Big Day Out Auckland 2007: Will There Be A Better Concert Event This Year?
Jan 23 '07
The Bottom Line Worth every penny.
Pros: Incredible lineup including artists from New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA, and nearly everywhere in-between and crossing pretty much every genre, very little downtime.
Cons: It would be impossible to see every single artist, the Boiler Room really lives up to it’s name, overpriced food and drink, portaloos are to be used at your own risk.
The Bottom Line: Worth every penny.
The Big Day Out is an annual music festival that tours Australia every January, but starts in New Zealand, playing Auckland on the third Friday in January before heading across the Tasman. The first Big Day Out was in 1994, and was headlined by Nirvana.
This year was the first time I’ve been able to go. There’s three lineup announcements, one a month from October (when tickets go on sale) to December. When the first lineup for the 2007 event included My Chemical Romance, I knew I was going. Also in the first announcement were The Killers, Jet, Muse, The Violent Femmes, Eskimo Joe, Tool, and more. Not only that, but it was heavily rumoured Lostprophets would be in the second announcement. Unfortunately, this did not end up to be true, but the second announcement did hold two significant artists as far as I was concerned – Lily Allen and Lupe Fiasco.
As far as New Zealand acts go, I was very excited about the chance to see Elemeno P again – who for one reason or another I’ve not seen since they were on their debut album release tour back in mid-2003 – and Goodnight Nurse.
Personally, I’m glad tickets went on sale and artists were announced nearly three months before the event, as it gave me plenty of time to get flights, shuttles and accommodation sorted out.
After arriving in Auckland only ninety minutes before the gates opened at 11am, I took a shuttle straight to the venue. A long line of people had already formed, but as the first band I really wanted to see wasn’t going to be onstage until two-thirty, I wasn’t all that worried. However the line seemed to move fairly quickly, and once inside I was able to meet up with one of my mates and we walked around for a while getting our bearings and talking about who we were going to see. SMSing seemed to be a fairly effective way of keeping in touch, as it can be quite difficult talking over the noise.
While waiting for some bands we wanted to see take the stage, we heard a bit of a group called Afra & The Incredible Beatbox Band. They weren’t something I’d normally be into, but they did manage to beatbox their way through The White Stripes’ hit Seven Nation Army. About an hour or so after that, Australia’s Eskimo Joe took the stage. While I’m not a huge fan of these guys, I made sure to stick around long enough to hear one of my favourite songs at the moment, Black Fingernails, Red Wine. I also recognised From The Sea, the huge single from their last album A Song Is A City.
The Big Day Out had two main stages beside each other, named The Blue Stage and The Orange Stage. The benefit of this was that while The Blue Stage was being used, The Orange Stage was being set up for the next band and vice-versa. This severly cut back on the amount of down time you’d have at another concerts between acts. These stages were equipped with bigscreens so that even if you didn’t have a good view of the stage you could still see what was going on. However, due to the size of the crowd (the venue was at full-capacity, I believe somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 people), when I was seeing Goodnight Nurse, I couldn’t even see the bigscreen, let alone the stage. However, I didn’t particularly care as I wasn’t there to see onstage theatrics, I was there to hear some good music performed live.
Goodnight Nurse were given a 45-minute set, which was nearly time enough for them to perform the entireity of their album Always And Never. I heard all six singles - Loner, Taking Over, Our Song, Going Away, My Only and Death Goes To Disco, as well as Our Song’s b-side, a rock cover of the Kelis hit Milkshake, and Take My Hand and All Hail The Serpent Queen. Just before Goodnight Nurse came out, a band called Trivium played. They sounded like death-metal, which is all just noise to me, but their fans seemed to love them, and I guess that’s the best thing you can say about any band when performing live.
After Goodnight Nurse performed on The Blue Stage, another New Zealand band – Blindspott – took The Orange Stage. I wasn’t going anywhere, as My Chemical Romance were due to be the next band on the The Blue Stage and as I knew I may have to miss the end of their set, I sure as hell wasn’t going to miss the start. Blindspott are very heavy rockers, and I’m just not a huge fan, so I couldn’t distinguish between most of the songs. I think they performed their new single Crawl, as well as the first single from their second album End The Silence Yours Truly, and their biggest hit Phlex
Next was the band I’d been waiting to see ever since they were announced. My Chemical Romance kicked things off by playing the first three tracks from their new album The Black Parade - The End, Dead, and This Is How I Disappear. They then moved onto Mama, another The Black Parade track, before taking us back to their previous album Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge with the track through which I discovered these guys, I’m Not Okay (I Promise). Of course, being as it’s their biggest hit in New Zealand thus far, they’d have been lynched if they hadn’t played Welcome To The Black Parade, which was next on the list. Due to unfortunate Big Day Out scheduling, I decided I best head off for the Boiler Room once that was over, but I believe they were playing Thank You For The Venom as I was leaving. As with Goodnight Nurse, I wasn’t able to SEE much of My Chemical Romance, but I can report that Gerard Way has dyed his hair black again.
