There were animals everywhere in furry onesies or in animal hats and I was one of them, rocking a tiger head hat rented from a costume shop for six-year old kids.
The baddest cat in the jungle, grinning like a maniac from ear to ear and laughing, just laughing my ass off the entire weekend.
Truth be told, from Thursday to Sunday, way too much awesomeness happened for one post.
The last thing I want to do is ram a 10 000 word piece down everyone’s throats that no one reads so instead I’m breaking this down day by day and hitting you guys with only the good stuff, that infectious craziness that makes festivals like Rocking The Daisies so awesome because that’s all anyone really cares about in the end.
Good times. Sunshine. Good people. We had it all. What a fucking amazing weekend…
Well, except for leaving on Thursday. J-Rab and I were both frazzled from the week we’d had and were keen to just head on through, get our shit sorted, crack open that first icy beer and start partying our asses off.
Obviously we took a wrong turn going there though and ended up taking the dirt road shortcut to the Darling Cellars turn-off. I was fuming by that point because I was trying to get through before sunset but by the time we actually arrived it was already 8.30pm.
Luckily our friends had taken our tent earlier and set up camp for us literally 5 meters from the main entrance. Chrissie, Pamela, Cat, you guys are fucking LEGENDS.
Thirty minutes later we were finally setup and smashing our first drink of the festival. We went the vodka / cranberry route which I mixed in almost equal proportions.
Yeah. It was basically rocket fuel.
Armed with that we moseyed on over to the Thursday night campsight stage and caught Future Primitives and Goodnight Wembley.
It was sad we missed the other Thursday night bands but lemme tell you, Future Primitives put on such a solid performance, I actually didn’t mind.
It was high-energy surf / stoner rock at its absolute best. The buzz in the small crowd gathered there was fucking electric. I felt all the tension from my shitty week come flowing out as my limbs loosened up and my mind unwound one gulp of rocket fuel at a time.
We went to sort out a refill before Goodnight Wembley got onstage and after that things got a little blurry.
I wasn’t in the best shape to review Goodnight Wembley in any way, but I just remember feeling that while they are a great and seriously talented group of musicians, their material is nothing we haven’t all heard before.
They do it flawlessly, but I don’t remember hearing any tracks that got me as pumped as Future Primitives did.
Also, at that stage some young 16 year old guy was trying his luck with our friend who had been sippin on the rocket fuel so I had to step in there and tell him on no uncertain terms that he needed to back off or the next time he touched her, he’d draw back a bloody stump.
After Goodnight Wembley all I got is flashes of lucidity. J-Rab went to the toilets and came back to find me orchestrating an entire group of people that I’d managed to convince there was a trip-wire between these two wooden posts in the main pathway.
Hilariously we got people either jumping over the imaginary trip-wire or doing the limbo between the posts. I tried to take some pics of it but man-o-man they came out badly.
The last part of the evening was spent back at Chrissie’s tent at Camp Tiger where we jammed some sick choons and carried on smashing the voddies, just laughing and having a killer time.
It was basically the best end to the first night I could have hoped for. Check it:
Obviously I have no recollection of actually going to sleep after that, but I imagine when I did, it was with a huge-ass smile on my face because I was here, I’d arrived, it had been a fucking amazing night and my Daisies experience was only just beginning.
The perfect start to what was going to be an epic weekend.
Stay tuned for my Friday round-up tomorrow 
-ST
