So where are those Festival Awards when you need to take a few stabs? “Award for worst management – Solar Music Festival,” “Award for worst crowd – Solar Music Festival.” All one can say is thank goodness for the great lineup of artists, because in its first year, Solar was hardly as bright as its name might suggest. Of course, it was the festival’s first year, which means that it needs to be cut some slack; but when acts start to play 20 minutes before anyone is even allowed into the grounds, and when the Mornington boys have to be told not to grope girls when they’re crowd surfing, then criticism is certainly warranted.

Gates opened around 12.30pm, which meant poor old Juke Kartel were already halfway through their set before they had any crowd. The crowd JK did get would have been fairly minuscule anyway, though, as a massive hold up at the gates, and no railings to indicate where lines should be meant that a great mass of punters were simply left to stand and wait – forfeiting their chance to catch the rock boys or the folky Lisa Mitchell.

Soon enough, however, Sydney’s Josh Pyke was more than happy to provide a belated first set for many in the quickly increasing crowd. Opening with Fed and Watered – an appropriate number about horse racing analogies to go with the racecourse venue – Pyke had little trouble engaging with both the standing crowd down front and the hill of sitters up back. His casual and humourous way of engaging with the crowd between songs also helped in this regard. Pyke’s acoustic led tales, back beautifully by his three piece ensemble were a crowd pleaser, but annoyingly the positioning of the stages (all three of which were more or less next door to one another) meant that Pyke’s softer moments had a rather evil “doof doof” backing track. Singles, Middle of the Hill and The Lighthouse Song provided upbeat singalongs, and closing track, Make You Happy, rounded things off in fine style.

Continuing with the good vibes on the main stage were The Beautiful Girls who have returned for the year after much touring around the globe. The amount of crowd surfers appearing from the masses during the Beautiful Girls’ roots/reggae/surf mash-ups was pretty surprising, and as already mentioned it took frontman, Mat McHugh to tell a bunch of rowdy punters how they should treat the girls taking their turn on top of the crowd. Encouraging the crowd to sing “yoh yoh yohs” during Black Bird and to clap and sing to I Thought About You made for the perfect mid afternoon kickback. However, the heavier Under A Southern Sky and jamming during the closing number gave a real edge to the Girls’ show – something that was greatly appreciated following the more chilled majority of their set.

Choosing between You Am I and That 1 Guy, who both had pretty much the exact same slot, was a tough choice, but on this occasion the token international act won. A lot of jamming followed for That 1 Guy’s set, along with his usual antics of howls, card tricks and general fooling about. Amongst the playing about on his magic pipe – which was both the funniest and coolest instrument any act at Solar had to show – That 1 Guy did choose to throw in a few of his songs, including Butt Machine and Weasel Pot Pie. The jamming proved to be more fun for this set though, as the mentioned songs seemed to have a slower than normal tempo and the jamming included many jump up and down moments.

Playing to a hometown crowd, Kisschasy ran about the main stage with their often melodramatic rock, stirring up the crowd with a whole lot of yelling from Darren Cordeux between songs. The singer’s bark seems a lot worse than his bite though, and his big rile up of, “Are you gonna get trashed with us” leading to the introduction of a ballad seemed like a bit of a waste of space. Closing track, Spray On Pants, seemed to be a hit though, and the boys left the main stage to the dance favourites to finish the festival.

PNAU are renowned for their crazy shows and Nick Littlemore is often a real entertainer; but at Solar, the robed pair, their drummer (the hardest working member of the band) and their dancing characters seemed to be in a totally different world. Littlemore’s “God complex” seemed out of control as he spent most of the time either yelling at the crowd to put their hands up or demanding cigarettes. At other points he simply walked off stage to hug people or asked that his band mates join him to hold hands at the front of stage. The giant dancing strawberry, sun, skull and bird were all in tow, but seemed to act more like a diversion from the fact that Littlemore wasn’t singing to half the songs. Both he and partner Peter Mayes took turns climbing the railings either side of stage and hanging outward – looking very out of it, whilst words flashed on the projectors and the crowd just sang and danced along, hardly worrying about how out of it Littlemore was. This set was certainly not the best of PNAU.

Appearing to show Mornington how dance music can be performed with class and still be amazing, the almighty Presets appeared to an equally almighty crowd – packed in to see the only option available for the last part of the day. 2008 was certainly a breakthrough year for Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes – something they made very clear when Hamilton announced the last time they had played in the area (three years ago), it was to about ten people at the Peninsula Lounge. Even without their light and laser show kicking in until dark half an hour later, the Presets were able to cause an absolute frenzy of arms in the air, dancing and chanting. Talk Like That, This Boy’s In Love, Kicking And Screaming and the always delightful Are You The One? were among the big hits that everyone jumped along to. Massive cheers also went to the bloke to suddenly appeared starkers during one of the quieter Presets songs. Without surprise though, My People, which was enhanced with lasers over the now darkened crowd, was a standout and easily made up for many of the less popular aspects of the festival.

Solar Festival managed to score a decent and varied group of Australian artists for its first year down at the Peninsula and although there were some issues earlier on in the day, everything seemed to come around to a rather decent end. There’s always the matter of learning from mistakes too, and if the festival returns next year then it’s bound to be better prepared.