V FESTIVAL

When someone told me that the Smashing Pumpkins were coming to Perth in the very near future I almost fell off my chair. Well, I was about three glasses of wine into the evening so it wasn't entirely my fault.

The night before was my last shift at the Newport and we went out after, so I overslept and mildly freaked out... Caught the bus into Perth which was painfully slow but made it just in time for Modest Mouse. We were at the Esplanade, with the skyscrapers in the background and the river in front, but all this was hidden by fences and who wants to stare at water while Modest Mouse is on?

They were good but I only knew one song. Cory, my boss, went off on a drink run and we didn't see him again until three hours later. Our Newport bartenders group slowly got dissolved in the crowd and of course, I was with the two rowdiest boys of the lot. We moved over to That Stage to watch Queens of the Stone Age who were brilliant, for the whole concert I was in between Lee and Dave, who were both holding on to my shoulders. But not to protect me from the crowd, it was so they had something stable to hold on to while jumping around.

A reviewer wrote later that "Queens of the Stone Age at V Fest was like doing a line of coke off a stripper's ass after drinking light beers with your dad all day."

The crowd moved to This Stage for Duran Duran, but Dave and I quickly went back to That Stage for the imminent arrival of Billy Corgan and his lot. The crowd was very excited and screamed whenever a roadie shuffled onstage. We miraculously found Cory at this point who was rather inebriated, having consumed all the drinks he went out to get for us.

The Pumpkins arrived. "You know what, Perth? I f***in' hate disco."

And they're off, playing all of their classics and lots of new, experimental stuff. They were amazing! And Billy Corgan was really friendly with the crowd too. Johnny Chamberlain was there, along with two new ones including a girl bassist in a tutu to replace D'Arcy. Billy was wearing a long skirt make of squares of metal. He threw out his pick, and Cory caught it (how?)!

Since it was a Sunday night, in Australia, we were all herded out by 12, so we continued the amazing night at Jake's apartment. I think only two people made it to work the next day.