Meredith Music Festival: Saturday 9 December 2006

Arise around 10.30am feeling like The Silver Jews' song that goes “the the the death death death”. A line from Lucky Jim also seems fitting: “His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.” The hills are hazy and the sun is a little pink dot in the sky. Bushfire alert is on.

Waiting outside the toilet, I overhear some guy in a black singlet and skinny black jeans say to two guys walking past carrying slices of pizza: “Fucken Donuts.”

Tapes ‘N Tapes, four oversized Goonies with better chemistry than an outer suburban meth lab, cure one of the vilest hangovers of my entire life, delivering the rock show of my secret fantasies and enabling me to shake the devils out and my tail around ever so stupidly. De Campo bets me a Pink Flamingo that a drum solo is forthcoming, she nails it (first song even!). Goodness this is exciting. I move to plant her one, teeth collide, she chips her tooth. She looks horrified and stifles a scream. Suzie and her friend Ness bet that the drummer gets the most girls, even though he looks criminally pre-pubescent (he’s 20). Dust is everywhere. It's up my nose. I pick my nose with great hostility.

For Midlake, we are joined by Blake Menzies and his senorita, who we thought we'd never find. The two of them have the charisma that Midlake lacks. The keyboardist has excessively hairy arms. Between songs, I announce that the next song will be about the singer’s gangrenous foot, referring not so much to the gruesome warning on my cigarette packet but to his uncomfortable presence. Despite my howling, drunken demands, Midlake’s set doesn’t end with a Saints cover. Bastards! Their best songs end up being the ones with guitar solos.

“Postmodern blues!” barks Gabriel Piras, wooshing up to me during The Drones’ set. I was completely haggard by this point and I turned to him and said as much. He then replied “you think you’ve lost it, take a look at that guy.” I turned to my right and there’s a guy wearing nothing but a purple sequined g-string, dumping a VB down his neck. My inertia lifts. I join De Campo off-stage and polish off a red curry wrap.

De Campo and I bump into Julian Tovey and his girlfriend Kate. Like most everyone, they look overheated. The sonofabitch is drinking a Gordon Gin and Tonic in a can! What?! Where did you get that? we ask, explaining how we searched all over town for them. “I got the last batch,” he says. “Apparently they were all recalled after someone found metal shards in them.” Back at the camp we bless the inferior Smirnoff. Bren, Susie’s brother, vomits a biscuit he didn’t want in the first place. ‘I’ll try that with a biscuit’ becomes a new catchphrase.

We stumble back to see The Cornelius Sensuous Showcase live up to its title. Saturday night at Meredith is severely hedonistic. Guys chase around the spotlight on our flashlight like depraved members of the canine species. We're too tired for this. We share a quesadilla and a plate of revolting nachos, while some guy entertains a group of teenagers nearby with the creepiest puppet imaginable. At midnight, De Campo and I retreat to the cinema to watch ‘Faster Pussycat Kill Kill’. She is quickly snoring, while I go in and out of consciousness imagining earwigs wiggling their way into my loose clothes.