Footage of the Killers performing Human last night at V Festival

There was no raining on thousands V Festival concert goers parade yesterday at Melbourne Showgrounds. Despite Friday’s all day downpours, the skies remained fine whilst international acts like Kaiser Chiefs and the Killers took to the stage. V Festival is a recent addition to the summer music festival scene in Australia catering to a rather mixed demographic of rock, pop and a little bit in between.

Wei and I, and everyone else hopped on the express train to the Showgrounds and were greeted with long lines at bag check so we made it a little late to Duffy’s set. Duffy is a 24-year-old Welsh jazz singer whose recent hits Mercy and Rain On Your Parade have been on high rotation on commercial radio. Her sultry voice combined with her overall blonde Brigitte Bardot looks perhaps attracted a lot of the males to her set. Either way her softer ballads were ill-fitted to a festival crowd and would be more suited to a nightclub or lounge. In her black tank top and denim shorts, Duffy teetered around the stage, singing mostly side on to the audience. Her ballads like Stepping Stone, Warwick Avenue led her to confess that she wasn’t “relationship obsessed” but found it more compelling to sing about than political issues. She does have an amazing voice live and I would love to see her play in a more subdued setting with an orchestra.

The somewhat random surprise hit of the V Festival was Vanilla Ice. V Festival was determined to break down the stereotype of Vanilla Ice being an uncool one hit wonder and took him to the Virgin Mobile stage at all the concerts. Most of the fans were admittedly embarrassed to be watching Vanilla Ice, but once he hit the stage he won the crowd over with his rapping and short mixes. When he performed Ice Ice Baby, the crowd was dancing and singing at the top of their lungs. What embarrassment?

The Kaiser Chiefs, in the opportune playing period right before the Killers, revved up the crowd with old favourites like Ruby and I Predict a Riot. Frontman Ricky Wilson stood on the railing, held up by a security guard grabbing the back of his jeans and seemed to be on the cusp of crowd surfing. He taunted the audience several times and briskly climbed the ten metre tall scaffolding to get a good look at the crowd. The Kaiser Chiefs set consisted of songs from Off With Their Heads and favourites like Never Miss a Beat and finished off with a rendition of Mark Ronson’s Oh My God. An insider reference to Ronson’s influence on the latest album perhaps? Interestingly they didn’t play Addicted to Drugs – hopefully not for censorship reasons at a festival…

By the time the Killers hit the stage at 8.15pm the crowd was impatient and in high anticipation. Brandon Flowers and the rest of the band delivered a great set, going from song to song without a break and giving the audience what they wanted. Flowers is a suave performer, wearing an-all black suit and waistcoat, he strutted around the stage confidently. He seemed less like the arrogant opinionated muso that the media often plays him out to be. Flowers said few words although confessed that we was having a much better time than the V Festival in Sydney! Crowd favourites included Human, Bones, Mr Brightside and the encore of When You Were Young and Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.

My absolutely favourite moment at an outdoor music festival like V is when an amazing band is onstage at dusk and the sun sets to their performance – in this case Kaiser Chiefs and I Predict a Riot.