I always find it strange when the music press review a festival, particularly a multi-stage one, because the reviewer's experience canvary vastly from another person's depending on which acts they see andif their tent washes away and so on. I didn't read a review of last year's Meredith that covered anything past midnight and so missed someof the best acts (why do they pay these people?). I think 2009's Laneway Festival is going to polarise opinion very heavily - the troubled logistics of the event this year had some punters screaming and crying (all too literally) while some barely noticed.

I dig the idea of Laneway, an army of indie kids taking over the cityfor a day. The crowd were pretty cool, all things considered, and different from a lot of other festivals that I've been to lately. There was a distinct lack of fluoro, of camera phones held up like lighters at a rock concert, of idiots. I know that there was some violence near the end of the day between security and the punters when tensions reached their peak, but, as one of my friends mentioned near the end of the day, if the same chain of events had unfolded at something like the Future Music Festival, people would have been stabbed.

Things were looking rough from the start, with queues forming at the main stages because the council wouldn't let them start earlier, or so said Tame Impala, who started their set before the punters were able to get through the gate. Sadly, this wasn't the last time that ticket-holders had to listen to their favourite artists from the wrongside of the fence. It was the only time I noticed a set being cut short (which I've been told has been an issue in previous years as well) and luckily it was Tame Impala, who only have four songs anyway - they just played radio-length instead of acid trip-length and it went down swell. I've never really got into them much, although their cover of Blue Boy's Remember Me is pretty cool. They're still very young and I think a few more years will see them doing some amazing things.

I was excited about seeing Beaches again after being wowed by them a tAll Tomorrow's Parties but struggled to stay enthused once they started playing, as I could barely hear them. This was another problem that marred the proceedings, and it all seems to stem from the size of the festival this year - that the sound dispersed quickly amongst the city's buildings and the festival wasn't allowed to pump it any higher than 90db, so unless you were right up the front the sound quality suffered significantly. If you stood at the back of the Lonsdale Streetstage, it sounded like the band was underwater. That's not a joke about Beaches, who are still probably the best side project around - seriously, an all-girl psychedelic rock band with a recorder player? Way cool.

Starting times for each set were staggered across the stages, which was pretty cool, although it made reading the timetable a bit more difficult. I wandered over to Little Lonsdale Street and caught the second half of Still Flyin', who reminded me a fair bit of Architecturein Helsinki but with some African electric guitar. They definitely hold the record for highest number of people squeezed onto a stage for the day - I couldn't see half of the band because they were stuck behind the first half.

I stuck around to watch Born Ruffians on the recommendation of one of my mate Plow's friends, who said that they were on her list of bands to see before she died. They were really good, although apparently it's a longlist. They sounded kind of like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah crossed with Vampire Weekend, only with less-intelligible lyrics and better drumming. The crowd, already warmed up in several ways, were loving it - the drummer even had his own cheer squad.

I stayed there longer than I meant to and accidentally missed Port O'Brien, who were apparently pretty cool. I went and saw Jay Reatard, who I'd seen last Golden Plains and spent a while talking up to my friends, only to be disappointed when he came on at a pitiful volume. Oddly enough, punk rock is not terribly engaging when you can barely hear it. I got a bite to eat and went to get in early for Rusko, whichis where things went from mildly annoying to completely fucking retarded.

I lined up to get into the Red Bull stage twenty minutes before I needed to be in to see Rusko, but his set was finished by the time that I made it in there. In fact, the set after that had finished as well. In all, I spent two hours in the queue. It wasn't too bad in some ways. Most people were pretty relaxed about it, at least at first, and I gotto hear all of The Temper Trap and Stereolab. If we'd found out from the start what was going on - that the stage had a capacity limitation of 250 that had already been exceeded because VIPs were being admitted anyway - I probably would have given up a lot earlier. As it was, I was stubborn and ticked off so I stayed in line. When people sat down, they were told to stand and a security guard roamed along the line, telling people to step back (confusingly - how would this help? why not just let one person in?). When some people came past with a video camera to get crowd shots, one girl started screaming that they should record the queue, that we'd been ripped off - they didn't, I don't think that's what they wanted to show. Although we were eventually told that the venue was full, dozens of people with VIP passes continued to stroll past us. When we got out of that queue, we joined another queue, and then got into the actual venue, which was laughably empty. By this point I was too ticked off to actually enjoy it, downed a beer and left. It's the angriest I've been in a long time.

