Ben Lee Bites

Well the weekend has again been and gone. I know you're all absolutely bursting to hear about what happened. You know you are...

On Friday evening , after finishing work at about 6.30 , Brother Brett met me for a beer or two before we were to head down to the Botanic Gardens for the Ben Lee and Missy Higgins concert.
I have decided that if I am ever forced to go into the city for a bevvie again ( I have been actively avoiding it for the past two years) the time to go is definitely before dark on a Friday afternoon. No wankers , no teenagers and no pissed and aggro a.j.'s or footballers.

After some fortifying beverages and a bit of a chat ( the first one I believe I have had with my bro, sans Matilda for a long long time) we headed down to the Gardens to get ready to groove the night away.

The first dissapointment was the stupendously long queue. "The queue?!" I hear you shout in alarm "There are no queues in Darwin - It's Darwin for christs sake- and you are going to see a couple of quasi independent Australian singer songwriters - It's not Barnsie or The Angels!..."
Well , I can assure you that is exactly what I was thinking. However my eyes did not decieve me and we did indeed have to queue for close to 40 mins to even get in the gate.

The queue was a pretty good indicator of what we were to find inside. The place was packed. Jam packed. I have never seen anything like it at a Darwin venue before. A sea of blankets, hippies, camp chairs , teenagers , grandmas , yuppies, prams and discarded shoes was what we had to cross in order to to get to a clear spot behind the sound tent ( The only spot I could envisge us occupying if we were to prevent me from having some kind of agrophobic panic attack)After being abused by some old coot who though Brett was being a cheeky whippersnapper by trying to squeeze past him and his wife's fat asses, we finally reached our destination. Upon arrival, the realisation dawned on us that there was no way we going to be able to obtain a beer. (Beer Tent queue even scarier than entry queue) Resigned to that sad fact we took a seat on the wet lawn , in a position where the entire stage was blocked by the combination of the sound tent in front of us and the gaggle of teenage girls hanging from it (since when did dorky Ben Lee become some sort of Heart throb ) and we waited for the good times to roll. Wacky frickin doo..




Here we are at the concert - looking like we are on Ecstasy - which most unfortunately we weren't. It certainly would have improved the experience.

Ben Lee finally took the stage - as you may or may not be aware I am a pretty big Ben Lee fan. Even in the days when he was a precocious teenage twat. I have never had the chance to see him live (mainly I guess due to him living in the US for the last million years)
Well basically, little Ben sucked.
It's not that he was out of tune, or the band were lame or that he acted like a dismissive arrogant prat (Hello Tim Rogers), he was just boring. Every song was identical to the recordings on the albums, he could of been lip synching if it wasn't for the sacharrine psuedo spiritual comments between verses telling us all to love one another.
We lasted through the set , chain smoking and pissing off the herbal yuppies that were seated next to us. It wasn't a hard decision to take off across the road to the Casino for a pee and refreshing alcoholic bevvie in airconditioned comfort.

The night wasn't a complete loss - Brett won $250 from $10 on the pokies, and I got pleasantly squiffy while watching crazy people gamble their life savings away.

Apparently Missy Higgins rocked , but somehow I am finding that pretty hard to believe.