Sunday, March 02, 2008

Main Divide Concert - Pegasus Bay Winery

Warren here, coerced in to contributing as usual!!

Main Divide Concert - Pegasus Bay Winery

We had been waiting for the Main Divide for a while, a small open air music festival in the grounds of Pegasus Bay winery. Everything was set for a great day and if the drought this summer was anything to go by we were in for a clear blue sky day listening to local bands in the grounds of a great winery. Perfect.


A few days before and the forecasts of big rain and storms AT the weekend get more frequent.

Bugger!

By the Friday night forecast it has downgraded to light rain clearing by lunch :)

Saturday comes and the sky is grey as far as the eye can see, a long distance when you live on the Canterbury plains. There is slight but consistent drizzle, not to worry it is due to clear soon.

We are both dragging our feet, the prospect of sitting in the mud in the rain does not appeal too much. We have not heard much of the bands on the list so its not that big a loss to write off the day. The festival started at mid-day, we finally get out the house about 2pm and set off on the one hour drive to the winery. So much for the rain stopping at lunch time.

We had been to Pegasus Bay winery before for an evening meal but I had forgotten that their grounds feature a natural amphitheatre. The concave steep bank with a good 35 degree slope levels to a flat with enough space for a stage and a crowd.

We walk down the path at the side of the hill, walk past the front of the stage on the flat as a female "singer songwriter" finished her set. The hill in front of the stage was full but it was clearer at the sides.

We grab a spot off to one side but still with a view of the stage. We are only really interested in two bands - Phoenix Foundation and Kora. We have not heard anything by anyone else. We have only heard one or two tracks by the Phoenix Foundation but liked them and a friend bought me the Kora CD a while back.

I grabbed two large alcoholic ginger beers from the beer tent as Phoenix set up. I say beer tent but the choice was bottles of red or white wine, a ginger beer and one other beer. You could even get real wine glasses (yes, GLASS!).


Phoenix Foundation played a great set, good enough that you forgot the rain that was on-off all the way through the afternoon. By now the hill was getting more slippy and we watched a young woman, wine glass in hand, trip and roll head-over-heels once down the hill. As she stood up, looking very embarrassed, she realised she had not spilt a single drop of wine and received a round of applause from onlookers.

As Kora hit the stage the rain was more constant but we were having a great time so stuck it out as we knew Kora were on next. I get the feeling that everyone had been waiting for them to hit the stage because they were the only band to really fight through the rain to get people down to the stage.

They were worth the trip and being sat in the rain for 4 hours!

They sounded so good live and played with so much energy you could see them light up the main stage at a big festival like Glastonbury.

We left as Kora finished, the rain had soaked us through to that point you could no longer ignore it and that "wet-through chill" was starting to kick in. Perfect timing as that was the last of the bands, it was DJs from then on. As we left the venue, the field used for parking was starting to swamp up and we were one of the first cars to leave. There would be tears before the last car left.

A great low key real Kiwi festival in a wonderful setting. Ready for next years bash :)

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