Okay, it is kinda late to review the Big Day Out 2004 given that tickets are currently on sale for the 2005 one. But hey, who cares? If you missed it, you missed it, so finding out now what you missed makes very little difference than if I'd done the review the day after.
However, I may have forgotten some things, but that is simply because I am now old and not "with it".
Intro: The 2004 line-up was huge, packed full of bands / artists I wanted to see. I knew I'd probably miss some of them because of that line-up. Anyway, got there at about 12:30 with Steven. I'll do this by artist / band, since that'll make things vaguely more interesting. Oh, and the Perth Big Day Out was held on February 1 2004.
The Darkness I didn't really care about, but they were on the main stage while I was wasting some time. They seemed to peform pretty well live, but they weren't that interesting to me.
So I wandered over the Boiler Room and saw Salmonella Dub play part of their set. Again, these guys didn't interest me, and I don't like reggae-influenced music, so I only hung around after I bumped into some people I knew from my uni days. However, Friendly then took the stage so I hung around for a while for a dance or three.
Having seen the Black Eyed Peas in 2000 (or 2001) when they came through, I was hanging out to see them again. You'd think that arriving half an hour before they started would have meant I could get into the front section. But no! For some reason Security shut the gate on the Blue stage a long time before the BEP took the stage, meaning that the front section was a big anaemic and lots of people got stuck behind the security D-gate. That said, the BEP were great once they got beyond their Top 40 stuff. Plus one of the Darkness came out and did a guitar solo during the performance! This is why I love the Big Day Out - lots of different things to see and sometimes you get to see things that would never happen at a solo gig.
Originally I'd intended to see 1200 Techniques but I was hungry by this stage and went to buy a hamburger. Unfortunately, said hamburger was cold in the middle (and when I say cold, I don't mean "just a little bit warm", I mean "stone motherless cold") so I threw it away and bought some spring rolls instead. They were at least cooked! However, once I'd had lunch it meant I missed out on the majority of the 1200T set. Oh well, I'll have to wait until next time they come through.
Something for Kate were in the last couple of songs of their set on the Orange Stage, so I watched them from behind the D gate (again!) of the Blue Stage, which was still shut. I do like SFK and they do a great live performance. However, I was really hanging out to see the Dandy Warhols who were great. Sure, they only did their radio hits, but these songs are great and got the crowd going. Plus I got to hear "Horse Pills" done live, which was a treasure to hear! Also, Fergie (from the BEP) came out and did some vocals for one of the Dandy's songs, which was another bonus!
One great thing about the Big Day Out is that you can go and see artists you'd never ever pay to see. Now, I'd never ever pay to see Peaches perform live, but I thought I'd check her out and see if what she did live was better than the stuff that is played on the radio. It was - she was better than I'd expected. I'd still never pay to go see her, but Peaches was pretty good live.
After Peaches I went across to see Luke Vibert and Aphex Twin do their thing. For the first two songs, I thought, "Oh no! These guys are just off!" but with the start of the third song things really got going. I managed to dance my way through their entire set, but it completely stuffed me! I was exhausted and sore by the end and needed to lie on the grass for a while!
Unfortunately, this left me in poor shape for the Afrika Boombaataa set. Afrika was having technical problems anyway, but being sore as well made things difficult. However, the technical problems did get sorted and part of the set was really good. The MC's then pulled up girls to dance on the stage, which was also fun to watch. However, I left the Hothouse (where he was playing) after the MC's started conjoling the guys to grab girls and dance with them. That didn't really interest me (when I dance, I dance ... ALONE! :-) so I went and watched Metallica for a while. Who were fine, I guess, but didn't really grab me. I was probably too tired anyway by this point.
Went back into the Boiler Room to see Basement Jaxx but I don't like them that much. Steven was also pretty tired, so we took the opportunity to watch a song or two from Jaxx and then head off home. Past experience has taught me it's better to leave the BDO a bit earlier than a bit later - everyone rushes the Boiler Room as soon as the final main stage act ends since it goes on for another hour, plus traffic / public transport becomes a nightmare as thousands of tired / drunk / whatever people try to make their way home.
