Summadayze 2005 - 1.1.2005
Author: Justine Schuller
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
There's nothing better than bringing in the new year with some drinks, good friends and more sounds than you can poke a stick at. Seeing as I was a keen reviewer, I arrived at Summadayze quite early. By this time, the entry queue was already large but thanks to my 'media' pass I managed to scurry my way through the crowd saying 'Media! I have to take photos! Let me through'. We skipped most of the queue and walked in with some cheeky grins on our faces.
Walking into Summadayze at any time of the day is quite overwhelming. To look down onto the main stage with only a couple of handfuls of people dancing, knowing that in a couple of hours there would be more than 20,000 people running around within that small space, amazed me. We went down to the VIP balcony to get a closer look at the action and found that Andrew Padula was playing and although there was not a huge crowd yet, he was rocking it with those that had already entered their dance-off in the main arena. One thing I really appreciate about a DJ is how much they get involved in the tracks they are playing, and I was really impressed with how much Andrew was going off, loving every track and encouraging the crowd. By the end of his set the dancefloor had gone to full throttle and the crowd cheered. During the last few tracks Padula played the crowd could see De La Soul lingering around the stage and this prompted us all to get more excited. Being a Hip Hop fan myself and after seeing 'De La' three times in the last three years my excitement was growing as well.
'De La' launched onto the stage and I was very interested to observe as I always enjoy watching a Hip Hop act make such a diverse crowd move. They have so much crowd involvement with their antics it took the crowd quite sometime to remember how to 'Throw your hands in the air and wave them all around like you just don't care'. I was into it from the word go, but I could see some of the punters were a little bit unsure. By the end of the set, the crowd was remembering how to move to Hip Hop with a lot of hands in the air and chants coming from the crowd. By the time 'De La' finished I looked around to the hill to see the crowds had surely arrived - what was previously a vast empty lawn had become an area full of people settling themselves in for a big day.
We stopped by the Housedays stage and saw the start of Body Rockers. They had some very impressive electric guitar playing which got the crowd rocking and is definitely something I've never seen done before at one of these events. I stayed around for a little look and the thought crossed my mind that this would be the stage where all the 'beautiful people' would spend most of their day. After a quick trip back through the VIP area to top up our drinks (with the drinkcards which make drinking so much easier at Summadayze), we trecked back onto the balcony on the main stage to listen to the end of Sean Quinn, followed by one of my favourites, Adam Freeland. As expected, he rocked the crowd like I knew he would with some old fav's and new ones alike. I never have a disappointing moment when Freeland plays.
By the time Freeland finished, the party was in full swing and we were heading into the late afternoon. To mix it up a little, we pushed our way through the crowds to get up to the Trance stage to listen to a bit of Master Kaos. The trance groupies were going crazy. I was enjoying the set, but decided it would be best if I went back down to the VIP room to escape the crowds, as it was virtually impossible to move around the trance area or any other area for that matter.
Back in the VIP room, we got a glimpse of DMC champions J-Red and Selekt. They mixed it up with an interesting display of turntablism and played some great old school Hip Hop. This is always a real treat in the VI Tags