The problem was - quite literally - everything else. To get a beer, you had to queue to buy beer tokens, queue to enter the beer-drinking enclosure, and queue to redeem your tokens. Once you got your beer, you realised you couldn't actually see the stage. And alcohol supplies ran dry woefully early, sparking a near-riot. I still have $80 worth of useless beer stubs in a drawer somewhere.
To make matters worse, it drizzled all afternoon and into the night. There were precious few toilets, so everyone started peeing off the edge of a surrounding cliff. Problem is, trying to balance on a precipice when you're drunk and wearing jandals is kinda dangerous. The cries for help from people who had fallen into the urine-soaked ravine below still haunt my dreams.
The icing on the cake? We left early, and on our way out discovered a security guard who'd slipped on grass into a pothole and broken his ankle. As we consoled him and called for an ambulance, one thought crossed my mind: "I bet this is his last New Year's festival too."
Angelina Boyd says:
It's not a particularly attractive poster. It's purple and orange, and yells: "Exponents, Pash and Bic Runga, Pauanui Rec Centre, Dec 27th 1996".
Actually I think my partner wants me to throw it out. But that poster is an institution in itself. It marks the beginning of my initiation into one of the greatest parts of the New Zealand summer - tour season.
I remember walking into that Rec Centre at 16, thinking "who's this Bic Runga guy?", nabbing a spot right in the front, and getting caught in my first, if rather lame moshpit. We snuck backstage, high-fived the bands, nicked a couple of Lion Reds, grabbed a tour poster off the wall and almost made it back by curfew.
The summer tour is an incredible ritual for Kiwis, where the bands, often the highlight, sometimes simply end up being the soundtrack to events that unfold.
Like watching that crazy guy who climbed on to the roof at the Kora gig at Mangawhai Tavern one year. Security muscled him out but he climbed back over the fence and ended up on the stage while the band played. I bet he has a story to tell about that night. I wonder what ever happened to him?
Summer tours aren't just the old "catching a band at your local". It's the process of working out whose car you'll take to drive a bunch of you to that seaside town hotel, the location being as much a part of it as the bands themselves. And making sure that one friend is actually facing the stage, not singing all the wrong words with great fervour to the crowd instead.
The bands, over subsequent summers, have become a bunch of photos taken on disposable cameras, still on my kitchen wall - if a little spattered with stir-fry sauce. I look at them when I cook dinner and think about which Chuck Taylors are gig-worthy for this summer's showdown. I'm still on that train, and not planning on getting off and stopping anytime soon.
Angelina Boyd hosts Hauraki mornings, 9am to 1pm weekdays.
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