ALRIGHT!
So I went to the Big Day Out.
Then Sarah asked me how it was... act-by-act :(.
So I decided to tell her how it was. Act by Act. This is the full excerpt of my Big Day Out impressions in our correspondence. (with some embellishments and stream-of-consciousness narrative style)
Lanie Lane - Really good, it's like classic americana kind of music, she wears vintage dresses and looks like a 1950's girl, betty boop kind of music and has a voice a bit like Katy Steele from Little Birdy, but her music is very retro. Band was really tight and good. Really enjoyed it.
Parades - Awesome! Gotta love electronic, kind of sweeping rock and roll and falsetto harmonies. Sydney represent.
Little Red- Great energy. Really nice harmonies, very cool soul-pop-rock-sound. The lead singer(s) (since they kind of rotate) were very charismatic, especially the Asian-Australian bassplayer who wore a floral blouse. But they all could sing and it was really rad.
Jim Jones revue - that was really intense! Uh, old school kind of rock n' roll, but it's got a bit of a punk edge to it so it's played loud, fast, rough and he screams at you. The musicians were really good and they were all dressed in shirts and vests and stuff.. so they looked like guys from the 60s. Jim Jones is a great lead vocalist, really rock n' roll - like he's aging (or middle aged, rather), he probably drinks a lot, and has fathered a lot of illigitmate children.
Washington - I've seen her live show before and she did a pretty good performance at the big day out. The sound wasn't mixed very well so sometimes you couldn't hear her vocals. I liked her album launch show a lot more.
Lupe Fiasco - This was interesting. The crowd was crazy and he completely rearranged his show for a festival context, so instead of laid-back, intelligent hip-hop it became rap-rock-punk. But there was heaps of energy. I couldn't hear what he was rapping about for most of the time, but it was still fun.
Angus and Julia stone - Probably the biggest crowd I've experienced for the smaller stages. They sounded amazing! Really relaxing after Lupe Fiasco... until I went to
Crystal Castles - wow. That was crazy. And scary. Alice Glass, the singer, broke her ankle, so she did the show on crutches, hopping around on one leg, head-banging and then screaming at the audience while all this fuzzy, messy, dark and distorted electronic blips and blops just start booming everywhere in the boiler room (which was pitch black btw). Lots of white strobes. It's like some sort of rave with phantoms and witches and ghosts... that's probably how I'd describe it.
I saw plan B, which was pretty awesome. He had these big soul ladies doing big soul backing vocals and everyone on stage was dressed to the nines in vests, ties and shirts and leather shoes (black dresses for the soul ladies). They played this motown set and then played My Girl, which they turned into GNARLY dubstep. Oh yeah they had a beatboxer, that was pretty amazing.
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Sounded really, really good! Really cool AMericany hippie and folk and country and blues and rock. It's a really huge band, and the vibes were good. I went into a dance circle (not a death circle) and did rain dances with random people. That was cool.
I saw a bit of Sia, that was interesting. I was pretty far back, so I checked out Black Milk (a hip hop quartet of keyboards, drummer, DJ and MC) on one of the smaller stages. That was really cool because there wasn't that many people watching, but everyone who was there was up next to the front of the stage (maybe there waS 30-40 PEOPL?) and really getting into it.
I saw LCD soundsystem and nearly danced myself to death. They sounded really good and the band was so huge and there were so many synthesisers and instruments everywhere. The lead singer, James Murphy, was really polite and gracious to the audience... which was quite cool. I think it's a shame that it's the last time they'll play in sydney.
That was pretty much it. I caught a bit of wolfmother, lowrider, the vines, a bit of MIA (which was kind of shit because the sound was terrible and loud and you couldn't see anything). So we left early.
Normal programming to resume soon.
Shout outs to my C-block CREW for coming along. Spec shouts outs to my Sydney Festival waterbottle and free cold water taps for helping me survive the 35+ degree heat. No thanks to CSS who had to hold their concert at the same time as Lupe Fiasco.
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