscally and teleologically. The borderline sacred nature of these venues and the reason for the fervour of regional festival crowds are far from unrelated. Matty walks keenly with me sloping slightly behind, tripping over my feet and attempting to decipher the careful preservation and veneration of the cattle runs, pig pens and poultry sheds. It feels, somewhat obscurely, like a church. Backstage is different. We stalk carefully up the steel stairs, into the transient tangle of long guitar racks scaffolding the inside of shipping containers, cavernous truck bodies waiting to be filled, ratchet straps swinging from their walls. Dammed between the two main stages are milling clumps of bodies, an arcane assembly of ukuleles, brass, road cases, and a colossal mixing desk with an unhealthy operator resisting sleep behind its controls. Illy is on the left-hand stage, one foot raised on a foldback, gesticulating aggressively at the crowd while he spits long, jagged lengths of rhyme. This is Oz Hip-Hop Heartland, and the crowd shows its fealty.
Around 3 hrs until Showtime
The artist area is arranged in the same basic fashion as a UNESCO disaster relief zone, with each artist afforded their very own white tent to occupy, all of which are collected inside a colossal shed. A rangy long-haired kid in pink tights sails slowly through the rows of tents on a longboard as Matty and I wander through the white vinyl ranks, catching small vignettes of band life—Violent Soho swinging beers towards their mouths, Madeline Follin from Cults straddling a full length mirror, running her fingers through her long black hair, Kim from the Presets moving slowly between interviews in tracksuit pants, Disclosure and Dizzee Rascal nowhere to be seen. I stop outside the closed flap of the massage tent when I spot, further down the row, the temporary enclosure for The Kite String Tangle.
Around 2.5 hrs until Showtime
Danny Harley is laughing, slouched in his chair with a bottle at his mouth. The man behind TKST is like some kind of universal little brother, a quiet mischief radiating from behind his black Ray-Ban spectacles and perennial smile. He stands, we shake hands. Warner Music A&R man Mark Wilson swoops around the table with a sort of detached calm, declares me and Danny “besties” and vanishes, leaving me in the company of Danny, Nicole Millar, Nick (TKST Tour Manager), three bottles of wine, two cling wrapped fruit platters and a black tub filled with beer and soft drink. Suddenly I feel the way I somehow always manage to feel in situations involving music and free booze– fucking old. Nick keeps himself invisibly occupied, his heavily forested features disappearing and reappearing through the jaws of the tent while I plunge my hand into the black tub beside me and extract a lemonade.
Around 2.2 hrs until Showtime
Danny’s pouring out his beer into a plastic cup, exiting the Artist Area as I run to catch him. We wander to the back left corner of the huge hanger the artist-related infrastructure is huddled under, to a small pen of temporary fencing cladded in black fabric. Danny and I are unsubtly impressed at the perfection with which he decants his beer from bottle to plastic cup, mentioning nothing about the deep correlation between struggling musicians and career bartending. We wait for the Speaker TV crew to arrive, sitting at a large, oblong table - a tiny jar of lavender forsaken at its centre. The small crew arrives, Danny has already met producer Sarah Guppy through his other band Pigeon, a connection indicative of almost all of the chewing gum-ish, one-degree-of-separation type interactions currently transpiring in the Artist Area. The Australian music industry is, and may forever be, some sort of levitating country town. Sarah asks some crowd comparison (volume and type) questions, then digs slightly further. Comparing crowds across different GTM shows seems like an appropriate platitude for an opening question, but it’s also, secretly, the most vital question. I sit in the orbit of the interview, quietly denying that I’m a functioning part of TKST while thinking about how GTM naturally highlights the demographic and behavioural points of difference between cultural centres and satellite cities and exposes the distinction between saturated and starved audiences. I imagine the Speaker TV team were thinking something like: “Isn’t it nice that Danny brought his autistic high-school friend along with him?”
Around 2 hrs until Showtime
In the same way that catamarans and kite surfers will happily scatter for a surfacing nuclear submarine, people seem to smile, nod and wave in the wake of Tony Harlow, Managing Director of Warner Music Australasia. He approaches slowly in my periphery, entering the tent while I’m attempting to ask on record the only two questions I’ve prepared for Danny. The interview is wordlessly abandoned. Danny stands as Tony greets me by name, wearing the kind of features (narrowed eyes and slightly pinched smile) that don’t simply know - they know that you know that he knows. Small gusts of nervous sympathy leak out of Nicole Millar, as I flick between her semi-complete gaze (she’s almost blind in one eye, she assures me) and the questions spread fruitlessly in front of me.
“QUESTIONS FOR DANNY (TKST): BOTH ABOUT EXPECTATION:
- 1. You’re at a kind of pivotal juncture, albeit an early one. With the runaway success of ‘Given a Chance’, do you find yourself trying to replicate that same sort of sound in order to keep people keen?
- 2. With the fast rise to notoriety of many young Australian producers, and considering how dense and layered the music often is, is it hard to meet fan expectations of what they feel the live show ought to be?”
Danny continues to laugh, I crane in to listen and Tony entertains, continuing to emanate the kind of magnetism and menace that radiates from powerful engines in low gear. After Tony leaves Danny winces towards me:
“I think we should get over to the stage, maybe we could do the questions after the show?”
