We turned around about five kilometres after passing the entrance to Buffalo Drift. Blame our excitement about the Rock the River music festival, or the fact that we were all deeply involved in a conversation about rivers existing on the sides of mountains, but we completely missed it. The Blackberry told us to find a safe place to turn around, and we did. It had taken us this far, and being from the Highveld I didn’t know sign from post – so far we had passed a place named after a cheese (Gouda) and one named after a german, Hermon. “˜Drive straight for approximately 45km, passing Hermon’ the Blackberry had said at one point. That had us laughing – I was travelling with friends, and their kit – we were packed to the brim.
We arrived at Rock the River at around five o’clock, about four hours later than expected but, surprisingly, earlier than a lot of other festival goers. There was still room to pitch a tent within stumbling distance of the main stage, which, at a music festival, is a fundamental criterion. There wasn’t enough room, however, to set up a tent without disturbing one of the many well-rounded cow pats strewn across the field. They were ubiquitous. I ended up using one as a pillow.
Buffalo Drift’s open-plan entrance building provided a neat transition between the campsite and the main stage. Beyond that was a small makeshift bridge which led to the Hellfire stage. The entrance was innocuous enough, save for the menacing wildebeest skull that greeted us on the way in.
We made our way past the watchful skull at around eight o’clock to see Boombox Troopers. I love a clean slate when it comes to new music, and I had never heard them, or of them, for that matter. They did not disappoint. They call it extreme pop, I didn’t really know what to call it, but it was funkier than a pot of neon primer and just as inordinate. Frontman Graeme Danger’s Lynchesqian rhymes blended cheekily with the metal-inflected punk riffs that twanged out from the lead and bass guitars.
The rest of Friday went by like the prequel to Harry Potter – had he stayed under the stairs – quiet and uneventful, musically anyway. Even Hog Hoggidy Hog’s usual limb crushing moshpit entourage were looking fairly thin and whittled. Again, it was probably down to the tardy Friday crowd, and if anyone knows anything about concert dynamics they’ll know that playing to a half-empty field is anything but inspiring. So instead, we dedicated Friday to the German god Jagermeister … they were relatively inexpensive and the barmen were obliging.
I woke up in the middle of a completely deflated air mattress. It was hotter than a pair of sweat pants dipped in Tabasco, my mouth was dry and my tongue was stuck to the top of it. I don’t know how long it had been stuck there … but I needed water, like yesterday. There was no water, only beer … that would have to do.
And so began Saturday, a day that would only get stranger, a day that would see normalcy scoffed down like a plump Easter hot cross bun and downed with a mug of boiled beer. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the music, but insanity prevailed, and William Golding would have had his sequel, were he still alive.
A mutual decision was made to go down to the river. Its icy freshness made the Saturday heat (and the Jager-ache) bearable. We climbed in, some less elegantly than others, and swam to the middle of the river, stood on a submerged island and then laughed hysterically as we watched people try to clamber over the rocks to get in. Usually people check their pockets before they go for a swim, not Fox Comet frontman Rob Coutts. He arrived on the island with a pocket full of soggy R10 notes. He then hung them out to dry over the nearby bulrushes. Within a few minutes most of them were gone. Donated, paid in homage to the river gods for fair weather and equally fair entertainment … maybe. Blown away in the wind … more likely.
Early afternoon saw most of us seeking solace from the sun. We watched the main stage from the respite of the bar tent, sitting on some post-modern furniture provided by Camel, who were there promoting their Black and White range. Red Huxley’s deep, thrombotic riffs rolled toward us from the stage. Huxley are a modern/classic marvel. Unexpectedly commanding and strangely reverent, they fuse a much-missed rock authenticity with some good old dirty strumming and soul-elevating vocals. They’re definitely old school, and listening to them, I kept on asking myself, “˜Have I heard this before?’ I hadn’t, but I think I wished I had. I was on my feet by the time they played “˜Coming home’. By that time we had also rearranged the furniture several times.
Photo-guru, Nick James, and I went up to the Aaklas bar in one of the top sections of the foyer building. Organisers had turned it into an intimate-style comedy club, cleverly inviting some stand-up crowd thrashing by having the entrance right in front of the main stage. Late-comers beware. Fortunately we were early, too early in fact, and ended up leaving before anybody even came on. It’s always a case of having to sacrifice one thing for another when it comes to multi-platformed performances at a weekend festival, and that’s just the way it is, I suppose. But I did wonder, however, if it might have been a good idea to have the 420 Comedy Troup performing on the main stage, between music acts. There’s enough time between set ups for a full length set, everybody is already there, and it could provide a useful distraction from ogling that roadie’s plumber’s bum as he sets up the bass pedal … just saying.
