Sunny Skies and Windy Weather: Parklife, Melbourne - October 3, 2009

06 October 2009

What started out as a grey morning blossomed into a sunny afternoon, thankfully for the 17,000 people that turned up to Birrarung Marr, Melbourne for the cities third Parklife festival.

With an all-star dance/pop line-up it was difficult to decide who to see, with the schedule really beginning to get hectic from 3.30 onwards.

If you're into dance-able tunes, there was a bit of something for everyone - Cool Kids and the notorious Lady Sovereign brang the hip hop beats, while there were the electro-house sounds of Busy P and Tiga, turntable stylings of A-Trak, computer game blips of Crystal Castles, electro-rock stylings of The Rapture, Metric and Metronomy, however the real highlights came from the pop realm.

PHOTO GALLERY - Crazy Parklife Punters!!

The tuneful squeak of flame-haired Elly Jackson of La Roux and UK Lady Gaga doppelganger Little Boots were daytime draw-cards, while the ethereal one man band of Empire of the Sun (fronted by Luke Steele sans Nick Littlemore) brought things to a climax toward the tail end of the festival.

VIDEO: Empire of the Sun - 'We Are the People'

Unfortunately the fantastic line-up was really let down by the sound quality. The Fire Stage was a complete write-off thanks to muffled acoustics that completely destroyed the quality of the experience, meanwhile the trademark screeching vocals of Alice Glass of Crystal Castles were barely decipherable over the thud of the backing music.

PHOTO GALLERY: Empire of the Sun, Little Boots, La Roux and More - Onstage at Parklife!

The pop acts may have provided a better experience but this could have been due to their position on the much larger Water Stage, which also provided more standing space, some look-out points, food AND bars!

One more thing: toilets. A 30 minute line to a festering porta-loo in this day 'n' age is not OK! Have festival organisers STILL not worked out that concert-goers really enjoy drinking alcohol, which in turn means they will have to go to the toilet...and that there are thousands of them?! I do not understand the consistent problem here! Are they that disorganised that they continuously order too few toilets? Are they too cheap? Is there not enough room?!

Either way, the festival toilet line can be very entertaining at times, at least according to a friend of mine who witnessed two girls a scrag fight over a girl who tried to cut the line!