What runs through peoples heads I wonder? As they collect their change for the train, Big Day Out ticket, Australian flag cape, fake Australian flag tattoos, southern cross boob tubes and shorts?
"I am Australian. I will wear my flag. I will let people know I am Australian. You could be too but...I'm just letting you know. Today. Who I be." Somewhere in between the Cronulla riots and the
ensuing controversy surrounding the banning of the Australian flag at the 2007 Big Day Out, wearing our nation's colours at music festivals became something different. Ugly. Jingoist. Stupid. And not because it used to mean much of anything in particular, but because before the riots...no one really did it. Meaning that those who take up the attire now, do so knowing - presumably - of its by-product relationship to the block-headed patriotism, racist overtones and connotations of violence that currently accompany it. At some point the flag needs to revert back to its original intention surely, but until then those that shout about it in public ("Australian and proud of it mate") and wear the flag like a badge of honour (always in packs, always accessorised with matching tatts, flags, hats, sunnies, thongs, shorts, etc) stand as some blurry grey statement of one nation in solidarity. Against, presumably, those who aren't. Pauline Hanson would flicker.
The 2009 Big Day Out was the first in recent memory to fall on Australia Day in Melbourne, and as such you couldn't walk three metres without bumping into an Aussie bloke or sheila that needed to tell you about it. Such feelings also filtered awkwardly from the stage, with artists like Mike Patton, The Ting Tings, TV on the Radio, Neil Young and My Morning Jacket all trying to rouse the crowd with some sort of mention of it. Trust Patton and Co to find the absurd, donning full cricket whites and cricket pads, dropping lines like "It's Australia day right?! You patriotic cocksuckers". My Morning Jacket and Neil Young instead quietly sported the Aboriginal flag on their tee shirts. Which was either a hint to Invasion Day or as a friend said, "they must be giving those things out backstage".
The Melbourne Big Day Out didn't sell out this year, despite every other national date doing so. Just last week promoters claimed they were 10,000 tickets short. A strange turn for a festival that routinely sells out in minutes. It's either a "the people have spoken" type swipe at the awful conditions of last year's swirling dust storm in the Flemington carpark, or a "saturated market" jab at the idea of a 63 year old rocker headlining a line-up of names that, for the most part, have all been here before.
Bummer dudes. It was a breeze to move around the festival grounds. Meaning more than ever the Big Day Out functioned as it should; a comfortable way to see the maximum number of bands in a short a time as possible There was an abundance of lush grass on site, more shade, a better proliferation of food stalls and seemingly more thought given to the layout of the back stages. With 10,000 tickets still on the printing press it also meant that the forty or so puffy English men scalping tickets all up and down Flemington road weren't making much chop. (Where do these puddles of organised Poms come from? Facebook?) Seeing a bunch of red-faced poisonous fools watching their tickets shrink in value before their eyes was an unintended pleasure.
The voice of Ian Kenny could turn an open mic night into an arena show, so it's no surprise that early on,
Birds of Tokyo sound massive on the main stage. Even when Kenny's equipped with an acoustic guitar. Likewise it's not hard to mistake Brendan Supression's ocker tones wafting from over the back of the Lilyworld/merch tent/food stall scrapheap. The
Eddy Current Supression Ring frontman is all jerks and jabs on the Essential stage, thrusting his mic like a shiv while he channels whatever it is that the band are on about. Not so much meat and potatoes as meat and red cordial. There's some salt and pepper in their audience today, presumably biding time til Neil Young and it adds to the idea that ECSR are the next name in a long line of dirty Aussie rock to be accepted to the history books. Bassist Rob Solid bounces and laughs like it's still weird that his group is playing to about a thousand people in the middle of the day at a national music festival but then that's why it all works. It's fun and they mean it.
The Ting Tings score the "wrong stage" award of the festival, as thousands of people swarm to the grassy cul de sac of the lonesome Green stage to see the British duo. (They should have been swapped with System of a Down frontman
Serj Tankian, who later played to an embarrassingly small crowd in the main arena.) Their set-up is as manufactured as their music (while the band sport just a guitar and a drum kit, bass, keys, percussion, loops and backing vocals appear in the mix as well) but it doesn't matter much. From the moment the snare cracks in opener 'We Walk', the crowd is a mass of arms and bobbing heads. Frontwoman Katie White seems to have taken on role model proportions amongst the ladies, and the crowd is predominantly female. A point not missed by a gaggle of male photographers scrambling to high points in the pit trying to get chest shots of two well-endowed chicks on shoulders. There's a flag-covered fuckwit who's climbed onto the roof of the mixing tent also, being pelted with empty bottles. Full cans, people! 'That's Not My Name' gets maybe the biggest bounce of the day.
Black Kids are down one Youngblood sibling thanks to a bout of illness, but it doesn't stop them being as cheery as hell. The blog backlash they experienced at the hands of influential online media in 2008 isn't completely deserved it seems. They're supposed to be fun, stupid. Back on the Green stage and despite standing front and centre for New York list-toppers
TV on the Radio, wind is playing havoc with their sound. Like someone playing an MP3 through their headphones a metre away and then waving it from side to side. Tunde Adebimpe still has some of the best pipes going and he wrings them for all they're worth. As the set progresses from opener 'Young Liars' through to early crowd favourite 'Wolf Like Me' the sound quality picks up, but it still isn't quite enough to catch the cinematic nuances that lend so much to this unique outfit. They seem to be having fun though, joking with the crowd throughout, yelling playfully at each other. By the time they arrive, 'Red Dress', 'DLZ' and yes, 'Staring at the Sun', are excellent distractions from the now scalding conditions.
The hirsute
My Morning Jacket pick up pace throughout their set, but playing to a dwindling crowd a third of the size of the Ting Tings just two sets earlier seems a little deflating. There was a glimpse of the fabled epic shows the band is legendarily capable of, but they need darkness, or more time, or more drugs or maybe just more people around to really take off. Perhaps there's also something inherently Americana at their roots that doesn't translate as immediately in Australia. Still, Jim James voice sounds fucking incredible and as they loosen they start to stretch and connect. 'Highly Suspicious' included. I can't stick around for too much of
The Drones thanks to oncoming sunstroke (the Essential stage faces directly into the sun y'know) but a healthy crowd had assembled to watch Gareth and Co wring the necks of their instruments, nowhere more so than on the always epic 'Shark Fin Blues'. Meanwhile a member of Little Red watches from side of stage having an epic mind party of his own. Though
Cut Copy have four members on stage these days they still seem to rely (much like the aforementioned Ting Tings) on a swathe of programmed backing tracks to get them across the line. There's no problem with this per se, but it does make them sound pretty much exactly the same every time. There's a a wobbly, sleepy-eyed man with no top on and a flag tied round his neck, covered in zinc slogans like "I love everybody" and the mysterious "Simon", dancing happily and, surely, not giving a shit.
PART 2: HOT CHIP, FANTOMAS, ARCTIC MONKEYS, NEIL YOUNG, THE PRODIGY, FASCINATING OBSERVATIONS AND MORE.(Pics: Tim O'Connor)