I met up with a few friends on the State Library lawn and listened to Architecture in Helsinki in the distance. It took me a while to chillout, relaxing and watching people mucking about on the lawn, chatting with people about how badly things had been going. VIPs and people with Access All Area passes were now being turned away and were even more pissed than the plebs. I saw a few people trying to bribe security tolet them in. A guy was walking around holding up a sign that said "Ripped off? Sign the petition at lanewayrefund@gmail.com" and was met with cheers from the crowd outside AIH. I'm not really satisfied that I got the full value of my ticket price, but I'm not holding my breath for a refund - how would they return the money of most of their punters? I would be surprised if they didn't make a bucket of money with the excessive number of people they let in this year (does anyone know the proper figure? I would have guessed around 8,000) so hopefullythey can get things right next year. I've read an article since that says that festival organisers were blaming "a minority's reckless behaviour" on the problems, which frankly is a crock of shit. They're lucky that there wasn't a riot.

When I went back to the Lonsdale St stage to see the Hold Steady, the bars weren't serving alcohol and all of the toilets were blocked off. I asked a clearly harrowed security guard, who suggested going to QV instead. Where was the planning for this? It was a problem during the day as well, with toilets being outside the stage limits so that patrons had to queue back up again if they wanted to go to the toilet. Unsurprisingly, at lot of people pissed in the laneways instead, putting the festy back in festival. There was a comfortable amount of room at Lonsdale St, while there was still an angry mob outside of Girltalk at that point. The organisers don't seem to have understood that having a number of stages doesn't mean that the punters will distribute themselves evenly across them. Underestimating the popularity of Architecture in Helsinki and Girltalk by putting them on the smaller stage has to be the biggest mistake of the festival. On the bright side, the Hold Steady probably won a lot of new fans just because people came to see them because they weren't able to get into the other stage.

I really like the Hold Steady but I had a lot of difficulty describing them to friends who didn't know what to expect. I ended up ramblingthrough useless things like 'Modest Mouse if they were more stylistically consistent', 'surf rock from New York with more lyrics' and so on. They agreed later that while these were all factual, they don't form a good description, so let me just say that they were great and the crowd actually had fun again. Some people went mental up the front which is to be expected with the amount of pent-up emotion from the day's frustration. They ran through their hits smoothly and I decided that their singer, Craig Finn, got the award for most excited person at the festival. Double points because he's so dorky.

As the lights went down at the main stage, me and the Plow legged it over to Roxanne's for one of the after parties, where people went wild to the Yacht Club DJ's. The perfect end to a troubled day, those guys can get any party going. I'd love to hear someone who saw both Girltalk and Yacht Club compare the two mashup DJs.

That's the thing with these festivals though, some people probably got into Little Lonsdale St early and stayed there without noticing that everything had gone to hell outside. There's a lot of things about Laneway that I liked and the bands I saw were great, but I mean it when I say that it's the worst festival I've been to, by no small margin. I've been told that the blokes who organise it are good eggs and will be miffed that it went south so dramatically, but I can't help but bear a grudge over paying them so much and receiving so much frustration in return. I don't think I'll be going back next year. Some of the problems, such as the capacity and noise restrictions, have been imposed on them by the council and are probably the result of the festival getting too big and attracting ill will. If they can get those things sorted then it won't be so bad, but if they don't reduce the number of tickets that are sold for next year then I don't see how the festival can survive.