Some of us might think that now isn’t the greatest time to start expanding your music festival in Australia, what with many well established festivals falling apart left right and centre. Nevertheless, Cherry Rock Festival, a one day, rock-and-roll festival held in the most cliched Melbourne location (AC/DC Lane), is coming to Sydney’s Factory Theatre this Saturday (31st of May).
US cult band Meat Puppets have been brought out from Phoenix Arizona for the affair, alongside ex-Kyuss Lives muso Brant Bjork. In recent years, Meat Puppets name has popped up on blogs and in the media as one of the bands that influenced Nirvana, but I feel like defining a band in this way really sells them short.
Must everything relate back to the holy, ineffable musical genius that is Nirvana? Meat Puppets made some cool songs that were ahead of its time regardless of their influence on Cobain – I’ve embedded their 1984 album below, but don’t listen to it – go buy it from iTunes or something.
Other highlights of the lineup include alcoholic four piece Drunk Mums, stripped back two piece King Of The North and Sydney’s beardiest Satan worshippers Gay Paris, whom I caught at Newtown Festival last year. Or was it earlier this year? Holy crap it’s almost June! Anyway, a Gay Paris show is a mess of those cliched devil horns, spat beer and down tuned strings that needs to be seen to be believed.
If you’ve read anything on the Fairfaxsphere about Cherry Rock 2014, you’ll get idea that perhaps organising the Sydney leg hasn’t been all sunshine for the festival coordinators. The event is apparently quite popular down south in Melbourne where Rock and Roll is still cool, but up here there hasn’t been a huge reaction to the lineup – to the tune of a 15% ticket sale figure as of last week.
We don’t like talking too much about the industry and it’s failures here at Happy, but it does bring up a good question – does Sydney even rock anymore? Maybe we don’t, but $60 for a 14-act lineup? Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to take a chance at the whole Melbourne scene just this once.
FULL LINEUP
Brant Bjork (USA)
The Meat Puppets (USA)
Redcoats
Gay Paris
Chris Russell’s Chicken Walk
King of the North
Beastwars (NZ)
Child
Drunk Mums
Bitter Sweet Kicks
The Harlots
Don Fernando
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