The food left something to be desired. There was enough of it, that wasn’t the problem, but I kind of felt like I was in the food court at a mall. There was a Steers, some Italian-named pizza outlet and a burger stall. I’ve always been a bit of festival romantic and was expecting something like tannie en oom’s padstal ontbyt, or maybe a bit of a boerie and a mielie. To be fair, there was a lonely pancake man, but his penchant for bees made him almost inapproachable. The stall was covered in them, he was covered in them, and the sugar fiends buzzed around him busily as he made pancakes. An ineffective citronella candle burned sheepishly on the table. When I asked him about his swarm, he said, “˜I’ve made my peace with the bees, and they love my pancakes,’ fair enough old soul. I bought a cinnamon-sugar pancake and gently brushed the bees off it.
As it got dusky an air of mischievousness drifted up the banks of the Berg River and Fox Comet took to the stage, already having amassed a crowd excited just to see the big ginger man in real life. He didn’t disappoint, and neither did the band. Their well-paced lyrics and catchy riffs had everyone jamming from song one. Coutts’ biblical dreamcoat didn’t stay still for a second as he strutted, danced, jumped (and rolled) through their new-wave narcosis. Kyle Gray was equally energising on the drums, never missing a beat. The bass/guitar combo of Catto and Corneloup only served further to exhilarate and enliven the already throbbing crowd, who by that time were spitting back Comet’s lyrics with unrelenting energy. Coutts’ even did some acrobatics, and although he didn’t score a 9.0 on his landings, his ballsy gymnastics had some onlookers (ahem) picturing him in spandex. And this is where things got a little pear-shaped, and not because of the spandex visions, although those were getting a lot more frequent.
Apparently, someone had inadvertently filled up the main generator with petrol instead of diesel, or vice versa. Either way, rumours began to circulate. There was talk of a complete generator meltdown, sparks and even possibly an explosion, which, in retrospect, would have been pretty epic, for everyone except the following band. Anyway, in spite of the looming Armageddon, Fox Comet used every last bit of energy available and ripped into the remainder of their set – possessed and glowing -until the generator that could finally couldn’t anymore, and we were all plunged into darkness.
There was about an hour of stage inactivity, save for a strange two-minute mime show. It seemed that two wannabe comedians had somehow managed to wrangle their way on stage and began talking … into unplugged microphones. It was fairly obvious to everyone else that the microphones weren’t working, or there would have been an announcement of some sort, but the two geniuses kept on blabbering and gesturing wildly to one another until they finally figured out that nobody was listening. They exited the stage and a while later the music was back on and everything was back to normal … well, sort of.
The relentless, high octane sounds of Taxi Violence thrusted the crowd back into a Dervish’s maelstrom. PH Fat followed suit, and they’re about two clicks left of normal on a chilled day. ‘We love animals’ breathed life into even the most inanimate of onlookers and even the menacing wildebeest skull started looking twitchy. By the end of their set I really did love animals and had resorted to using their lyrics as a sign off to pretty much every conversation.
We made a dash across the bridge down to the Hellfire stage for a late night mishmash of dub step with Niskerone and Hyphen. The rest of the evening/morning was peppered with more bridge crossings, random meetings, deep conversations and a four-o’clock-in-the-morning bonfire with nobody that I knew, except for my musically-melancholic passenger and tent-mate, Devon. He had magically reappeared somewhere along the line. I was happy to see him, until I got back to my tent.
It happens sometimes; maybe it’s the combination of country air, cow pats and brandy, but open air festivals drive some people crazy. This happened to Devon, my long-time friend and tent buddy. Apparently sometime during the evening he had gone pinballing through the campsite, bouncing off chairs, climbing into people’s tents, knocking things over and leaving canvas shrapnel in his wake. One of those things that happened to be in his path was our tent. It was wrecked, crushed, and completely flat. Lacking the energy to even comprehend what had happened, I simply concluded that it must have been the Easter beast, and somehow MacGuyvered a chair into the tent to act as a centre pole, and went to sleep.
The weather rolled in on Sunday morning, the ominous greys contrasting with the last two days of sunshine, it was time to go. We slowly contemplated gathering our belongings and heading home.
We stopped for a customary Wimpy breakfast on the journey. If you’ve ever been at a One Stop on a Sunday the chances are you’ll have seen a group of weary, dirty festival refugees trying to stomach hash-browns in the vain hope of joining “˜regular’ society. We were those people. And as I sat there, I glanced at my phone and read a text that I had apparently written to myself the night before.
“˜Speak to this man tomorrow about etcetera etcetera,’ it read.
I have no idea what that was about, and I clearly missed our meeting. In fact, there were probably a lot of things I missed. But I suppose there will always be one or two things that go by the wayside, especially when so much is happening at the same time, and I guess that’s just the nature of it – doing what you can while you’re there. And if that’s camping in the sun with friends and listening to good music, then its not a bad way to spend the last days of summer.
Photography courtesy of Nick James.