Notable Mention of this Day: One thing I did enjoy was seeing the huge number of guys in black t-shirts / singlets all there to see Metallica. They all stood around all day in the alcohol areas of the BDO, swinging back coke and bourbon and / or beer, slowly going pink in the sun. I'm sure there were some very, very, very sore people the next day, given the bright skin colours I saw some of these guys turn over the course of the BDO.
Working For The Maaaan.... 21/1/04
Anna's Story 15/4/03
I have never read so much crap in my life.
I'm not going to go on about the drug message contained in this book. My attitude - take them, don't take them; it's your call. Your responsibility too. Put something into your system and you could die. Eat a peanut and you could die too. Pedestrians get killed crossing the roads all the time. Actions and consequences aren't always fair. Chaos reigns. Anyway, on to the book...
The summary of Anna's Story is that Anna Woods, aged 15, took an ecstacy tablet and died from complications arising from it. I'll check the book for the exact reason, but I think her brain swelled after she drank too much water. The book examines the lead-up and consequences surrounding Anna's death. You have interviews with her mother, father, friends and the guy she was seeing at the time who gave her the fatal pill.
What made me gag during all of this was the sainthood bestowed on Anna with her death. Never was there a more perfect girl to ever walk the face of the Earth. Had she lived longer she would have come with a cure for cancer while still meeting her "dream job" obligations as a hairdresser. No doubt she was leaving school a year early not because Anna was thick as two short planks, but because she'd already got perfect scores in every subject and wanted to let someone else get the spotlight. I swear, if a few miracles aren't performed in Anna's name in the near future it will only be because people aren't looking closely enough. Anna was obviously destined for a life of greatness until evil, evil drugs cut her down.
What made Anna's Story bearable was the subtext. Along with the perfection that is Anna Woods, you get a lot of creative re-interpretation of history within this novel. The parents blame her friends. The friends share the blame amongst themselves. The guy who gave the pill feels guilty about it. All well and good. But the subtext tells an interesting story.
What comes out is a tale of how Anna's parents were too wrapped up in their business to give her the time she wanted. How her father wouldn't punish her if she did something wrong "because she would smile at me and get me to laugh". Her parent's were splitting up and trying not to tell the kids (cause that always helps). Anna was allowed to smoke and drink at her parent's and friends' houses "because that's what teenagers do". A lot of little things indicate that a huge charade is being pulled around Anna's death; that everything is being kept in soft focus because a critical analysis may ruin the picture.
I'm not going to pretend that I know Anna through the the reading of this book, but enough indication is given for me to make speculative and baseless claims. Anna sounded like the kind of girl that always got what she wanted, one way or the other. It was lucky she was pretty since it sounds like she didn't have much going on upstairs. She may have been as nice as pie, but given the whitewash surrounding other aspects of her life it's a bit hard to tell the truth. She comes out sounding so blameless for everything that the whole story becomes difficult to swallow.
The testimonials of how "this book has changed my life" are possibly true, but appear written by the same brain-dead stock that Anna was a part of.
Is this overly harsh? Yes, but for a reason. As stated above, Anna is shown to live a life so perfect as to be unattainable to the rest of us, yet she is the case study for the anti-drugs message. She's perfect enough (as described by the book) to have been deliberately killed by the gods so that they could bask in her raidiant goodness. I'm sorry, but there is only so much saccharine I can stand and Anna's Story was too much. I did try to re-read the book for this rant, but couldn't do it - all the characters ... sorry, real people, were just too unbelieveable to sit through a second time.
In short: Anna dies. People who knew her lamented. Crap book written.
Out Day Big 5/2/03
Got in about 12:30pm-ish. Had thought to arrive earlier but in the end it didn't happen. Went with Steven. Had also thought that security was going to be tight (I wasn't carrying anything I shouldn't have, but after last year with all the queues...) but... no. Went straight through. Didn't need my driver's license to get into the Bar Areas (whereas last year I did). Lots of security around, but things seemed relaxed.
The day was overcast which made it a lot more pleasant if a touch humid. I was looking forward to some rain to really cool things down, but apart from some mocking drops late in the evening, the weather was pretty dry and probably as good as it could get around this time of year.
Augie March: First band for the day. Enjoyed their first album, so I thought "Why not?" and went to see them. Overall not bad, but they were having a couple of bass problems while playing into a headwind. This didn't make them that happy, with some complaints / apologies that they were sounding messy. They sounded fine from where I was and were a nice way to enter the day. Stage banter was okay but not great.
