I worked my first concert with Dune Rats on the 26th of July, 2013 at Splendour In The Grass. It was the first year that the festival was being held at it’s new site in Yelgun. The amphitheatre stage wasn’t in existence yet - we still had the Super Top stage from the old Belongil Fields days.
I’d never met them before, and I’d never really heard their music, outside of Red Light Green Light and Pogo on the rare occasion I listened to JJJ.
I had been given Danny’s phone number from their manager Matty Woo, and was told to look after them and make sure everything went smoothly.
It was the first day of the festival and the band was arriving in a Wicked campervan with a shit load of pot. They were late and both Matty and I were worried that we couldn’t get on to them. Eventually Matty got through and it turned out they were also a bit worried, however more so because of the sniffer dogs going through the cars up ahead of them.
Matty and I got their gear to the stage and I got a stage plot from the stage manager before I started setting up everything, still never having met the band.
Brett’s cream coloured P-Bass was covered in stickers, Danny’s white Jaguar had every knob and button gaffer taped down and BC’s snare was covered in blood, beer and didn’t look like it had seen a new head in it’s life. His crash cymbal had a small crack and his ride had about 1/4 of it ground out, presumably also because it was cracked at some point.
I set everything up on risers and got ready to push on to the stage, however I still had no idea where the band was. After quite a few “where the fuck is your band”s from the stage manager, they arrived in a fluster and to my surprise Brett was with them. We went to uni together and I didn’t realise he was playing with Dune Rats.
They were all completely blown away that everything had been set up for them and was ready to go. They’d been busy doing the all important task of inflating beach balls. Even from day one they’ve insisted on having inflatable shit all over the stage.
I recall Danny saying “we don’t have enough songs to play for 40 minutes so we’ve got this shit cover of Blister In The Sun”.
At 1:20PM they started the show off with Pogo, then they fit Blister In The Sun in somewhere around the middle and slammed home with Red Light Green Light. Throughout the set, beach balls flew, people crowd surfed in inflatable boats, on inflatable animals and the crowd crammed in tight, filling the whole tent. When they finished at 2PM, BC ran off stage and vomited over the deck before coming up grinning from ear to ear.
Matty and the band gave me a t-shirt and a “Smile” EP as payment and that was that.
Needless to say I was captivated by the chaos, swept up by the infectious fun, loveable kindness and caring friendship, and have since stayed on for another 197 shows in 17 countries across 4 continents, and I sure as hell wouldn’t change a single thing.