The reason I left My Chemical Romance early was so that I didn’t miss the start of Lily Allen. It’s not that MCR weren’t putting on a good show, but you never know when your favourite song is going to come up in an artist’s setlist. MCR were due to finish on The Blue Stage at ten past four, and Lily Allen due to start in the Boiler Room at quarter past four. Five minutes difference was pushing it a bit for my liking, and Blindspott finished a little late anyway, which means MCR started a little late.
Thankfully, I made it to the Boiler Room in time for Lily Allen’s performance – I even found a spot right by the speakers, which gave me a damn good view of Lily. She started with LDN, and followed it up with the song I wasn’t sure she’d play - Nan, You’re A Window Shopper. In fact, I’d planned to ask Lily to put this on her setlist if I’d seen her wandering around before her set, which I unfortunately didn’t. She also played Smile, Littlest Things, Not Big, Friday Night, Everything’s Just Wonderful, Alfie and Knock ‘Em Out. This was one of my favourite performances of the Big Day Out. If you ever get a chance to see Lily live, I highly recommend you do so.
As it turns out, I was basically able to see the three main acts I wanted to see all in a row, as after Lily left the stage we headed out to see Elemeno P. Since releasing their second album Trouble In Paradise they’ve done a few tours of the country, but either they haven’t come far enough south for me to see them, or I haven’t been able to get the time off work. Seeing as they’re soon going back into the studio to write and record album number three, there was no chance I was going to miss them this time. They started with their latest singe S.O.S., which is only on the special edition of their latest album. They then played my favourite song from said album, Death & The Maiden, which seeing as it wasn’t a single, was a very cool surprise. At one stage during the band’s performance, frontman Gibbo asked the audience for a request, which is how early single Fast Times In Tahoe. Personally, I would’ve preferred Every Day’s A Saturday or another non-single called Stay / Go, but when you’re only on voice – and you’ve been using that voice to sing along to a few great acts for the last three hours – it’s not easy to make yourself heard. However, Fast Times In Tahoe is still a great song, and just as easy to sing along to. They also performed Ohio, a song Gibbo tells us he wrote when George W. Bush was re-elected, an event he was very angry at. Other songs performed were smash hit Verona, Urban Getaway, You Are, Burn, 11:57, One Left Standing, and rather appropriately, Nirvana.
Also performing at Big Day Out was Australian band Jet, but they were on either the Blue or Orange stage when Elemeno P was on the Converse stage, so I missed them completely. Still, between Elemeno P and Jet, it was a pretty easy choice.
After Elemeno P finished at six pm, we headed back to The Orange Stage to check out Scribe. As far as New Zealand hip hop stars go, he’s pretty much at the top of the pile. His debut album came out in 2003, and went to gold status on pre-sales alone. Not only that, but his single Stand Up was at either number one or two on the charts for three months straight. He had competition for the number one spot from The Black Eyed Peas (Where Is The Love) and Chingy (Right Thurr), so he hovered between one and two for a while. Add to that the fact we haven’t heard anything new from him for ages and that he was to perform five new songs at Big Day Out, and you can see what a big deal he is. Personally, I was pretty bored by his performance. It’s nothing to do with him, I’m just not into hip-hop at the moment. I spent that half-hour watching the bigscreen and the messages scrolling along the top.
See, Telecom had set up this thing whereby you could SMS a message to a particular number and soon enough it could be scrolling along the bigscreen. Whenever someone offers this kind of “service”, you’re going to get idiots SMSing some pretty stupid things, with some fairly dodgy SMS spelling. One guy was outed via bigscreen SMS, when chances are he was probably heterosexual but the guy sending the SMS in didn’t like him for whatever reason. There were many proposals onscreen – some for artists, some for audience members. One that stuck in my head was this: “It should be legal to hunt emos.” I also remember seeing “Message to all emos – your parents DO love you.” I guess the event was full of “emos” because My Chemical Romance were performing, but I personally don’t see why people hate “emos” so much. I’ve been called an “emo” because I like MCR, but I simply like the music. I don’t embrace “emo” like it’s a religion, which some people do, because that seems a little unhealthy to me.
