RHUM

I felt like an egg in an outdoor paint commercial, if I stood in the sun for one more second I was going to drop to the ground and fry like somebody’s breakfast. The heat made the whole day feel mediated and distant, even standing in the moshpit at The Mars Volta I felt like I was watching a band on television from the inside of an oven.

Sydney Big Day Out crowds have a reputation for being nasty so it was no surprise that I was elbowed, stepped on, spat at and generally shoved around. Lisa Mitchell was pelted with coins until she stopped mid-song and threatened to leave the stage. I wouldn’t have blamed her. What was surprising was the amount of people wearing macramé dresses, well it was either macramé or crochet, I can’t tell you which because I’m not a master of the bogan arts.

Mastadon, The Decemberists, The Mars Volta and Muse all cranked out contemporary forms of prog and I’m not sure the crowd liked it. The audience was disconnected from the music, sure they were dancing but they were facing away from the stage and dancing the shuffle. They shuffled no matter what the music. They shuffled to Lily Allen, Mastadon, Dizzee Rascal, Muse and even Rise Against. I must have missed the memo about there being only one all purpose dance step now.
 
The heat was so intense it forced me to retreat into available shade as often as possible. I hid under a stairwell to see Regular John. Rolling Stone got it right when they described Regular John as ‘the perfect distillation of everything good that’s happening since rock found a heavy, fuzzy imagination in the late sixties.’
 
Caleb Goman from Regular John described Big Day Out as ‘A festival for people who don’t really like music, the crowd come just to be a part of it and they ruin it.’
 
Temper Trap might have been good but I couldn’t get near enough to hear them. The crowd surging around the smaller Green Stage swelled out into the walkways where they slammed into each other, threw cans and water bottles at my head and elbowed everything their arms could reach.
 
Mastadon had a bigger stage and a smaller more organised crowd. Standing in a crowd of Mastadon fans is exactly how I have always imagined the AGM of anarchist’s society might be. The slam circles were the best possible examples of organised chaos.
 
Dizzee Rascal was as hard as fuck, like amplified high-speed hammers assaulting my semi-heat stroked brain. He did more running on the spot than I’ve seen since Playschool. Lily Allen dropped the volume a little and is my only sound quality complaint for the day. Allen looked unnaturally fresh, as though she was performing from inside a bubble of cold air piped directly from London.
 
Jet, Powderfinger and Devendra Banhart were disappointing. They played competent yet boring sets. The crowd was drunk and disinterested, wandering aimlessly from stage to stage. Bluejuice deserved a bigger crowd, if only to bear witness to their matching yellow unitards.
 
Peaches provided the best moment of the day, she said ‘Hold up your hands. As Jesus walked on water Peaches will now walk on you.’ and she did.
 
Muse were commanding. They had lights, they had lasers, giant screens with wavy underwater effects and the bonus of playing to a crowd blanketed in darkness. One day science will prove that bands sound better after sunset, until then we will continue to need hats.
 
I finished the day sweating for the twelfth hour in a row in the Boiler Room. I was surrounded by hordes of youth shuffling to Groove Armada like their lives depended on it. I think they must have been tired by this time. I can’t think of any other reason for why they stopped trying to push me over and throw things at my head. 22 January 2010 Big Day Out Sydney

photos to come