I’m always interested in hearing a cover - some can be bad (i.e. Celine Dion’s covering AC/DC), some can be strange (Of Montreal covering “Know Your Onion” by the Shins), and some can sound as good or better than the original (Elliot Smith’s divine cover of the Kinks’s “Waterloo Sunset”).
You can listen to what I think is an OK cover of Bowie’s “Hereos” by one of my favourite bands, The Magnetic Fields, by clicking on this link (not sure how long this link will last!).
I had to take dm.com offline for a bit. Spam was becoming a bit of a problem, and I had upgrade wordpress. I’ve posted most of the notes that I had been writing on facebook over the past few months (mostly travel stories related to South America).
Well, well. I’m well behind on my travel blogging, but I’ve decided to skip ahead and report some of the details of my recent adventure to the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Arts which I experienced for the first time during the past week.
Glasto has the reputation for being a muddy and patience-trying experience. Luckily for me and my partner in crime, J-Kay ‘Janderson’ Anderson, we were fortunate to experience nearly perfect weather. I’ll quickly give a run down to which performances I thought was good, OK, and not worth the hype. Please note that for some (most) of the days I missed some of the main bands due to being intoxicated or asleep!
The Good!
There were many really good acts. As usual, at least according to my festival theory, these acts were nearly all confined to the side stages. The pick of Friday was the simon-and-garfunkel-esque Vampire Weekend who put smiles on everyone’s faces with their afro-beat pop songs. You have to love a band you can dance too!
To my surprise, one of the other great acts of Glastonbury was gold coast locals Operator Please. I had always heard these guys on the radio back home and thought ‘argh, just another one of these gimmick bands’ but this was the first time I saw them perform, and I must say, I was hugely impressed. Also, their cover of Salt’n’Pepa’s ‘Push It’ has to go down as one of the best covers I’ve seen. Also, I had no idea that lead vocalist and guitarist Amandah Wilkinson had so much guitar credentials – she was busting out the riffs like there was no tomorrow.
Eventually coming out as my second favourite performance of the entire festival was Crowded House’s Saturday afternoon set. I knew all the word’s to most of their song, and there is nothing better than a giant crowd sing-a-long on a warm Saturday afternoon. Most of their obvious hits were played (they finished with my personal favourite ‘Four Season in One Day’) and a few newer Neil Finn numbers placed in between.
The Hoodoo Gurus played an early slot on Sunday at around noon. Much like the Crowded House set of the previous day, it was littered with old classics. Dave Faulkner did talk a lot of shite at times, but generally the set was enjoyable with the band members indulging in some rock and roll showmanship.
I randomly went and saw a UK band called Friendly Fires at the John Peel tent (coincidently, the tent closest to my campsite). They were enjoyable enough to warrant a place amongst my favourite sets of the festival. They had wisps of the cure mixed with a lot of electronic backing tracks, and reminded me in some ways of Australia’s own Seabellies, albeit with less members. Also, I think the guitarist might have thought he was Johnny Greenwood reincarnate, though clearly he wasn’t.
My pick of the festival was without a doubt Caribou. Playing a lot of songs off their great album ‘Andorra’, Daniel Snaith a co really showed an initially unsure crowd what it was like to mix 60’s-esque melodies with an dab of electronic beats and effects. ‘She’s the One’ was a festival highlight. I also loved their stage setup, with Snaith and his drummer setting up their separate drumkits directly opposite each other, so when they manically smashed their kits it looked like the were entangled in a drum battle of gargantuan proportions.
Spiritualized also played a great set at the John Peel Stage early on Sunday evening. Never listened to any of their music before, apart from the song ‘Come Together’, but I might have to check out some more of their tunes.
Much to my surprise, My Morning Jacket, who closed off the Park stage on the Sunday night, absolutely rocked. I have a few of their albums, and I always thought they were OK, but I had no idea that Jim James, their lead singer and guitarist, was such a rock god. They mixed rock and country music songs interchangeably, and jumped round the stage like men possessed. It was a delight to watch. Their drummer looks like Animal from the muppets, and indeed, drums like him as well.
I’m told on good authority by Janderson that Hot Chip were brilliant and ‘boyfriend material’. Unfortunately, I missed out due to being passed out drunk in my tent.
The Yeah-They-Were-OK.
I won’t go into much detail, but the Raconteurs were OK. John Mayer was OK (he can play some mighty fine guitar), The Kills would have been more enjoyable had their sound been better (I frequently noticed that the John Peel Stage had a really bad sound mix), Stars suffered from the same sound quality issues as the aforementioned Kills, and their lead singer’s choice of performance outfit left me feel slightly ill. I didn’t really mind the sounds of The Rascals, who played a mixture of punk and surf music.
The Over-hyped and Awful.
Actually, I didn’t see many bands that were that awful. Some that I thought weren’t all that good were Canadian stoner rock group Black Mountain. Their 8 minute plus medleys were just drawn out and boring. Maybe I had to be ‘under the influence’ to appreciate, but I wasn’t, so therefore, I didn’t. The hyped up Crystal Castles probably were good. However, they only played for half an hour, despite having an hour set time, much to the extreme displeasure of the audience who rightly booed them off the stage. MGMT were also another band for which I couldn’t even been bothered to stand through their entire set for, such was the quality of their set. They didn’t look interested in playing at all, despite a full house at the John Peel stage. Furthermore, their songs were uninspired and bland. Don’t believe the hype. Janderson mentioned to me that by far the worst band she saw was the Brian Jonestown Massacre. I’m not surprised at all.
Well, that sums up what I thought was good and bad about the performances of certain acts at the festival. Overall, it was a good few days, though extremely tiring. Unsure if I will do it next year.
My last tale from the traveler’s beard involved the events that occurred on my Inca trail adventure. You may recall that after the annoyances of my trip back from Aguas Calientes, I had consumed a curry and headed off to bed.
Not for too long it seems. For the first time in my South America trip, I encountered some form of food poisoning or sickness. My body began to reject food, and thus, trips to the bathroom to relieve my stomach of food matter became frequent. It was hard to eat, and it was also hard to stay up late. I would frequently head to bed at around 9pm, only to wake at 6am. This debacle went on for two or three days, though it wasn’t too bad thanks to the huge amount of pharmaceutical drugs that Doctor Stephen Hogg M.D had managed to procure prior to leaving Australia.
Steve, Moss and I ended up spending about four or five more days in Cusco after the trail. We had originally planned to go to Araquipa or Nazca, but we soon realised that these side trips would involve more sitting on Peruvian buses, an experience that we did not want to repeat in a hurry. Cusco was a great town; we decided to stay a bit longer. We moved into a bigger dorm in the Loki hostel – this time with about twelve or thirteen people. Steve got into a fight with an Irish girl on the first night in the dorm, and decided to look elsewhere for more privacy. I was fine as usually I was drunk to the point of passing out (and earplugs did a fine job of keeping out unwanted noise).
We went out for some meals with some of the people in our Inca Trail group – or at least, I tried to. The plague was preventing me from staying out late and eating a lot. Still, I’m told it was fun! Moss began to show similar symptoms to me , and eventually came down with the same thing. It seemed to be rife through the Loki hostel. I blame the curry. We sampled some fine cuisine at places like Café Muse, Victor Victoria and Paddy O’Flahertys (get the shepherd’s pie – it’s awesome). One day was spent with Kiet and Dave (from our Inca trail group) sitting in some Australian themed bar playing shithead and 500 rummy for about eight hours. Many beers were consumed and by the end of it we were a total mess.
One of the best things about Cusco is the sheer amount of fun activities that can be done for relatively cheap. For example, the boys and I (including Kiet) went white rafting for $30 US dollars (unheard of in Australia for this price). The rapids, we were told, were about class 4, and were quite treacherous in some places. Our boat consisted of myself, Steve, Moss, Kiet, our new friend Priscilla, and some other random American dude who kept falling out of the boat. At one stage, Steve and I got pummeled by a rock, and I got trapped under the raft. I thought I was going to die – but the guide pulled me up fairly quick smart, and thus I lived to tell the tale.
We ran into old friends from our previous stay in the Loki hostel including Harry, Yianni and Jamie – a trio of crazy Englishmen with a inclination for copious amount of drinking – something that we had in common. Many nights were spent either in the Irish bar, Loki Hostel bar, or Mama Africa’s, a gringo filled danced bar that occasionally played good music. At some stage during my second Cusco experience, I swapped my At The Drive-In shirt for an Evo Morales shirt (the president of Bolivia!) with Rob, one of the Loki hostel managers. Definitely a highlight.
Anyway, Steve left for Australia (via Lima) after several all night drinking sessions, and Moss and I were to continue to Quito in Ecuador for the next stage of our journey. More to come.
Well, we were up at 4 am. Steve wasn’t in a great mood, having had little sleep. Our fairly cramped quarters combined with the cold and the wet was beginning to wear our patience slightly thin. We gringos need our gringo comforts. The porters had to disassemble our tents, cook us breakfast and pack all the rest of the trek stuff, and run to a train before 5.30am. Hence, the early starting time. Our breakfast wasn’t a good as previous (hard bread and little else), but at least Roberto got us to the final trail checkpoint early, which meant we were the second tour group through. Steve, Manuel and I took advantage of this, and we set off at a killing pace through the cloud forest, covering the four kilometers to Intipunku (the Sun Gate) in about 25 minutes. Along the way, I nearly died climbing some steep monkey steps (steep vertical steps placed close together, so it is more like a ladder than stairs), I could feel my body begin to wear thin. Still, nothing prepared me for the magical moment as we climbed the final incline to the Sun Gate and stared down at Maccu Picchu, which basked in the glory of a near perfect morning. We were fortunate, the weather was ideal and we had an unencumbered view to the Inca ruins and, in retrospect, this was my favourite moment of the entire Inca trail.
