Sydney's first V Festival

V has been on for more than a decade back home, so it's a bit odd to have never gone in the UK, and to make it to the first one in Australia. Elissa was working with Australian Red Cross, so I managed to blag a free ticket for a big three-stage outdoor concert in Centennial Park. The lineup included Beck, The Pixies, The Pet Shop Boys, Jarvis Cocker, Soulwax, Gnarls Barkley... practically no Australian music, but lots of good imported stuff.

I'm not going to bother reviewing the music, except to say Beck was still doing his puppet show thing, and the Pixies did an entirely unpretentious four-people-on-a-stage-with-some-lights thing, and just relied on some excellent songs and a crowd who had waited nearly two decades to see them in Australia (this was only their fourth show in Australia - they'd never played here before this month).

Generally though, the weather was fantastic, the people I met in the crowd, or friends of Elissa, or colleagues at Red Cross, were very friendly and encouraging, and everything was pretty cool. I even managed to blag a VIP pass, which just got me into a bar with a marginally shorter queue, and a larger supply of beer. Good fun.