Ever since the 20th Big Day Out lineup hit the internet and radio, both Australia and New Zealand felt cheated due to its lacklustre lineup in comparison to both the rival festivals and past Big Day Outs. Even though the announced artists included Kanye West, Soundgarden and My Chemical Romance, punters still felt underwhelmed as only twenty acts were announced. Fast forward to the second lineup announcement: Perth, Adelaide and Auckland’s residents turned heads at the news that there would be just one main stage rather than two as in previous years and that Kanye West, the main headliner, would not be performing in their cities. Punters were shocked at the downsizing of the festival and some had proceeded to attack the promoters using social media. It was assumed that the Big Day Outs in the non-East Coast would turn out to be major duds, but were they?
For the Adelaide regulars that decided not to give this year a miss, there were many obvious changes in the layout and setting of the festival compared to previous years. What was most evident was the aforementioned single main stage as well as a lack of a surrounding D barrier. A smaller stage was situated perpendicular to the main stage and took the role of housing most of the punk and hardcore style music throughout the day. Next to this stage was the equally small skate ramp, where seemingly unknown skaters (apart from Tony Hawk, of course) would perform to the soundtrack of the live music next door. The Boiler Room took to an indoor location (taking over The Green Stage’s old site) while The Green Stage was placed on a random patch of grass.
First up were beach rockers Best Coast. For their 45 minute set, the only time lead singer Bethany Consentino really stopped singing about boys, heartbreak and relationships was when she threw a signed small corn flakes box at the crowd after stating that “I promised on my twitter that I’d throw breakfast at you guys if you came this early to see us”. Regardless, Best Coast were a great band to see to get you pumped for the day to come.
I couldn’t bring myself to miss My School Act Adelaide winners Love Cream, because the only time you’re going to be able to see a rock band primarily based on innuendo is when they’re fresh out of high school. Between the five of them they wore every colour of the rainbow twice over, and to make matters uncomfortable, the first thing that popped out of the vocalist’s mouth was something along the lines of “We’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and semen into this show to make it good enough for you guys”. Musically they sounded like 80s glam metal (go figure) with a layer of lyrics revolving around exactly what you’d expect from them.
The first crowd I saw that really started to fill out was for Bluejuice, which was no surprise. These guys put on a remarkably good show from all aspects. Their costumes featured heaps of glowing neon colours and their background visuals tied in really well with their performance. Coming out and swiftly opening with “Can’t Keep Up” they built the crowd energy up for the rest of their set which included the every past Bluejuice single you could think of as well as a bunch of new stuff from their latest album.
The only thing keeping me from running off and hauling down a load of overpriced festival food was the fact that I’d lose my spot for Odd Future, which was something I wasn’t prepared to do. It’s astonishing how a group of teenagers from Los Angeles who record music in one of their rooms could get picked up and become one of the most respected rap collectives in the current industry. Needless to say, they are still ridiculously young for their musical standing so it was no surprise that their performance was a little dysfunctional. For half the time it sounded like they were talking over each other when they were rapping, as well as it sounding like they were straying from how the actual song went.
I ducked out of The Boiler Room quickly to check what other attractions the festival held. I ventured into the pavilion that used to be the home of The Converse Stage which had disappeared due to the festival’s downsizing. The dishearteningly empty floor space was used for dodgem cars, some generic food stalls and a bar, which no one seemed to inhabit at the time. On the opposite side of the grounds was a massive inflatable waterslide. The good news was that it was free. The bad news was that due to the massive price hikes on pretty much everything in festivals, people were constantly on radar for free things. This meant that the line was way too huge to even bother trying to get a shot, especially when Battles was set to start in ten minutes.
I felt really sorry for Battles. Not because their crowd was small or because all three of them have accepted the fact that they look like boring uncles, but because they had major problems with their sound. Their set was going well until the keyboardist discovered that his right hand keyboard had stopped working. After no less than twenty minutes of scraping through using just one keyboard when he could, and blind improvisation from the other two guys when he couldn’t, the equipment suddenly started to work again. At the times that everything was in order, Battles were carving it up. It was amazing to see just three guys push out so many different sounds simultaneously while still looking so comfortable.