Around 1.5 hrs until Showtime
Violent Soho are somehow everywhere at GTM like a kind of hairy miracle. Physically I witness them drinking in the artist area and wandering in self-possessed Neanderthalic swagger through the grey bowels of the food hall. Mythically I hear them lovingly mentioned on the tongues of almost every industry body, regardless of label. And materialistically I see their name on the shirts of a fair chunk of the GTM audience. After Danny and I crawl over to the stage in a red people mover, meet Nicole and Nick and enter the back of the stage, Violent Soho are on the stage. I scuff through the wet racecourse sand, staring at the generator cables snaking towards muscular bundles of multicores blinking on the far side of stage. The noise is enormous. There’s small pockets of pure animalism erupting in the crowd, or at least in the parts of the crowd that can move. The audience has swollen into unbroken fleshy walls far beyond the boundaries of the tent. Danny sidles up next to me while Violent Soho are playing ‘Covered in Chrome’.
“Watch this, this is fucked up”
The entire, writhing crowd yells “Hell Fuck Yeah” before all shouting the chorus (mostly the word “Yeah”) so loud that their noise almost drowns out the band. Nicole Millar is sort of swaying with the music side of stage, gushing over the euphoria being broadcasted by the audience. Apparently GTM engenders this kind of euphoria fairly universally. Despite being relatively unknown, Millar still attests to the magnetised, malleable crowds at GTM. “I felt so in control” she laughs about her guest vocalist spot at a previous TKST show, “it was so cool”.
Around 1 hr until Showtime
“So its 2 acts before your show” I say to Danny, “when do you get nervous?”
“Uh…now?” he shrugs. There’s definitely been a small, rising tension. His perennial smile sometimes falls suddenly from his face as he races towards his gear. He and Nick have arranged it precisely on a sort of large drum riser, so it can all be wheeled onto stage. With Violent Soho finished, Danny plugs his gear into power.
“Oh I hate it!” he replies rapidly when I ask him about MIDI instruments and pre-show nerves. “I see Vance Joy with the ukulele, that’s the dream, that’s the dream…” He’s tried to eliminate as much as possible, or at least is in the process of doing so. He has duplicate MOTU soundcards, and hopes to run duplicate computers, so if one fails the other automatically kicks in. In addition to an ancient piece of midi hardware, he uses an ALESIS Control Pad for onstage percussion, comparatively ancient to the Roland SPDX’s I’ve seen lurking on the stages of most young electronic acts. But simple is best, and looking at the deepening concentration rippling over Danny’s face, I get it. “I’ll see you in a bit” he smiles at me.
Around 30 mins until Showtime
Nick, TKST Tour Manager is again disappearing and reappearing. Nick and Danny have lived in the same house, play in the same band (Pigeon), and have known one another for over 8 years. “I’ve sort of seen it all take flight” he nods. Thundamentals are galloping through the second half of their set, and there’s not a lot to do except wait. It feels a lot like waiting for weather—weather that will shape the rest of your night, or even your week. Nicole Millar stays side of stage, appearing to know almost everybody. Nick and I saunter outside, Danny’s already leaning against a fence on the phone. It’s starting to rain. I-SEC security guards are wandering slowly around the site, weaving slowly between the AUSA excavators and Budget rental trucks pulled against the fence at the rear of the stage exit. Danny hangs up and we stand around for a few minutes, completely distracted, now completely full of nerves.
“Alright, I’m gonna go inside and warm up” he says.
Around 5 mins until Showtime
A roadie has managed to step on a trigger for a confetti cannon, sending shredded paper and a bewildered “Aaaaaaahhh” into the thickening air inside the tent.
“Fuck” whispers Danny, as confused as the crowd clearly is. “Now they’re gonna think that I have confetti!”
Around 0 mins until Showtime
Green and white striped balls are sailing through the tent. The dim light and gentle swell of the music makes the crowd look oceanic—Danny’s floodlit face bobbing in synch. At the front end of TKST cover of Lorde’s ‘Tennis Court’, Danny goads the crowd into a deafening series of ‘Yeah’s, This is that sort of moment, not dissimilar to ‘Covered in Chrome’ by Violent Soho or even the Killers ‘Mr. Brightside’ being played in between bands, where we can glimpse a shadow of the entire modern musical experience. A moment that transcends geography and genre and binds people together simply because of its collective meaning. The rapturous response to the rest of the ‘Tennis Court’ cover further galvanises this idea. GTM doesn’t just show the differences between urban and regional areas, but also shows the power of popular culture, that these Popular Culture/Collective Experience type moments exist unchanged, regardless of place. During Danny’s set, Nicole Millar stands right at the side of stage mixing desk, mic in hand, sunglasses on, swaying, no longer talking and eyes on the stage. When her song comes on she rushes onto stage, kicking one of the striped balls into the crowd.
“How you guys doin?!”
Danny finishes the set with his big one, ‘Given the Chance’, and I swear everyone in the venue seemed to be on someone else’s shoulders, the first five rows seemed to be triple-stacked. Through the euphoric strains of the song, I was reminded of the first question I was meant to ask Danny:
You’re at a kind of pivotal juncture, albeit an early one. With the runaway success of ‘Given a Chance’, do you find yourself trying to replicate that same sort of sound in order to keep people keen?
Looking out at the sea of humans losing themselves, I wish I had gotten the answer to that question, but the song will have to remain, (with TKST’s set and GTM at large) as a moment. Tomorrow the ground we’re swaying on will turn back into emerald lawn and poultry sheds, transforming utterly. But as ‘Given the Chance’ comes to a baronial close, I look into the crowd, assured that nobody’s thinking about that. For tonight, this is Bendigo.
