V 2008
Wow, what a weekend! I apologise in advance for the terrible pictures that I got of Alphabeat and Scouting for Girls. I didn’t have a camera on Saturday but on Sunday all I had was a crappy 2megapixel thing that was only cool in 2002. I’ll see what I can get from my sister’s phone later.
Day 1 (Saturday)
Arrived in good time to Hyland’s Park, lined up, etc, got right in. We headed right towards the main V stage to see Michael Franti and Spearhead, who were really awesome, especially considering the relatively small crowd.
After, we saw The Futureheads, one of my favourite bands. They were brilliant, especially towards the end. Really good stuff!
We saw Lostprophets next, and they were really good too. Got the crowd all involved, and sounded brilliant too.
Maximo Park were up next on the main stage, and they were pretty good too. Some sound issues marred the performance, as they sounded a bit weak, but they were still great.
Next we moved over to the 4Music stage to see The Hoosiers who were damn awesome, and put on a great performance.
Right after, we stayed for Newton Faulkner who was downright awesome, spending much of the time on the stage completely alone and being a one man band, turning his acoustic guitar into a drumset all on it’s own. We even got treated to a “You spin me right round” cover. But he was awesome.
It was getting late once Faulkner was done, so we headed towards Stereophonics on the main stage, which was packed. We tried to get forward but simply couldn’t. Hundreds of thousands of people were there and it was crazy. Stereophonics were great, too. I’m not a huge fan of theirs but I recognised some of their singles. Very enjoyable, even if being crushed to death wasn’t.
Muse were the headline act for the night, and we moved forward in the gap between the two bands to get as close as we could. And it was worth it - Muse were phenomenal. They were downright amazing. Easily the best live act I’ve ever seen and they were just awesome.
Day 2 (Sunday)
I started the day off by heading to the main stage to see The Stranglers who were pretty good. Right after, I headed over to the EA setup thing to see if I could wrangle a go on Mercenaries 2, but it wasn’t there, contrary to what I had read. Shame.
As I wandered around, I caught a bit of Squeeze on the main stage and The Rifles on 4Music. Both sounded great.
I headed to the JJB Tent-thing to see Gabriella Cilmi, who was pretty good. But I wanted to be in there early for Alphabeat who were on right after. And they were brilliant! Really really fun to see, they were incredibly loud too. Great fun and great seeing them live. The one word to describe Alphabeat would be ‘Electric’.
We headed over to 4Music to see OneRepublic who were pretty damn good - very slick, very well performed.
Scouting for Girls were without doubt the highlight - they were downright amazing, with thousands and thousands of people turning up to see them. They had such a command of the audience it was crazy, and it felt like everyone was behind them and it was astounding. The sheer energy in their performance drove the audience crazy.
I decided to call it a day after that. Although some more cool acts were coming up later (Kaiser Chiefs for one) I didn’t feel like staying for much longer. Overall the weekend was awesome, though. Truly amazing.
