BASSINTHEGRASS

BASSINTHEGRASS, this SATURDAY from 11am at Gardens Amphitheatre

BASSINTHEGRASS is back again in 2010.

This year’s line up boasts awesome Darwin bands like Sweet Amber, DJ Fish, Semishgure, Leigh Chisholm, the winner of the battle of the school bands Sleeve Heads.  Big name acts like Silverchair, Empire Of The Sun, Hilltop Hoods, Shortstack, Jessica Mauboy, Children Collide, Horrorshow and Redcoats are also playing.  I think the line up isn’t as good as it could be this year; they could have chosen a band other than Hilltop Hoods because they have played so many times at BASS.

There has been lots of controversy on facebook about Shortstack playing BASS this year.  Groups like “don’t bring Shortstack to BASSINTHEGRASS” and “If Shortstack come to BASSINTHEGRASS we’ll bottle them,” while amusing could pose problems in the Darwin music scene.  Although I think that this is funny, as a musician myself I would not like the idea of people throwing bottles at me while on stage.  This can also cause OH&S problems such as water on stage (a slipping hazard); also with so much electrical equipment on the stage someone will be at high risk of getting electrocuted.  Because of this there have been rumours going around that there will not be any bottled water this year, these accusations are false.  There will, as always, be free bottled water but you are not aloud to bring bottles inside with you.  The producers of the show have also threatened, in years past, to shut down the festival.  This would be very bad, because that means no more really good music festivals in Darwin (other than The BIG GIG of course).  Please if you don’t want to listen to any band playing then you can bring an iPod OR if you’re over 18 then you can leave and come back after they finish their set.

There’s an encouraging amount of new music on the bill this year and I’m really excited about Melbourne band Redcoats.  They were picked up on Triple J Unearthed last year and have had a growing fan base ever since.  I was lucky enough to have a chat with their singer Emilio Mercuri last week and now I’m even more excited about what they will bring to the concert.

GRIND: “Hey Emilio, how are you mate?”
“Yeah, good mate.”
GRIND: “You’re playing at bass in the grass next Saturday, how are you guys looking forward to that?”
“Ah, mate we’re very excited about it, we’re just tailoring the set to hopefully bring something different to the day. Looking forward to seeing Darwin and playing to a lot of new people.”
GRIND: “Sounds great, I can’t wait to see you play, I’ve heard some of your music on Triple J Unearthed and it’s great.”
“You enjoyed it?”
GRIND: “Yeah it was… different”
“Yeah well, you know that’s the thing, that’s what we’re hopefully going to add to the bill, there’s a bit of diversity.  Yeah, like I said, we are really looking forward to it”
GRIND: “You released your first EP in September last year, how’d that go for you?”
“Mate it’s done really well for us, it’s really circulated quite significantly through the industry, and it’s helping to set us up quite well to do our album.  So it’s really established a good working team for us anyhow.”
GRIND: “You got you new guitarist in February last and you hit the road straight after that, how’d that go?”
“Yeah, no it went really well.  He came from a band called “The Escape Committee” and was playing quite significantly across town for a number of years, and as soon as he came in it was just kind of the fourth part of the square and it all just started moving a lot quicker and really working well and still to this day it’s still working.”
GRIND: “You are releasing your new LP do you know when it might creep out?”
“Well we’re writing our debut LP which is a full length album, and we’re hoping to record towards the end of this year, so right now we’re just in the writing process and it’s really shaping up well so you should be able to see it the start of next year.”
GRIND: “That’s honestly great and I’m differently going to buy your EP if I can find it.”
“Yeah, fantastic man! We’ll show you a few of the new ones on Saturday.”
GRIND: “Sweet, I’ll see you then man, have a good one”
“You too man take care,”

You should go, the gig will be fun and no doubt the bands will put on a great show.

Check out the BASSINTHEGRASS website HERE