Big Day Out

Big Day Out is seen as the quintessential Australian music festival by music fans in the UK. It’s the one all the best British bands go over to play and the one we music fans read about most regularly in the British music press. Of course these days music festivals are ten a penny, both in the UK and Australia, but when it came to choosing my first Australian music festival experience, it could only have been Big Day Out.

Now, in the UK festivals are muddy, sweaty and smelly feats of endurance, albeit hugely enjoyable ones. They last for three or four days and truly test the commitment of even the most loyal music fans to their best-loved bands. Australia having different weather means that it more often than not doesn’t have that deep down and dirty experience. This, combined with Big Day Out being just that – one day, meant that the experience felt a little too lightweight compared to my previous festival experiences. I apparently need to be physically and mentally challenged by my festivals.

What also surprised me was how clean-cut and straight-forward the whole thing was. As Big Day Out is Australia’s most famous festival I immediately compared it beforehand to the UK’s most famous festival – Glastonbury. This was a mistake. Big Day Out is a much smaller, sleeker and newer operation, with none of the tradition and deeply ingrained character (and mud) that Glastonbury has. It’s like comparing Australia and Britain themselves. There is no comparison.

Once I’d gotten over the fact that Big Day Out was a sleek shiny camper van to Glastonbury’s beaten up old vee-dub, I embraced this smoothly run and neatly laid-out festival and made the most of the opportunity to see some amazing (along with some average) live music. Something I’ve been starved of these past two years.

Trial Kennedy: An Aussie band who first caught my attention with their song Colour Day Tours, I dragged Mark along at 11am to see them. He was pleasantly surprised, as was I. Him because they did a blistering energetic set and won him over as they had me, and me because the lead singer looks like a Hollywood movie star and not the greasy indie lad I was expecting. Only in Australia.

Children Collide: Another Aussie band whose Social Currency song first caught my attention. They sounded great but we were far back chatting to our friends so I have no idea how good the performance was.

Birds Of Tokyo: Again, an Aussie band whose songs have been a constant presence since I arrived. Again they sounded great but the performance was drab. They could have been shop dummies up there. It was more enjoyable when I wasn’t looking at them.

The Ting Tings: Something was missing. Sure there are only two of them up there but it wasn’t that, I’ve seen duos and three-pieces generate more energy than full bands. And sure there’s no depth to the music, it’s just party music. But for some reason this party was a little flat.

The Black Kids: The polar opposite of The Ting Tings, these guys roused the crowd into states of pure joy. Never have I seen such a bouncy, joyous crowd. This American band seems to have that magic locked in their joyful pop music.

Sneaky Sound System: Fun, bonkers, easy-going. This band knows what it’s doing and does it very well.

Pendulum: They started off really well, getting everyone going with their bouncy drum’n’bass but then it inexplicably just tailed off. As my friend put it, “Well they’ve done their three best songs now, we can go.”

Cut Copy: The surprise of the day for me. The album, good as it is, doesn’t suggest an exhilarating live experience. But exhilarating it was. They don't seem the most charismatic band but they infuse their music with so much energy in their live show.

Arctic Monkeys: Cut Copy was so enjoyable that we missed the beginning of their performance. We apparently didn’t miss much. The crowd was huge when we arrived but as the performance went on large chucks of it disappeared. It was lacklustre and irritating, latterly because they kept ‘ending’ songs only to start them up again. As another friend put it: ‘applause junkies’. It was a performance they could have phoned in and Alex Turner’s vapid between-song talk didn’t help.

The Prodigy: A-mazing. I’ve never seen them live before so I was excited to do so, not least because friends who’ve seen them have said they’re incredible. And they were. Blistering, visceral, aggressive, empowering, frightening, euphoric: it’s all there with added adjective.