So Wednesday night I was fortunate enough to be given a couple of tickets for The Happening art show, movie premiere and live music at The Espy. As I was to find out, I’m glad I didn’t have to buy a ticket as it wasn’t worth the $45 it would have cost. That’s not to say the photography (from the likes of Ryan Heywood, Dane Peterson and Steve Sherman) and the artwork (Andy Davis with a whole wall of others) wasn’t of top quality. The music I saw was pretty good too, although mellow given that it was acoustic guitar sets from Neil Halstead and Matt Costa respectively.

So what am I complaining about you ask? Well myself and my two accompanying friends drove an hour and a half to catch, what we were told, would be a midnight showing of Woodshed Films latest movie 180 South. Not knowing what time the event started, as there were no times on the website or flyers or press release, we arrived a little after 9:30 and caught all of Neil Halsted’s set. He had some technical problems that caused him to cut a song or two short, but I found it a bit odd that he played with George Greenough classic 1973 film ‘Crystal Voyager‘ playing idly in the background. As good as Neil was, for an evening that promoted itself as ‘spreading surf culture around the world’ I would think that many in the audience deserve to see one of Australian’s most successful surf films on it’s own. Especially given the 20 odd minute Pink Floyd backed ending. At least that’s what I came to see. I could deal with this because I’ve already seen that film. What I really came for was the Melbourne premiere of 180 South, a film that follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia (Yvon would later name his company after the country).

However Matt Costa was now on stage. Thankfully he wasn’t accompanied by a surf movie. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Matt. I recognized some of his songs from surf films I had seen, but was pleasantly surprised with his show. He actually unplugged and sang the last two songs down in crowd, which was rad considering it was close to 1am at this stage and only 30 or so people were left. When Matt had finished his acapella and took his bow, I was sure it was time for 180 South. After-all, I was told it was playing at midnight. Nope, up next was Emmett Malloy or Woodshed Film’s latest, ‘Under Great White Northern Lights‘. A tour documentary following The White Stripes through Canada in 2007. A great documentary I’m sure, but at 1am and work in the morning, I couldn’t watch all 92 minutes of it. I was here to see a surf movie. I’d been standing up for over 3 hours listening to mellow music in a room with no more than 80 people in it. I’d had enough, I went and asked the girls at the ticket booth when 180 South would be playing. They broke my heart, it was only a ‘preview’ and it had played first at 7pm. Bullshit, I got in the car and drove the hour and a half back to the Mornington Peninsula.

I can certainly appreciate the talented artists, musicians and people behind The Happening. From all accounts the Sydney show was fantastic with lots of people in attendance. However, sometimes that doesn’t always translate to Melbourne. On almost any given night there are a handful of gallery openings and shows going on around the city. All are free and generous with beer and artistic merit and talent. And they’re not competing with The Ripcurl Pro going on in Bells. It seems to me that the organizers of The Happening really could have benefited from not trying to jam so many different mediums into one evening. I left disappointed not because the artwork wasn’t good, or the msuic, but because I’d been promised so much and there simply wasn’t enough time to fit it all in. I struggled to recognize a surfer in the small crowd, and once Matt Costa had finished, everyone left. So much for a night of ‘celebration of surf culture and community’. Next time guys, leave the surfing off the bill, The Happening clearly wasn’t meant for us.