What is the best concert you have been to?
The best concert I have ever been to was Narara Music Festival, on the Central Coast of NSW, at the end of January 1984.
It had a great line-up. INXS. Mondo Rock. Sandii & the Sunsetz. Simple Minds. The Pretenders. Talking Heads. Eurythmics. Cold Chisel. Australian Crawl. Models were there too, with James Valentine playing saxophone.
On paper, it should have worked.
But festivals are not held on paper.
They are held in paddocks, in weather, with ticket sales, sound systems, toilets, tents, volunteers, and mud. And this one did not really work.
The numbers were down on the previous year. The line-up was impressive, but perhaps too mixed to hold the crowd together. Then the rain came.
On Sunday night it poured. We were volunteering in the coffee tent, which quickly became a shelter. People came in soaked and cold. At one point a man collapsed from his chair and landed head down in the mud. We dragged him to safety so he would not suffocate.
By Monday morning the site looked like a flood zone. Tents had collapsed. People were drenched. Everyone packed up early and went home. Narara was never held again.
So, in one sense, it failed.
But it was still the most successful concert of my life.
A few weeks before the festival, I had met a girl. I asked a couple of people if they wanted to come to Narara. Only she could come.
Over that wet, chaotic weekend, we got together.
Just under three years later, we were married.
So when people ask me about the best concert I have ever been to, I can talk about the bands. I can talk about the rain, the mud, the coffee tent, and the man we pulled to safety.
But that is not really the answer.
The answer is that a failed festival became the place where our life together began.
The festival did not last. The tents came down. The mud dried. The crowds went home.
But something began there that has lasted more than forty years.
What can I say?
It was the festival that failed. And it changed my life forever.
The Afterword 
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