Groovin' The Moo @ BendigoShowgrounds, Bendigo(30/04/2011)

Tue 3rd May, 2011 in Gig Reviews

After growing slowly but surely, year-by-year, as well as making changes and additions to its selected regional stops, Groovin’ the Moo seems to have found its happy place with a largely unchanged format for 2011.

In 2010, the Bendigo leg of the festival received less than favourable reports of up to three hour queues to get through the gates, prompting a statement from organisers that it would ‘NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN’. Thankfully, from a range of reports, this promise was kept and there was little to no delay on entry.

The layout was slightly odd and saw the smaller section of the crowd directly in front of the main stages open to everyone amongst the all ages attendance. Behind this was ‘the cage’, the fenced off majority of the grounds where only those 18-plus could access and of course, buy and drink booze. It worked quite well except that those that were in the front section created a logjam whenever the changeover in bands took place, seeing plenty of tweeners get barreled by overzealous bogans.

For those regular gig goers, Darwin Deez was one of few bands on the bill they were unlikely to have witnessed before. Darwin Smith and his ensemble provided a set of jangly, sunny pop numbers that were nicely paralleled by the perfect autumn weather of the day. If the smiles and enthusiasm didn’t win over the crowd, the band’s between-song synchronised dance routines to RATM’s Testify and Enya’s Orinoco Flow did.

On the opposite end of the festival appearances spectrum, Datarock were up next. Australia was the first country to support the band with airplay outside of their homeland of Norway, prompting frequent tours here. Unfortunately, since breaking through with hits Fa-Fa-Fa and Computer Camp Love six years ago, they’ve offered up little else to get excited about, and apart from its members, the live show has also barely changed. Great club shows have been seen from Datarock, but their sound seemed lost in the outdoor space and would have been far better suited in the more intimate Moolin Rouge dance tent.

The average acoustics at the main stages of the festival became more apparent when Washington next took to the stage. While Megan and her band had many of the females in the crowd singing and dancing along, one astute punter highlighted the fact that the sound was much clearer at the slightly higher far back section of the grounds. Unfortunately, this was right next to the stench and queues for the toilets.