It hasn’t been an easy couple of years for the live music industry. Competition has been stiff, good line-ups hard to find, and after 20 years putting together one of the best rock’n’roll festivals this country has known, Big Day Out founders Vivian Lees and Ken West have gone their separate ways. Of course you wouldn’t know it from the throngs of bright young things streaming through the gates at Olympic Park on Australia Day.
Getting sunburnt, gorging on festival food and dancing ‘til you can no longer feel your legs is still a beloved an Australia Day tradition. And judging by the median age of the crowd, there is a whole new generation of music fans here to take their place in the mosh-pits and grassy knolls of the Big Day Out.
Best Coast took to the stage early on in the day, and played surrounded by sunshine, green grass and youths with flowers in their hair. It was a beautiful sight to see. They tore through a sweet summer soundtrack in 45 minutes and managed to play all the songs that people wanted – no filler necessary.
Although they didn’t know it yet, Boy and Bear were set to take out No. 4 on the Triple J Hottest 100 for the second year running. There was a lot of love for the Sydney lads and people were ready and willing to battle the climbing humidity in order to see them play ‘Feeding Line’ and ultimate crowd-pleasing cover, ‘Fall at Your Feet’ live.
Fortunately for Sydney the Orange and Blue stages were free from the technical difficulties that marred the Gold Coast festival. The changeovers occurred with military precision and the final strum from Boy and Bear had barely stopped ringing in the ears of the punters when the Jezabels strolled onstage. You cannot help but be reminded of the great front-women of the ‘80s when Hayley Mary is performing. She is like a new era Chrissie Hynde in skin-tight black leather-look leggings, slinking along the stage. She belted out ‘Endless Summer’ to kick things off and then the band worked their way through the better part of the latest album, throwing in ‘Hurt Me’ from the EP She’s So Hard for good measure.
Anyone who had Mariachi El Bronx on their shortlist had packed out the concrete amphitheatre at the Hot Produce stage well before the start time. There were significantly fewer of your daisy duke-sporting teens in the crowd – this was one for the grown-ups. Taking quick stock it was clear that a certain portion of the audience were there because they were Bronx fans and a very separate group were there for the new incarnation of the band.
Swaggering on stage in matching mariachi uniforms, the band’s combination of Mexican rhythms and punk sensibilities meant that the only thing missing were saloon doors from which people could get thrown from like a scene from Deadwood. To say they killed it is something of an understatement.
Architecture in Helsinki always brings the party to a festival and the grassy Converse stage was the perfect spot for a late afternoon boogie. With many punters hitting the six hour mark, the irrepressible poppiness of ‘Contact High’ and ‘That Beep’ is always a sure fire cure for anyone starting to flag.
Once it hit seven pm the big guns started blazing. Girl Talk took over the Boiler Room and dehydration, sweat, exhaustion and hunger were all forgotten when the opener from All Day, ‘Oh No’ (featuring Ludacris’ ‘Move Bitch’ and Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’) started. Girl Talk may have had his party posse up on stage with him but the broiling masses on the dance-floor paid them no attention. This was a set for cutting sick, getting high on endorphins and getting confetti in your hair. The classic Girl Talk mashes made an appearance but to stop it feeling like the latest album was being played from start to finish he threw in a lot of new samples, splitting up the more familiar stuff to stop things getting predictable.
The shift from burning the floor to swaying gently to brooding ‘90s grunge was a dramatic tempo change but considering it was Big Day Out’s 20th birthday, Soundgarden – who first headlined in 1994 – was a fitting way to close out the Orange stage. A lot of the people getting into place for Kanye would have missed grunge altogether, having been born some time in the early 90s but when Soundgarden played ‘Black Hole Sun’ everyone sung along, even if they weren’t sure why they knew the words.
The people who had been at Splendour in 2011 may have had a pretty good idea of what to expect from Kanye West’s set, but for everyone else it was shrouded in mystery. Would it be the highlight of their Australia Day or would it be a self-indulgent spectacle designed more for the enjoyment of the performer than the fans? For some people it was both but for many it was a horribly fractured set. There were high points; his entrance on a scissor crane to ‘Dark Fantasy’, ‘Gold Digger’, ‘Jesus Walks’, ‘All of the Lights’ and ‘Monster’ sent the audience into fits of shrieking adulation. But in between he would sacrifice the momentum that he had built and drift off into extended breakdowns that lost the crowds attention. No one is labouring under the delusion that the man can sing and so the bizarre interludes of heavy auto-tune coupled with dancers who looked not unlike they were having seizures were superfluous and tainted the better parts of the set.
Once ‘Runaway’ had stretched past the 15 minute mark with no signs of letting up the crowd began to noticeably thin out, with some heading to catch an early train and others thinking that Noel Gallagher was a better bet. It turned out that Noel Gallagher and the High Flying Birds were a great way to end the festival. The final song of the night was Oasis’ ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ which ended the festival on a high note and helped wash away the sour taste left by Kanye’s antics.
Twenty years in the making, the 2012 Big Day Out put on a good show. It was consistent, solid and delivered on its promise of a massive day for lovers of rock’n’roll. The line up may not have been their strongest in the last two decades but it did manage to cater to almost every taste imaginable and in light of how rough 2011 was on the music industry I think they can chalk this one up as a win.
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