Blueprint Festival, Ararat -Day One (18/09/09)

Mon 21st Sep, 2009 in Gig Reviews

Blueprint festival – a shambles or a success? To take the debut festival on face value, some punters may have leant toward the former; really, who organises a festival on a swamp? However, endurance proved that there was plenty to find and love about this new addition to the already bursting festival scene and by Sunday evening all earlier problems were forgiven.

Blueprint. n. a detailed plan, esp. in the early stages of a project or idea.

Blueprint festival had the plan, it was set out very clearly on their website, and promised some great ideas to reinvent the festival setting – a garden of tables and chairs outside one stage, strictly no beer in cans (micro brewery only), a restaurant serving steak… Promises that weren’t kept. The biggest blow, though, was arriving at 3:30 on Friday afternoon (the expected starting time), only to find the stage had only just begun construction and security were strictly not letting anyone near the festival grounds, which of course meant the devastating lack of entrance to the beer hall as well, a fact that aggravated many festival goers.

“Two massive stages” were, in fact, one massive stage and one very small stage, which kept in line with the camping theme of the festival by looking like no more than a slightly oversized dome tent itself. Those stages may have been bare of bands, but that just presents a challenge to find your own entertainment, like viewing the bogged truck, which tried to push itself out of the mud with its own skip and was labelled by onlookers as “Epic Failure”. Around 7:15, the dome, SYN stage, finally had some music on it, and not too long after that the main RRR stage did as well. Music that could not have been more welcome and more needed.

“The Resin Dogs have got what you need!” It was with this lyric that punters finally got to shake off the cold and jump, dance and yell their way into Blueprint. Resin Dogs had been shifted to opening the festival (not too far off the time they should have played), with the rest of the bands being slotted in with shorter sets to follow. The change proved a good choice, with the feel good vibes of the Doggies getting the crowd into party mode. Coming With The Sound topped the set, with a pack of unified waving hands saying thanks for finally delivering the music. The funk side of Resin Dogs was later emulated again by Pablo Discobar, who treated the audience with their full band to tracks like Give It To Me and had people dancing again, a testament to the fact that funk music is what cold, angry punters needed to roll into the night.

Epicure had a harder time than they would have had in the afternoon, now they had to follow the hip hop with their “downbeat acoustic songs”, but they certainly delivered a decent show. Amongst a set list that comprised of songs like Life Sentence and Armies Against Me, frontman Juan Alban and guitarist Mick Hubbard rocked out as best they could, trying to encourage the still crowd to do the same.

“Blueprint you cheeky bitch!” The almighty Galvatrons were in fine form come 10:30 and their cheesy, heavy and oh-so-lovable rock and roll was exactly what the rock kids ordered. Johnny Galvatron was full of clichéd call outs between tracks, as he and the band made their way through songs off their debut – Donnies on TV, Cassandra and When We Were Kids. You expect a boyish arrogance when you see this band, and that’s what Blueprint got, along with a muddy mosh pit.

Rock music was now the call of the night, and whilst Calling All Cars on the smaller SYN stage weren’t much to go by (did he really need to throw his guitar at the drum kit?), the return of Kevin Mitchell and the great Jebediah certainly left people satisfied after a night of music that almost wasn’t. The fist pump hook of Lino kicked things off, before the four piece really got the crowd excited with Animal. They might not have been playing the Saturday night slot, but Jebediah appeared as the headliners of this festival. Amongst the setlist of favourite oldies ( Feet Touch the Ground, Please Leave and the awesome Leaving Home ), the band tested a couple of new tracks as well, Mitchell assuring the crowd the band would have a new album by next year. Whilst the fresh material had a familiar ring, it was classic Jebediah that people were after – the voices of each punter in the mosh pit during Fall Down a testament to the fact.

FOR ANOTHER TAKE ON DAY ONE READ PORGIEPIE’S REVIEW
DAY TWO REVIEW
DAY THREE REVIEW

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE FESTIVAL HERE