West Beach Festival '09 - Unprecedented levels of Awesomeness

Man - I'm trying to write about all this after a MASSIVE three days of sun and sugar. Disneyland, The Festival - It's now Tuesday morning and still feel pretty wrecked. So we'll see how we go. What a 3 days though. It was fun. TO THE EXTREME!!

For once I didn't get up before sunrise. Perhaps I've turned the Jetlag corner? We had a bit od time before the festival started. While Sherry got ready for the day we thought about what we should do in the morning and I looked adt the band line-up adn sneak peaked their sound on Itunes to get an idea of who we should see. G-Love and Special Sauce sounded cool. Kind of mellow like a cross between Ben Harper and Ash Grunwald. Other stuff that i thought would be worth checking out were - Pacfic Dub, The Bravery and The Kicks. Ben Harper was on last and that was a given. After previewing G.Love and Special Sauce i decided to download the 'Lemonade' album. So we had a bit of a listen to that before we headed down. The Kicks kicked off at 2.00 pm so we had a bit of time. Going out for breakfast was the plan, but where to go with a car for a change? We could have headed anywhere. But time started slipping away and Cajun Kitchen which Sherry raved about became the plan.

The place is really popular with the locals as well as tourists (maybe?), and we had to put our names down and wait. Apparantly it is always flat knacker so i kicked my impatience to the curb as we sat and waited. I played a bit of Stones and Bones while we waited (gee that Vault spit sucks because the ball seems to gravitate to the left gutter lane and theres nothing you can do. Anyway, i then had a quick squiz at the menu and then Sherry saw someone she knew, Alex! Alex is one of Janet's sons and he was there with his fiance Sarah who I think looked like Charlotte from Sex And The City, but Sherry thought she looked like Robin from How I met your Mother. Sherry also thought that Putty from the Soarin over Califrornia ride was Big from Sex and the City so I can't trust anything she says when it comes to celebrities. We managed to get a a table together which was cool. We had a few laughs and talked about some Americann/Australian differentiation as well as getting good tips in regards to what to eat and where to go around Santa Barbara. Alex recommended the Cornbread as a side and I defenitely agree with his recommendation. We had good laughs and a good breakfast. Scrambled eggs over here are sick. They are like our omelettes but its like they cant be bothered making it ncie so they jsut stir it up and make it scambled. I had a Donny's Special. Super tasty. It was nice and strange and new to have an actual convesation with them. Like all I had really experienced before this was general banter with other basketballl lovers, some loose NFL talk, or the whole 'I'm from Australia' talk, or just general customer service talk at shops or restaurants. We then headed back and gor ready for the West Beach Festival. I thought I'd better eat and drink something healthy before i left so i decided on a beer and the left over rib's we got yesterday from Costco. They were still good.

We caught the trolley down State Street. Befoer we got on some homelss woman thought I was staring at her so she staretd pulling faces. The festival was right on the beach - on the sand. It was pretty quiet in their early on, so we did a quick surveyance of the area adn then walked up and watched the end of the Kicks. They were playing a more reggae sound then i expected after having listened to them on itunes a bit. At the end they pulled up a couple of people from the crowd and i think the guy proposed on stage.

Deep Blue Sea!! A SHARK ATE ME!!!!

After the Kicks concluded, out came Billy Bob Busttletoss or whatever with his white cowboy hat to rev up the crowd for the next act, Still Time. Haha - my god he sounded over the top. Still Time came out and they were pretty damn good. It was qhat i call 'Classic Yank Rock'. And they did rock, the crowd got into them and the atmosphere really started to come alive. We were sitting in the general area out the front of Bob's Stage. Everyoen around us was sitting down and chilling - getting a tan, relaxing with some really pumping music going on about 30 metres away. Plenty of people were dancing closer to the stage.

Pacific Dub came on after Still Time and they just didnt sound good from where we were sitting. All we could here were drums. Not very reggae if you ask me. So we thought we'd head back hoem to get something to eat, have a few drinks and get some warmer clothes for the rest of the night. As we headed back out we passed by the dance tent and the music that DJ Bones was playing was that song that i remember the guys from car sound at JB playing heaps. I wouldnt mind knowing what that song is - so many memories with that song now - JB and the music Festivcal at Santa Barbara. Outside the venue there were a couple of girls dancing near the fence to the music by themselves. They were going at it pretty hard.

Heading home turned out to be a pretty bad move. It took 40 minutes to get home and we had to be back within 80 minutes. So Sherry had a beer, I slammed down 2 scotches and cooked up some snags and onion on the stove. Within 40 minues we were back out on a mission to get back to the beach for G Love and Special Sauce which started at 6pm. On the trolley ride down we talked to a guy named Scott who had lived in Australia for 12 motnhs as a rowing coach. He had lived in Sale of all places. He was going down to volunteer at the first aid tent for a while and he was then free to see who he wanted. He had just gotgten a job at the local college as teh rowing coach here. What a plum gig.

Well we got there in time. From then on the night reached unprecedented levels of awesomeness. I said to Sherry 'let's get some beers' - so we headed into the beer drinking section which was more in front of the Bashment stage but still had a good view of Bob's Stage. We had to flash our I.D's to get in to the 'Wet Area', and the security guys looked at our foreign licenses and had to get approval from another guard to let us in. Lucky we looked over 21 by a bit otherwise it may have been a case of 'Denied'. We lined up at a cue to get some beers and it seemed easy as because before to long we were at the front. i asked the girl for '2 beers' and she was totallyn thrown. Then she said 'Oh you have an accent! I was wondering what you were asking when you said 2 beers and i was like no we dont have that. But now i get it. hahah she was cool. Had a good laugh with her. Then she told us wew had to go and buy beer tickets. So we went and bought those and then tried again. I walked up to her again and said 'Gooogoody moogidy bliggidy blah'. 'And then we got some beers - I had a Newcastle which may become my beer of choice. We then went and got a good spot and watched G.Love and Special Sauce.

My god - The most fun I had had in a long time. The sun was going down. The palm trees out the back, the colours in the sky, the sweet tunes, all the cool people around us. Just mad. Some guy who looked like Adam Sandler came past and we did the whole 'Yeah!!' High 5 stylings. Then I talked to a dude with a yellow t-shirt and bowler hat who shared some love with me. G. Love simply rocked out and so did we. All around us there were people just getting loose, everyone was really happy. He played guitar, sung hip-hop and also had a a harmonica going sometimes. One song which was his love song he said was called 'Booty Call'.

After that came some cool more Mexican style music by 'Rey Fresco'. That was cool just to chill and listen to. The sun was well and truly going down. These guys were playing on the Bashment stage so we had a really good view. Sherry started talking to some 'Butch chick' as she called her who was from the Navy. She was throwing popcorn at people. Ben Harper then took his time coming on. His music was awesome, but the only problem was it was new stuff that no one knew and he seemed really distant, like he the gig and the setting was just too big for his liking. I think he's just got the blues.

We left about 3/4's of the way through, passing by the dance tent which was just going nuts. Would have been nice to still ahve the enrgy to go there, but we had a massive walk all the way to Valerio St ahead of us. On the way back up some drunk dudes were getting a ride on those tricyle taxis which were all lit up with cool blue neon lights. That was funny to see. We got home after about a 70 minute walk i reckon and it was almost 11pm. We were both beat adn had to be up by around 6 the following morning to get to Disneyland by a decent time. But damn. What a night, Disneyland would have to be pretty good to even come close to matching this. The music, the beach, the people and the atmosphere had just created one of the most memorable and special days in the historyness.