Big Pineapple Festival, Nambour QLD - 27/5/2017

Big Pineapple Fest, every man and his dog from the Sunny Coast and surrounds were there. You could spend the whole day people watching and leave satisfied, the diversity of the crowd is unlike many others and the fashion is pretty questionable. But there was an overwhelming common feel, you knew that every single person was there for bloody good times to see bloody good Aussie bands.
 
We walked into the festival and past the pineapple express stage, got to catch some of Gold Member, so lucky, these dudes know how its done. Their sick tunes would make anyone groove.
 
We began our day at the Sea Sheppard Stage, with the hella funky sounds of Ocean Alley, could literally have not started any better. Personally, I think the guys could have been given a later set time, maybe 6.10pm for instance, when The Veronicas were on. But plenty of keen punters rocked up early, and loose, to get looser in the psychedelic reggae cascade of OA. I looked around during ‘Lemonworld’ and most of the crowd was just gazing in awe. Closing with ‘Yellow Mellow’ we couldn’t have chosen a better first set, and totally set the bench mark for some more damn good performances. 

We caught the end of Bootleg Rascal at the Pineapple Express stage, they were joined by Gold Member and Boo Seeka for ‘Asleep in the Machine’. Jack River was next, she is a babe, and has the most wonderful voice and stage presence. She makes you feel happy. ‘Talk Like That’ is melodic, and her cover of ‘Cigarettes After Sex – Hurt You Baby’ encouraged the crowd to sing along.
 
DZ Deathrays at the Sea Sheppard were probably the most high intensity set we had seen, though I’m sure Northlane was just as hectic. The DZ mosh was absolutely wild, in true DZ fan form.  I think every single person in that crowd lost their shit in ‘Gina Works at Hearts’ and it was so damn good to see.
 
We walked back over Mt Everest and past the iconic ferris wheel (except we’re not at Coachella) I’ll assume, is the meeting point for every tripper that can’t find their mates, and is hoping their mate had the same idea as them. We caught the end of Boo Seeka back at Pineapple Express, ‘Deception Bay’ was the closer and the crowd was grooving in unison, those dudes have some serious moves. 

The Veronicas on the main stage, took us back, as far as the temperature gauge was getting, but there was some serious belting out of lyrics “cause she’s everything, everything, I’m not” (don’t act like you don’t know it), and you couldn’t help feel a small inkling of nostalgia. But I wished I gave in to the hill and caught some of City Calm Down, which marks my only regret of the day.
 
Cloud Control at the Wild Child stage were fucking amazing. And become the highlight at this point, stay tuned, they have so many bangers and make you dance in a weird kind of head bopping way especially in ‘there’s nothing in the water we cant fight’.
 
Safia, Sea Sheppard Stage, overtake Cloud Control as highlight of the day, maybe on parr. ‘Listen to Soul, Listen to Blues’ was a huge sing-along. ‘Over you’ and ‘Make Them Wheels Roll’, every person in the unsurprisingly huge crowd was boogying, hard.
 
The night ended with Birds of Tokyo and then Peking Duk at the main stages. Birds of Tokyo was a bit too mellow that late at night, guess you got to build the energy levels back up for Peking Duk, but be careful not to die in the ass listening to ‘plans’ like I did, at this point I probably should have again braved the hill and spent some time at the Avant Garden stage.
 
Big Pineapple Fest, you did it again, fucking brilliant, see ya next year. Let’s ditch The Veronica’s for 2018 though, please.
 
Reviewers: Lori Hogan + Kelsea Hogan