I’d like to start with a disclaimer. My thoughts and experiences with the Big Day Out do not reflect in any way the promoter’s views or the way they run the tour. So any mischief that we get up to on tour is completely self inflicted. And, as they say, what goes on tour, stays on tour, but I’ll let you in on a bit of it.
This year, I was lucky enough to be on the Big Day Out. The tour is three tightly packed weeks, in six cities – Auckland, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. This year, I played live in Oz, and DJed in NZ. To give you a quick run down of what “live” means, I pull my recording studio to bits, and send it on the road. I play my own music off laptops, keyboards and mixers. My show also includes a video element, and choreographed dancers and lighting.
My touring crew was as follows – Ben Suthers (sound production), Jamie Centofanti (lighting), Jo Griffin (video artist), Danielle Moylan (manager and tour manager – “T.M.” if you will), Nina Silva and Patty Katts (dancers) and Danny North (stage tech and all round trouble shooter/maker). It was great touring with a crew, as most of the year I am on the road touring as a solo DJ.
Big Day Out is a chance for us dance music types to pretend to be rock and roll. Being on tour basically reduces your existence to the tour mentality. Every day is broken down into being either a “travel day”, “gig day” or a “rest day”. The only other thing you have to worry about is the pre show parties and after show parties. On the travel day, you have the pre-show party, then gig day you have the after show party, and the rest days, you just have a party because it’s not a gig day and a travel day.
Big Day Out also knows how to look after an artist. The production is always superb – each artist is allocated a dressing room and a pre-requested rider. I have always thought that an artists/DJ’s performance is a reflection of the mental state they are in, and if they are running around because passes or riders or technical stuff hasn’t been sorted properly, it reflects in their performance. The promoters know it works in their favour to treat them well, because then they get the best show possible. Works for me!
All of the production and most of the bands all stay in the same hotels together. This leads to some good hotel bar shenanigans. And some interesting room charges. The Big Day Out production team has been pretty much the same for several years now, and they are like one big family, including the yelling and the screaming. No, they are actually are well-oiled machine, who run each stage with the highest of standards, although they might say otherwise. I always find it more fun to hang out with the crews than the other bands, because they’re not big egos who think they are God’s gift to music. Not that all bands are like that of course. And you may be surprised to know that the crew’s are much more rock and roll. Mainly because as well as travel and gig days, they have setup days and pack up days, and are so sleep deprived, they go nuts.
Back to the music…. I thought the line up of bands was pretty solid this year, although there were no Courtney Love or Marilyn Manson celeb types. My favourite act ever was there – Underworld, down the East coast. Their shows bring tears to my eyes. If there is any band that I would aspire to, it would be them – they are so musical and their shows rock! The way they set their shows up technically is very cool too, but I wont go into any techno dribble here.
It seems whenever you are working on the day, you never get to see many other bands. Even if you spend 8 hours there, by the Perth show, you saying “Fuck, I haven’t seen anything!”. The bands I saw were Kraftwerk, Underworld, Luke Slater, Resin Dogs, Queens of the Stone Age, You am I, Chicks on Speed (which I renamed Chicks with PMS). I would have like to have seen The Music, Foo Fighters, Jane’s Addiction.
Show days would start about 10 or 11am, when I’d get up and have vegemite on toast and a coffee at the hotel. Sometimes, I dj’d at a club the night before, so the berocca might come out as well. I’d floss around til about midday, when I’d meet up with Jo, Nina, and Patty, and we’d all head down to the venue. Everything takes about three times longer than you expect it to – finding the room, sussing out the dressing rooms, getting the rider, making sure everything was working on stage, and little things like stage layouts, fans, cameras. Suddenly we’ve got half an hour before we go on. I normally went on about 4 or 5pm.
Playing live is so different to DJing, because you have a thousand little things going on in your head – which sound is on which channel, what key each track is in, eleven tracks with up to 2 dozen sounds in each, and I made sure I knew where every single one was coming from and going to. Not quite throwing on a record, but that’s the beauty of it. I actually get the nervous rush before going on. Musically, it was a bit of a risk too, because I was playing lots of new material – stuff that people didn’t know, plus there was some less banging tracks at the start.
Show goes on, show comes off. Each city was different, but I have to say, by Perth, all the glitches are ironed out, and I always feel like I’m ready to begin. Crowd wise, I think my favourite city was Perth, and Sydney for the sheer size of it. Gold Coast – by the end of the day, you’ve eaten so much dust you can hardly breathe, although the more dust you create, the more people have danced. Plus my mum was there, so that’s always interesting. Adelaide was a fun show for me, I let loose, and one of my dancers had her first performing hangover. In Melbourne I felt a definite connection with the crowd.
As far as meeting other bands, I didn’t do much of that, although Kraftwerk and I had a mutual admiration and respect for each other, and I met a couple of them, and did the techno babble thing. It was always interesting watching the crowds react in their shows. They seemed to go down really well in Auckland, Melbourne and Perth. The band that surprised me the most, in a good way, was the Resin Dogs. In a couple of the cities, they had the biggest crowds in the Boiler Room.
I also have to thank the Vines. I was on in the Boiler Room about the same time they were main stage, and I don’t think I would have got such a good turn out, if they weren’t playing as well. (bitch, bitch). No, honestly, I don’t think they have really established much of a fan base here. They haven’t done the Enmore’s and Metro gigs for years, like You Am I or Grinspoon.
So somehow, my crew and I went thru my rider very easily every time – which was 2 bottles of Stoli, 24 Crownies, and various non-alcoholic beverages. Then the day ends, you realise you haven’t eaten, you stagger back to the hotel, have a shower and head down to the foyer for, um, drinks. The after party preferred drink is mango daiquiris, and at the Duxton in Perth, they pre-order crates of mangos especially. This year we managed to drink them out fairly early in the night. And some time you end up with a bunch of people in someone’s room, drinking their mini bar and…..
And then the sun comes up.
It’s a travel day. Ergh! Out come the dark glasses…And it starts all over again. But that’s what’s so good about it. You’re reduced to dealing with “now” – “today”.
Rock and Roll, I love it!
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