Sound Relief concert - SCG

The Sound Relief concerts were held in Sydney and Melbourne to raise funds for the vicitms of the Victorian bushfires - the biggest natural disaster Australia has ever experienced. I think they raised nearly $2 million from the Sydney concert alone.

The line-up was awesome - these band were spread between Melbourne and Sydney and they had one band on stage while the other was on the massive video screens streaming live between the two. It worked really well because from where we were we couldn't really see our stage very well anyway!

There was - Augie March, Architecture in Helsinki, Bliss N Eso with Paris Wells, Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees, Gabriella Cilmi, Coldplay, Hunters & Collectors, Eskimo Joe, Jack Johnson, Hoodoo Gurus, Jet, Icehouse, Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson w/ Troy Cassar-Daley, Kings Of Leon, Josh Pyke, Liam Finn, Little Birdy, Midnight Oil, The Presets, Paul Kelly, Wolfmother, Split Enz and You Am I.

Anyway, James and I went along with friends Chucky (Elisa), Ana, Monica and our MASSIVE eski full of food and drink. It was one of the hottest days ever - really humid - and we were toasting out there on the grounds of the Sydney Cricket Ground along with about 80,000 other rockers. Monica almost passed out and had to head home after a while :-( but the rest of us stayed - jumping around to the music and amping up the energy of the crowd. Actually we felt quite old compared to some of the children they let into these concerts these days.... what the?

We met a couple of randoms who seemed to like us and stayed to play and use our eski as a dancing podium. Notably, they wouldn't let us take beers out to where we were on the field of the SCG so we had to tag team it to get plazzy cups of beer back behind the stadiums, skull them and head back out again. That was a bit annoying. On top of that they only serve light beer at these concerts so no matter how many we got through there was no beer buzz happening.. it was a sober affair over a whole day of doing that before we realised it was light beer. hehe. So we got high on the atmosphere instead.

FINALLY in the afternoon the heavens opened and Old Huey really let us have it. Oh My God. There was no escaping it. It lasted for ages, really, really, really heavy rain bucketing down on everyone at the concert. Not much shelter in the middle of a cricket stadium oval, so there was nothing to be done except to go with it and jump around in the rain - completely saturated. You know what it's like when you can feel the trickles of water running down your back, into your trousers and down your bum crack? Plenty of that. We were literally wringing out our clothes like we'd just taken them out of the washing machine mid cycle. MAD! It was such an awesome experience going off like that - so much energy - natural energy from the rain and people energy from the thousands of happy jumping beans dancing to The Presets and the rest. Why haven't we found a way of bottling that?

Eventually it had to end, so we took our eski and James drove me, Ana and CHucky back to our place in Narrabeen where we cranked up the party a few levels with lots of wine and loud music. Sorry neighbours. The usual stupid dancing and laughing and crazy behaviour followed and it was all round a very good, very late, very funny, very memorable day and night! When are we doing that again?

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