Chicks On Speed: Knew nothing about them other than there was no-one else on at this time I really wanted to see, so I thought I'd kill an hour in the Boiler Room (dance area). CoS were really more "noisy" than "dancey" (hard to explain unless you were there) and I know that aggrvated a number of people in the Boiler Room (cause they left!) but I thought CoS went off. Although I didn't like everything they did, they opened hard and finished strongly. Their political statement was wasted on an audience that was just there to have a good time. Ugly, ugly clothes though - I hate fluro and fluro + shawls = three types of tragedy.
Walked around for a bit - festival crowds can be an odd-looking bunch - until...
Machine Gun Fellatio: While I'm not a huge fan of this group, I thought I should see them live at least once. Very solid live, lots of things happening on stage, lot of costume changes and they pull off their variety of sounds really well. The crowd was mostly into it, but the sun came out just before their set and made things uncomfortable. Stage banter was good and had the crowd laughing.
DJ Kid Kenobi: This guy had won a couple of popularity awards or something so I thought I'd see him do his thing. Nothing unexpected or that interesting but he kept the crowd moving and definitely had da skillz. I can see why he's a crowd pleaser. No banter from him (cause he's a DJ not MC, I would think... :-)
At this point Steven and I went to one of the Bar Areas and I managed to bump into Micheal Davidson, Madeline (who I know a little bit) and Connor (who I know not at all, but now know her name). Spent some time chatting to them. Madeline took my phone number and promised to call me about a thing happening next week some time. At this point she hasn't made that call. Obviously, my "not as pretty as Andrew" remark wasn't as funny as I thought (it's a context thing) and she'll now avoid me until the end of her days... or she has forgotten. I'm choosing to blame the former <:-[
Davidson and Co. went to see PJ Harvey while Steve and I saw...
1200 Techniques: These guys were the band of the day and second best group I've ever seen at a BDO. They kept the crowd moving, had great stage banter and just rocked all over. Great stuff. I'm going to buy their albums solely due to this performance.
Went back to the Bar Area and bumped into Davidson and Co. again. More chatting. Bumped into Clementine for the first time in ages and chatted to her. Followed her and got to see Sam who I also hadn't seen in ages. Chatted to them for a while while watching Jane's Addiction and Foo Fighters from the hill before going off to see...
Kraftwerk: They are pioneers of electronic music. They were also pretty boring to watch and listen to. Left after only a couple of songs.
Went back, said goodbyes to Sam, Clem and whoever else (sorry, forgotten your name) and managed to quickly catch a train back to Perth.
All in all, a good BDO. I'm hoping next year has more groups I really want to see, but that's the great thing about festivals - you end up seeing artists you wouldn't otherwise.
If My Work Was Any More Pointless, I Would Dissipate In A Nihillic Cloud of Dust 20/1/03
Religion.
Stupid, organised, medieval religion. Without it, the following conversation would have taken place:
Osama bin Laden: Go and crash planes into the Great Evil's shiny towers!
Others: Errr.... No. Boy, these spoiled rich kids sure have some crazy ideas!
Instead, we have a revived version of the Crusades where white guys take on brown guys to see who can kill the most people.
All My Friends... 10/12/2002
Let's hope some of them do...
The Caliber Network 31/10/02
It reminded me of my plans to do something similar and open a lan centre, but I had a look at the figures and realised it would take a lot of work to do. Then I got a job and my time to do anything like it just disappeared.
I'm looking forward to going down there regularly and playing, but given the distance of Fremantle to my place, the fact I have to work full-time and a gf that wants (nay, demands) attention, I don't think I'll get to be the expert at UT2003 that everyone else will. Having slipped in CS to a point where it is no longer enjoyable to play (What's that? Another headshot on me?), UT2003 seemed like a good place to start again. The time I've spent on Battlefield 1942 hasn't left me with a great impression of the game so I'm not really that interested in it. Maybe I should see if Caliber would put Operation Flashpoint up since that's the fps that I've spent the most time with recently.
My gf's birthday tomorrow. Wonder if I slip away for a couple of hours down to Fremantle... ;-)