Big Day Out 2011

Well, it rained. And surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, if you’ve been to a wet BDO before), things got better from there. 2011′s Big Day Out might have been focussed on for the rock aspect, with main stage headliners Tool and Rammstein getting most of the attention, but if you were smart enough, it was easy to avoid anything like that and still manage to have a pretty good time. Minding the clashes, we checked out as many bands as we could on the day and below are some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the day.

CSS -  I knew I’d beat myself up for missing Andrew W.K. during this. 15 minutes later, not a fucking regret. Goddamn, that lady has energy. Maybe I’m just a sucker for stage charisma, but man, the whole thing just felt fun. Yeah, she crowd-surfed – just as everyone else did that day – but it didn’t feel like we were holding up some kind of musical god in our hands. Just a person like one of us sharing the fun of the moment. As a former ignorant non-listener of CSS, I came out changed. Sorry for doubting you, fans. – Michael McClelland

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Big Day Out’s the home of the rare phenomenon that is hipsters actually dancing to music. This could be because hipsters are right into their Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Or they were into them at Big Day Out, anyway. Forgive my cynicism – the vibes were actually soaring dangerously close to the point of ‘good’. Ed Sharpe and friends were smiling away to every note they played, which was a reassuring sign to us that the band were getting as into their music as we were. “You motherfuckers make me want to sing”, said the overly nice lead singer Alex. In return, we did too – to every song they played. It was really the only considerate crowd I experienced on the day… and I can thank the feel-good tunes of Edward Sharpe and the etc. – Michael McClelland

Lupe Fiasco – Well, at least we can confirm that Lasers is going to be terrible. Apart from playing the worst song from Food & Liquor (‘The Instrumental’) and his biggest hits (‘Kick, Push’, ‘Superstar’), the rest of Lupe’s set was all about his latest album, and most of the songs gave off first impressions of radio fodder, complete with Ryan Tedder-sounding guest choruses. Dude also got real primadonna when his sound cut out after experiencing some technical problems at the beginning of his set. He forced his band to restart ‘Shining Down’ twice while he walked off stage and tried to make another entrance. But he knew it wasn’t great: after apologising for the technical issues he reminded everyone that this was the first time him and his band had played together for six months. – Hussein Moses

Kody & Bic - Looks like Kody hasn’t left the Mint Chicks yet. You’d have guessed it from the sound of songs like ‘Time To Make A Change In Your Life’, with the trademark spazziness that got the Mint Chicks all the way to their Bad Buzz EP. And Kody hasn’t left that point either with the continuation of freak-out 60s pop bastardisation that proves those guys love Zappa and friends so much. Runga, on what appeared to be a Fender Rhodes, was all business – probably part of what made the unlikely duo gel so well together. Even though she for some reason struggled to tune her guitar, every other point of musicianship was in their favour. If you were ever in doubt of the skill of these two talents, Kody’s impressive drumming would have convinced you otherwise. Sadly, I missed this and other cool things during the first half of their set as I struggled to find my way to the stage. At least I timed it well enough to catch them covering ‘Hong Kong Garden’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Three non-alphabetical characters to sum up my reaction: !!! – Michael McClelland

Six60 – They’re being managed by CRS, which makes their prime slot on the top field a little more understandable, but did they deserve that spot? No. This was talent quest shit. They played a “remix” of ‘Smooth Criminal’ and then had this awful interlude moment where they all put down their instruments and danced on the stage to Dead Prez. They then played two more songs before the vocalist picked up his MPC and they preceded to do the exact same thing, except this time they danced to Snoop Dogg’s ‘What’s My Name?’ How does this pass for a performance? Embarrassing. – Hussein Moses

Iggy & The Stooges – These guys last played here back in 2006 but that was with former guitarist Ron Asheton (who died in 2009) and the band purely focused on material from their first two albums. This time it was all about Raw Power with the return of James Williamson. They rushed on stage and opened up with a succession of classic tracks – ‘Raw Power’, ‘Search & Destroy’, ‘Gimme Danger’ and ‘You’re Pretty Face Is Going To Hell’. They also threw in a couple of tracks from Kill City and ended the set with ‘Open Up and Bleed’, the memorable set closer from their classic live album Metallic K.O. Iggy was unstoppable and looked more psychotic than ever, and the band – complete with sax player Steve MacKay – were one of the loudest of the day. – Hussein Moses

Home Brew – “When I say ‘Fuck you Auckland,’ I want you to say: ‘Fuck you too, cunt.’” Fuck you Homebrew, fuck you too. Nah, it was actually this kind of hilarity that pulled me to see them on the Smokefree Hot Produce stage (which, of course, they slyly ripped the shit out of – tongues right next to their cigarettes, in cheek). Even though they got a bit of a bottling after the “fuck you” jab, I was right at the back having a good chuckle at the likes of this, ‘Benefit’ (about Homebrew’s government funding scheme) and ‘I Wish You Weren’t A Lesbian’. ‘Lesbian’ was directed at Anika Moa, this time. To our amusement, Moa directed a few things right back when she joined Homebrew on stage to share vocal duties on ‘Friday’ and ‘Fire’. The back-of-the-crowd chuckling continued – mostly because I knew if I stepped any closer, I’d have to share the song myself with the thoughtless meatheads that told me to “fuck off” every time I stepped on their close-range turf in their breeding ground, the boiler room. Homebrew was all good though. – Michael McClelland

Primal Scream – LCD Soundsystem or Primal Scream? I’m a bit of an idiot for abandoning the latter for the former halfway through. Well actually, I’m even more of an idiot for abandoning the very classy Primal Scream for the not-so-classy boiler room hordes just to catch a very obvious (yet always sentimental) single. Not going to name which one. It’s because Primal Scream were in such damn fine form at the green stage that I really never should have left. Bobby Gillespie, though he was looking (and strutting) a little like Mick Jagger in his younger days, sang the hits of 1991 with such cool I nearly thought a day hadn’t passed. He was dressed as well as the band was rehearsed, so it felt pretty cool to catch the Screamadelica album as good as it was meant to sound. It sounded like there was a little bit of dubious backing track work at play (they certainly didn’t have a full choir on stage with them), so you gotta wonder how much of their sparkle was their own doing. Or else, our own nostalgic imaginations got the better of us. Now, where’s that other Creation Records masterpiece when you need it? Come on, BDO. – Michael McClelland

M.I.A. – Hands down, the highlight. She smoked a spliff and took a shot of Patrón before ‘Teqkilla’; she stood behind a podium with eight different microphones that she used throughout her set, and she invited about two dozen people on stage for an encore of ‘Boyz’ and ‘Paper Planes’. Most of her setlist came from Kala and last years Maya, and apart from the weird exclusion of ‘Xxxo’, every track was a banger. ‘Steppin’ Up’, ‘Meds and Feds’, ‘Born Free’, ‘The Message’, ‘Bamboo Banga’, and ‘World Town’ all sounded bigger than ever. For those who were dubious about her being scheduled in the boiler room (which is now more of a canopy really) instead of the main stage needn’t have worried. It worked just right, and it was the perfect end to one of the best Big Day Out’s yet. – Hussein Moses