St Jerome's Laneway Festival - Friday Feb 6th

Since hitting my mid-twenties, I have been rather reluctant to go along to any big music festivals. These days I prefer smaller gigs, or staying at home with the stereo and a cup of tea. So I surprised myself by deciding to go along to the Perth version of the Laneway festival.

For the past few years I haven't really been keeping an eye on bands and new music. So without really knowing much about many of the bands on the line-up, I settled for some old favourites; Stereolab, Fourtet and locals The Bank Holidays. I was pretty happy to be seeing Stereolab as they were a particularly iconic band from my youth. The Bank Holidays were comfortable, like wandering through a field of daisies towards a croquet field. Fourtet was also pretty good but I was getting pretty cold by that time.

Oh, and the picture that I've featured at the top is of Still Flyin, a San Franciscan super-band with members from The Aislers Set, Ladybug Transistor, Dear Nora, Masters of the Hemisphere, Je Suis France, Bright Lights, and Track Star. Random stage dancing, ample amounts of novelty boxer shorts, and the wearing of a pig-faced soft-toy on the head all ensured a most entertaining set.

Speaking of entertainment, one of the more amusing moments on the night came on the walk back along James Street to Adam's car. We were passing by the window of "New York Tailors" (the shop that has all the rock & roll belt buckles etc in the window)=



Lo and behold, as we were passing, I spotted a RAT walking around throughout the belt buckles, in the window of the shop! I quickly pulled out my camera to take a shot, but by that time it had leapt onto the floor. Here's the rat running away:



I think it was Adam who said that perhaps, Ratatouille-style, this little rat was an aspiring window dresser, who, in order to avoid detection, had to sneak out at night to develop his passion. For this reason, I implore to the shop-owners of New York Tailors to support this little rat in his ambitions by offering him a retail traineeship.