a big day out

Ok, so I'm falling behind in my blogging a little since I got back. Time for some catching up during my lunch break. Sunday saw me at the Big Day Out, and I had a ball. Well, not literally. Ok, allow me to rephrase that - I had a good time. Better? If not, too bad.

The main reason I decided to fork out the $125 this year was to see Rage Against the Machine now that they were back together and touring again. I didn't actually pay attention to who else was playing until a couple of days beforehand when I printed out the timetable and started choosing bands I wanted to see.

Anyway, got there at 11am and the weather was cloudy and overcast. It rained a bit at around 11:30ish but after that the weather managed to hold up for the rest of the day. For most of the day, I spent it drifting around catching parts of sets, and only hanging around for a whole set whenever there wasn't anything else at the same time that I wanted to check out. Rather than going into detail, the bands I saw over the course of the day were: Operator Please, British India, Anti-Flag, Josh Pyke, Gyroscope, Enter Shikari, Regurgitator, Hilltop Hoods, Grinspoon, Silverchair, Karnivool and Rage Against the Machine.

Positives from the day: I discovered two new bands that I really enjoyed - Enter Shikari and Karnivool. Enter Shikari in particular were awesome, I really don't know how to describe their music, but 'screamo-trance' wouldn't be too far off the mark. The set was just full of energy, and the crowd was just going crazy, with the odd person with a busted nose pushing past you to get out every now and then. Oh and of course the fact that I got to see RATM. Definitely a plus, after all it was the main reason I went. The boys gave it their all, especially Zach. The finish with Killing In The Name Of was incredible, the crowd was really into it.

Negatives from the day: When we got there, we got a little event guide booklet, which had heaps of stuff in there including the timetable and map for the day. Now, the timetable in the booklet slightly differed from the one I printed out earlier, as it showed The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello from RATM doing solo acoustic stuff) being on at 5:30pm whereas the one I printed showed it being on at 4:00pm. Of course I assume that the one in the booklet is correct and the one I printed is wrong (being a few days old). Anyway got to the stage at 5:30 and was disappointed to find that Billy Bragg was on stage - turns out my timetable was right? The other disappointment of the day was the quality of the sound when Rage Against the Machine were playing. Due to my drifting around, the spot I got was a bit far back and to the side of the stage a little bit. When they started, it was as if it was turned down really low. So we moved around a bit so that we were a bit further back but directly in front of the stage. The sound was a bit better, but not good enough - you could still hold a conversation at normal speaking tone. Oh well.

At the end of the day, it was still worth the money for 11 hours of entertainment, but I was only slightly disappointed with the sound level for RATM - they were still great.