Big Day Out 2014 Lineup “Best And Biggest” Ever Say Promoters

Following the 2014 dates for the Big Day Out being unveiled and the all-important lineup announcement set to drop at the end of the month, hype for the “lineup to end all lineups”, as Big Day Out organisers themselves put it, is building.

After Big Day Out organisers dropped some clues as to the headliners to expect come the July 31st announcement, a few more promoters have teased that this year the festival is truly putting the Big into the Big Day Out, which includes a $20 hike to the ticket price for next year’s edition.

New Zealand promoter Campbell Smith says that the new $185 asking price, the highest in the festival’s 21 year history, will be well worth it based on the huge bands the Big Day Out has in store, as FasterLouder points out.

The NZHerald quote Smith telling New Zealand radio station The Rock to expect “the best and biggest lineup we’ve ever had,” adding that “it crosses all the musical genres that you’d expect at the Big Day Out.”

“When you look at the headliners, the second slot, third slot and fourth slot are probably all festival headliners,” adds Smith of the touring festival’s return to New Zealand, which has secured a five year deal with Auckland’s 50,000 capacity Western Springs for the resurrected NZ leg of the festival.

The Western Springs move eschews the traditional home at Mt Smart Stadium, which had been the home to Big Day Out from 1994 to 2012, where a troubled financial run caused the festival to take a rest from New Zealand in 2013.

Despite the hyped lineup announcement, the NZHerald points out that many punters aren’t willing to pay the hefty $185 ticket price. “Clearly NOTHING was learned from the 2012 debacle,” wrote one punter on Twitter, while another grumbled in query: “Big Day Out tickets plated in gold?”

In a previous response to the $185 price increase, Big Day Out CEO Adam Zammit revealed that it was to accommodate a bigger lineup with three headliners.

@LukeGReynolds $20 more than last year but an extra headliner. 2 of our headliners have never played an Australian festival

— Adam Zammit (@AdamZammit) July 11, 2013

Even a certain rival festival promoter who’s no stranger to massive lineups is convinced of Big Day Out’s hype. Soundwave/Harvest/Warped Tour promoter AJ Maddah has said the festival’s 2014 bill is “SUPERB“, taking to his fertile twitter feed to respond to a comment that the Big Day Out bill was a “challenge to [Soundwave] 2014 lineup?”:

@mos2016 no. He is right. BDO line-up is truly EPIC

— AJ (@iamnotshouting) July 15, 2013

Meanwhile, fellow Big Day Out promoter Ken West has dropped his own hints about the festival’s potential headliners, confirming it won’t be previous bill-toppers Neil Young and Kanye West, as well as ruling out fellow hip hop heavyweight Jay-Z. But they are still mightily impressive, he says; “I was hoping for one ‘White Whale’, managed to get two and ended up with three.”

Budding headline sleuths or fans looking for a Big Day Out clue trail could do a lot worse than look at this year’s lineups for Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza as both American festivals are organised by Big Day Out partners C3 Presents. Which throws the likes of The Cure, The Black Keys, and Deadmau5 in the mix.

Then there’s the ever-elusive Blur, with the reunited Brtipop icons having been absent from Australian shores since 1997 and certainly fit both West’s ‘White Wale’ comment and Zammit’s description of a band that haven’t played an Aussie festival before. Artists with new albums out before the end of the year would be a good fit for a summer festival promotional trail down under too. Such as Arctic Monkeys, who played Big Day Out in 2009 and drop their latest, AM, in September, and Arcade Fire, who played Big Day Out in 2008 and have confirmed their new album, produced by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, for an October release date, as NME reports.

All will be revealed by the end of the month, so start placing your bets.

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