For about one hour, we stuck around, took pictures and generally had a rest. I was feeling quite tired from a combination of lack of sleep and general weariness. My vertigo was given a bit of a test, as there were little or no natural railings, and the drop was enormous. From the Sun Gate, we could see tiny specs of people beginning to fill the ruins which increased the groups desire to get down and get dirty amongst the erotic ruins of the ancient Incas. We were waiting around for some time, petting llamas (as you do), Moss decided to go walk abouts through the ruins without actually getting his entrance ticket – I’m unsure how he got in exactly, but I’m guessing he vaulted a wall or something. By the time we got into Maccu Picchu, the fat gringos had made their way via train from Cusco, and the place was becoming crowded with old people and their gigantic cameras, determined to photograph every inch of the ruins. I must say I felt a bit disgusted – after all, we had trekked for days through the rain and mud, to enjoy Maccu Picchu, and here were these clean, pleasant smelling individuals walking about like the owned the place.
After a guided tour by Roberto in which we took in several temples, and the royal apartments, we were left to our own devices. Most of the group decided to hike up Waynu Picchu., though I passed due to a mixture of vertigo and exhaustion. Steve claimed he would take one hour to get up and back, despite the guides saying that it would take approximately two to two and a half hours to complete – at this stage it was 10.30 am, and we had to be on a bus down to the nearby village of Aguas Calientes by 1:00pm. Lo and behold, the return trek up Waynu Picchu would take until 1:30pm. While the guys where up their wandering round the hills, I took the opportunity to have some R&R, and a bag of crisps. I lay out in the sun, watching the gringos file into the ruins, and spend a heap of money. I did see a native Andean musician playing some tunes round the café, he managed to concurrently play a mini guitar and panpipes at the same time.
We boarded our bus to Aguas Calientes at 1.30 pm, and met up with Roberto and Manuel at some local pizza place. There was a complete stuff up with train tickets as the tour company we were with had not organised return tickets early enough, and thus, we weren’t all together on the train. Moss, Anna and I were on the 3:00 pm train, while the rest were on a later train. Many of our group were rightly unhappy (not I, I must confess, as I got to go on the early one! Lucky me). The train journey was approximately two hours, and Anna promptly fell asleep, while Moss and I mentally created the script to a movie (starring Samuel L Jackson as a MI6 spy with rather unconventional and violent methods of ‘getting the job done’, if I recall correctly). We thought we were going straight to Cusco as no one had told us any differently, but the train dropped us off at Ollantaytambo. We were slightly confused and slightly pissed off. In the midst of trying to figure out how to get back to Cusco, a random Peruvian approached us waving a sheet. My first reaction was to tell him to piss off, but Moss’s sensibilities prevailed, as he noticed our names scratched upon the parchment – someone had the smarts to call ahead and get us tickets on a bus back to Cusco. Yay. What was not so yay was the journey back, which was uncomfortable and accompanied with by large blasts of cumbia music – the worst music known to mankind.
We arrived in Cusco at 6pm, exhausted. The rest of the group got back at 9pm. I had a curry at Loki and immediately went to bed.
Well, well, it has been some time. I’m currently typing this entry from my pal’s place in San Francisco in the US, and it has taken me some time to get reliable and prolonged internet access. Let me continue my story on Maccu Picchu, and describe the events of day three of the Inca trail. As always, the group was up at the crack of dawn for another healthy and filling breakfast. The group was slightly lethargic after such an exhausting walk the day before. Joints started to groan after the first few minutes as we made our way up a steep incline to the Inca outpost of Runkuray, which had been visible from out campsite.
After some quick group photos and a quick-guided tour by Roberto, the group set off again up another set of stairs to the top of the ridge. The rain began to fall. The trail was quite crowded, and I was left at the rear, stuck behind some slower trekkers. Steve and Moss were some way ahead along with Kit and Dave. Indulging in some coca, I ran behind some porters (which people politely made way for), and I was soon able to make it over the ridge. Instead of a nice and easy walk to the next set of Inca ruins, I was greeted with a steep decline across wet rocks – it would be easy to slip and do you some serious damage. The going was slow and slightly treacherous is the wet, and very hard on the knees. At one stage, I was all on my own, and I thought, easy prey for lurking pumas! Fortunately, I wasn’t eaten alive, and after an hour of walking pretty much on my own, I made it to the impressive ruins of Phuyupatamarka. Trekkers are required to mount some extremely steep and dangerous stairs in order to make it up into the ruins, which are made even more dangerous by wet weather. I finally had caught up to the other boys, and Roberto (our guide) gave us a quick talk and tour of the ruins.
By this stage, it was about 11 am, and the group made our way down to a small campsite for an early lunch. Roberto informed us that we had an easy few hours walking until the final campsite. Several hours of walking, and several Inca ruins later (including a great detour to these marvelous terraces with an incredible view into the valley below). The day three campsite at Winay Wayna allowed us the luxury of showers, in which most trekkers indulge. My feet were in quite a state after three long days. The porters cooked up quite a feast accompanied by several flaming hot whole chilies. Steve ate a full one and nearly destroyed his taste buds. We shouted the guides some beers, and I finally learnt the immortal traveller’s card game ‘shithead’ (which would end up killing idle time in many more future adventures). We said goodbye the porters, who had done such a great job, with handshakes and a few ‘huzzah’s’. We had to be up at 4am for the final trek to Maccu Picchu. Sleep was valuable.
