Ever since I met Vero on the Magic Bus two months ago, we have been planning to go to Big Day Out - a festival that travels around New Zealand and Australia and brings awesome bands together for a fantastic day in the park. The only show in New Zealand is in Auckland, and people came from all over the country to attend. When I was boarding the bus to Auckland from Napier, a bunch of other people were also heading north for the show. I felt a bit of a collective energetic buzz over it, imagine what it would have been like for the Rugby World Cup!
We started the day off properly, and drank some of my beloved Scrumpy in a city park before taking the shuttle bus down to Mt Smart Stadium. It was a cool set up, with three stages set throughout the area, each with their own charm. But we were immediately attracted to the FOAM TENT! I don't know why, but I have always thought it would be really cool to go to a foam party. This one was outdoors and well lit, so it seemed a bit less sketchy than the ones I've heard about in clubs. We slipped around, blowing bubbly foam at each other and dancing to bad pop music for a while. It cleaned us right up.
Next, we went to check out Six60, a New Zealand band based out of Dunedin. They're pretty popular here in their homeland, and no matter what kind of music you like, I'm pretty sure you'll like this song, which is a pretty nice tune to listen to when you're far away from home like me:
After that, we lazed around for a while in the sun, and then wandered over to the skate stage. Now I realize the heyday of skateboarding has come and gone, but apparently it is a staple at every BDO. To make it ridiculous and cool, Tony Hawk was skateboarding. Tony Hawk! My reaction was of the "what is this I can't even" variety.
From about 5 o'clock on, we were booked solid in terms of bands that we wanted to see. To start it off was Kimbra, a New Zealand born singer who recently won best new Australian artist of the year. Go figure. Her biggest claim to fame is being the supporting artist in Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know", but she just had a solid set full of her own music. Such a tiny woman, such a powerful voice. From Kimbra, we ran to Bassnectar who I absolutely love. I've already seen him twice, but that didn't take away from the music. I'm used to seeing him play around 1 AM though, so it was weird to see this creature of the night play at 6 in the evening. It took the Kiwis a while to warm up, but once they did he had the crowd in his pocket. Next up: Girl Talk. I saw Girl Talk play in Edmonton at Sonic Boom a few years ago, and he's one of those acts that is always a good show. He skillfully mixes pop songs together to create a mass dance party with songs everyone knows. Sadly, this was the part of the day when the people around me in the crowd had collectively reached sloppy day drunk status, which is never fun when you're sober. Luckily I'm well trained to avoid people falling on/stepping on/making out on me. Girl Talk likes making everything more exciting by throwing whatever he can at the audience: balloons, giant plastic crowd surfing tubes, streamers, toilet paper.. The toilet paper was probably the most exciting prop as those sloppy drunk girls would wrap themselves in it and dance like it was the sexiest thing that ever happened. Girls, it's toilet paper.
After two hardcore dancing sets, we needed a break and headed to the stage with the grassy field to watch Foster the People. I have listened to their album, but still am only really familiar with their two radio hits. It was a great set, and the band still seemed so shocked with their overnight success after Pumped Up Kicks took off- it was kind of adorable. They finished their set with the mass hit, but changed the end to a sort of live dubstep remix of the song. Very cool.
Royksopp was very interesting live. They all wore different costumes for each song, which usually had a creepy as mask. They played my favourite song early on, which gave me the energy boost needed to dance for the rest of the set. From there we ran over to see Soundgarden. For me, Soundgarden is one of those bands that I know a lot of their songs but don't really care about one way or another. Still, they rocked the main stage. Vero headed into the massive crowd, but I was feeling like I might just fall asleep in the bleachers where I was sitting and listened from afar.
I decided to ditch Soundgarden early to watch the final show of the evening at the Boiler Room stage. Nero was playing, and it was one of those bands that I had heard about but never actually listened to. I thought I'd go to the back sitting area to watch, but when I arrived at the stage, the two dj's popped up from behind their soundboard and started a ridiculous set. I immediately started dancing. Vero and I brought glowsticks that had strings attached and naturally, it turned into this really bad poi dancing but I couldn't stop. I had been going hard for ten hours at this point, but I guess the music inspired me and I just danced harder than ever. Such a crazy amount of energy. I've never felt that before, it was slightly otherworldly. I hope I get to that point again someday. Dancing like a crazy person is one of my favourite releases.
Other than the fantastic music, the biggest success of the day was not spending any money at the festival! Other than the silly ticket. Worst part of the festival was cutting the bottom of my foot open early on in the day and then dancing on it all day. It's a shallow cut and never bled, but the fact that its on the bottom of my foot and I'm already limping doesn't bode well. Especially considering I have no time to stay off it to help it heal. The cut will probably be around for a while. Damn injuries. Oh well. A little pain for an amazing day with music? Worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment