There's no rewind, so we might as well play.

Last year I went to quite a few gigs, I guess one of the advantages of living in the Valley was the fact that I could literally catch the lift down to the basement, walk out a door and immediately be within 200 metres of about 20 different music venues.

Having a good mate in Salvador who loves music just as much as I do living just around the corner was also a plus. I have lost count the number of times we would email each other at work about an upcoming gig or festival or album, come to think of it, I would say almost 80% of the gigs I went to would have been with him. Each gig or band would always provide some funny memory, such as:
- walking home singing from West End singing "Rock It" in pissing rain after Little Red.
- embracing the torrential downpour at the Riverstage as Cold War Kids sang "Hang me out to dry" (a week later the park was underwater from the Brisbane floods).
- Talking to some people for 30 minutes after buying The Jezabels album at a gig, only to realise when they went on stage that it actually was The Jezabels I was speaking to.
- Phoebe getting hit in the head with a drumstick at the end of Teleprompter's set.
- The countless nights of scotch and dry's and dancing up a storm with Elliott and/or Salv at numerous Belligerents gigs.
- having pre-show drinks with the lads from Epidemic Over only to be interrupted by the world's most over-the-top fan spilling his guts on how much he loves the band, to the band - and then learn later that he would do this at every one of their gigs.
- the craziness of A French Butler Called Smith after 20 of us stumbled into Ric's during my brother's bucks party.

However, probably one of the funniest moments would have to be the Stornoway story....... My last weekend before my first Europe trip this year, a group of us (including Salv, funnily enough) went down to Melbourne for the Laneway festival. It was an awesome lineup including PVT, Two Door Cinema Club, Cut Copy, Foals and of course, Stornoway.

Now being Melbourne and how it's weather loves having the the outlook of "I'm such a manic that I am going to start off sunny, end up windy, but be rainy, hot, cold, and maybe snow a little in between" meant that we needed to be prepared. Purchasing chinese rice hats with bath caps would keep our head shaded, and dry, a poncho would cover the body and buying reef walking surf shoes would allow for traction and comfort in any festival weather. The only thing was it got cold when we got there, which meant I walked straight to the merchandise tent and bought the first shirt I saw so I could double up.

After raising my excitement about Stornoway playing in an hour (and everyone else saying "who's Stow away?"), I guess I had no choice but to buy their shirt. So I did. From then on I was known as Stornoway's biggest fan, singing along, almost in the front row, at their gig and representing the shirt, in my chinaman bath cap hat and frog shoes. Two hours later we were watching Cloud Control when out of the corner of my eye I saw the guys from Stornoway basically standing beside me. Trying to work on the evolution of me being their biggest fan I started talking to them and ended up getting a photo with them. My chat mustn't have been too good however as the only proper thing they said to me was "where did you get the shirt from?"

I got the photo though, and it takes pride of place as the only photo on this post. It is accompanied by one of their songs, which is a nice little ballad.

Stornoway: Fuel Up

Note my Chinese bath hat!