The Hilltop Hoods are arguably the biggest name in Australian hip hop. Combine that with the fact that they’re home grown in Adelaide and that means they had potential to pull some serious crowds. Believe me; their crowd could have rivalled that of Soundgarden’s. They threw classic after classic at the beastly crowd and those thousands of fans did not stop jumping until the Hilltops left the stage.
Up next on our agenda were Boy & Bear, who were still riding on the success of their latest album Moonfire. Their show was extremely tight and everyone seemed to be enjoying it until the entire row of stage left speakers decided to play up and shut down for seconds at a time. Both the band and the sound tech seemed oblivious to it for the first few songs because it looked like no one was really doing anything about it. After the problem got worse, Boy & Bear realised and pressed on until the sound tech fixed the problem, which was met with a hefty cheer from the crowd.
Up next was the token guilty pleasure band of the festival – My Chemical Romance. Surprisingly enough, ten minutes before they were due on stage, the crowd was no bigger than a few rows. It felt satisfying walking straight up into the mosh zone of a My Chemical Romance concert without having to push through the abundances of overjoyed five feet two inch pre-teen girls. After a few vacant moments of sightseeing, I suddenly hear that certain loud, high pitched squeal that could only come from butterfly filled teenage girls who are seconds away from seeing the band that covers their bedroom walls. The opening sequence from their latest album starts playing, and suddenly the band runs out and bursts into the very energetic track “Na Na”. The songs keep the same lively speed throughout their set and the band manages to get the majority of the crowd bouncing.
My Chemical Romance left the stage and all focus was turned on to two very great things simultaneously happening side by side – Tony Hawk and the Living End. Despite the whole skating to live rock and punk music idea that Big Day Out set up sounds like a gimmick, it surprisingly worked very well. There’s no doubting that Tony Hawk is a legendary skater, and he was able to drive the crowd wild with what he could do.
Even though there was a party going on at the skate stage, there were other things to attend to. I dashed to see Norway’s Royksopp and got there just in time to see them play “The Girl and the Robot” which is one of their bigger songs, if not their biggest. Each time they played a new song there was always new headgear to go with it. The headgear was a good addition to the set, until the headgear started to turn a little frightening. You’d never think that artists with nice songs such as “Eple” and “Happy up Here” could even think of such horrible creations. In their final song “This Must Be It” one of the artists came out wearing what looked like a three eyed razor toothed version of H.R. Pufnstuf, while another person wore a brown fluffy sack with about twenty bright blue flashing eyes, went to the back of the stage and swayed for the entire song. If that doesn’t give you nightmares, I don’t know what will.
Up next were fan favourites Foster the People, who probably should have been placed on the main stage as the crowd was expectedly massive. The indie sweethearts assured us that they loved playing in Australia more than their home – North America. They played through their debut album in its near entirety and while it seems that the crowd was enjoying their set, it was almost like they were etching to hear their most popular song – “Pumped up Kicks”. The song was met with warm cheers and sing-alongs until lead singer wanted to “take it to the next level” and changed the style of the song into a danceable remix tune.
Following Foster the People I decided to run up and take a good spot for Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. After anxiously waiting for the legend, Noel came out with his band and opened with “Everybody’s on the Run”. Following that, Gallagher played a mix of Oasis songs and his own from his debut album in his hour long set. He paid as much attention as he could to the men in their thirties praising him for how much of a legend he was, which was good to see. His finale was a very well chosen Oasis song – “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, which had even the tired, vacant people sitting down singing along. It was a perfect song to end the night on.
It’s now just a matter of time before Adelaide gets the news about whether it will face the same fate New Zealand had gotten and be culled from the festival, or be left in and hopefully restored to what it once was. Let’s hope it’s the latter.
– Tom Gaffney