Anyhoo, after a half hour or so of watching these messages scroll by, Ruth and I headed back to the Boiler Room. Now, it should be noted that this place is the most aptly named stage at the Big Day Out. It’s freaking hot in there – there tent must be made of some kind of material that attracts and stores heat or something. Personally, I was keen to spend as less time in there as possible, but Ruth’s a big Lupe Fiasco fan, so the Boiler Room it was. I was keen to check out Lupe as I’ve heard a lot of good things about him but no music from him. I shouldn’t have really bothered. In a 45-minute set, it only sounded to me like he performed three or four songs, the rest of the time was just mucking around on stage. He did – for lack of a better word – hum a cover of what sounded like Seven Nation Army with a bit of something else mixed in. Sure, The White Stripes didn’t come to Big Day Out this year, but their music certainly did. Lupe’s last song was Kick, Push, which was far too repetitive for my liking.
After Lupe’s performance was over, we went back to The Blue Stage to see a bit of The Killers. Their performance time clashed with Lupe, but they were on for an hour, so we did see a track or two. From my position high in the stands I couldn’t see the band themselves, but I could see them on the bigscreen. I don’t know what they were playing when we got there, but the next song – which happened to be their closer – was All These Things That I’ve Done, possibly my favourite track by The Killers. Shame, then, that I could barely hear it. Maybe I spent too long beside the speakers when I saw Lily Allen, or maybe the setup wasn’t designed to reach those of us up that high (not very likely), or maybe Flowers simply didn’t have it in him. However, seeing The Killers was my first chance to see the sheer volume of people at the Big Day Out, and it seems like everyone showed up to hear them. Personally, I can’t figure out why, but I’m not here to judge people’s taste in music. The crowd was REALLY into them, I could tell that much.
Nesian Mystik, a band we both used to be very much into, were playing on the Boost Mobile Local Produce Stage, so we had a look at them. There wasn’t really a huge crowd, which was disappointing for a New Zealand band, but the single they were playing at the time - If It’s Cool didn’t do all that well if memory serves correct. We didn’t hang around long either. PNC played on the same stage later on, but I didn’t recognise anything he played – again, not that I hung around long. I think one of the songs he played may have been Who Better Than This?
That was pretty much the end of my Big Day Out experience musically. We wandered around for a while and checked out the fairground rides. I didn’t expect to see anything like that there, but they were free, which was cool, and I’m always up to give something like that a go, so we went on one which I think was called The Hurricane or The Twister or something like that. Basically it had seven or eight cars attached to these long arms. The whole thing rotated and the arms extended and retracted, which made the cars go up or down and out to the sides. Considering how scared I am of heights, going on it may not have been the best idea, and I’m aware I probably resembled a little girl while on it and a drunk after coming off it. If I’d eaten recently, I probably would’ve lost the food.
We left the Big Day Out around 9.30pm I guess. There were several bands which were yet to take the stage, Muse, Tool, and The Violent Femmes among them. From what I can remember of the timetable – having lost it somewhere between the venue and the McDonald’s down the road – the last band wasn’t due to finish until around quarter past eleven, which gave the event a total running time of a little over twelve hours.
When something lasts that long, you would hope there’s be food and toilets available. There was, but the food was overpriced – paying nearly double what you’d pay at a dairy for the same kind of stuff. Same goes for the non-alcoholic drinks, of which there didn’t look to be a huge selection. I don’t drink, so I don’t know about the alcoholic drinks, but these were strictly controlled – I saw men of at least forty-something wearing the ID tags. I wasn’t ID’d myself (I guess I’m past the age I can pass for seventeen), but I was given a tag. I didn’t really need one, but if you walked through the beer garden, then you needed a tag. I didn’t see any EFTPOS terminals or ATMs, but I wasn’t sure if there would be any and took plenty of cash with me.
(Coincidentally, after what I just said about The Killers, can anyone guess what my iTunes shuffle has just started playing?)
As for the toilets, the only ones I saw were portaloos. Considering the events that are held at this particular stadium (sporting games, like both codes of rugby), I was surprised not to find any real toilets, but during the time I was there, I didn’t need one, so what do I care? I don’t use portaloos unless I really have to, I just don’t like the things.
And that was the Big Day Out for 2007. On my request list for next year: Lostprophets, Green Day and The White Stripes. It would be nice to hear Seven Nation Army done by the original artist.
Costs - all in New Zealand Dollars:
Concert Ticket - $112
Flights - $342
Shuttles / Taxis to and from airports – Total of about $120
Food / Drink during the day – Around $25
Accommodation for the night – Free, thanks to Ruth’s relatives.
The experience of seeing three brilliant artists live, and hearing a plethora of great live songs? – Priceless.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dbcint
|
|
Member: Dean Cowie
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand
Reviews written: 198
Trusted by: 39 members
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.