Monthly Archives: January 2004

Big Day Out 2004

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First I will complain about the train. My brother and I got to the Mt Eden station and waited. I heard other people saying they’d been waiting for over an hour. After about half an hour the train showed up, but it was completely full so no one could get on. I said, “this is fucking bullshit, maaaan,” and felt really angry with society. We walked on into Queen Street and caught the bus.

This time ten years ago I was 19 years old and excitedly exploring the very first Auckland Big Day Out. Now I’m older and I think my gig-going stamina may be waning slightly. After last year’s BDO I felt really worn out. But I don’t want to be one of those elderly people who ends up only being able to survive the Big Day Out from the air conditioned comfort of a corporate box, enjoying cold beer. Yeah, it’s about being hardcore, man.

The Darkness
I’ve somehow managed to avoid hearing many of their songs, so I didn’t have much to cling to, but the big, fun rockness was really fun. I think this is what the Datsuns would like to be, but won’t because they also want to be taken more seriously.

Then were went off to get some food and ate that in front of the Lily Pad stage. There was a thing possibly called “Straight eye for a queer bloke” which seemed to involved dressing up a fellow from the audience as a typical Aussie bloke. I like how the Lily Pad provides entertainment for people eating their Hari Krishna vegetarian real meal deal plates.

Something for Kate
This was totally not on my schedule. We were checking out the Green and Essential stages. Zed was just finishing off their set, then Something For Kate were on. (Most people were off seeing the Black Eyed Peas, but they can kiss my arse. They had a ton of goodwill from “Where is the love” but they blew it with that terrible “Shut up” song. Maybe hearing “Weekend” would have make it ok, but it wasn’t appealing.). Paul from Something For Kate thanked the audience for choosing to be in front of that stage. They were surprisingly rockier than I had expected. They did a cool cover of REM’s “The one I love”, and they played “Three dimensions”, which is probably my favourite Something For Kate song.

Peaches
Then it was time to get hot and sweaty in the techno tent with Peaches. It was pretty much the same as last night’s show, only with a whole lot more people. I noticed a few bogans craning their necks looking for rudie nudie girlie bits. The virtual duet with Iggy Pop seemed to work much better in the tent. Oh, it was only two years ago that I saw Peaches performing in front of a tiny audience on the Lily Pad stage.

Dandy Warhols
I was looking forward to seeing them, but somehow it just didn’t work out. Their coolness in recorded form was not quite coming across live. They didn’t suck, but they just didn’t engage me enough to please me.

The Datsuns
I don’t like the Datsuns music. It’s like there’s one kind of song they know how to write, and they just keep doing variations of that. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They had a huge crowd and I realised that they pretty much had the position that Shihad normally have, the big, cool New Zealand rock band that everyone loves. Ye olde Shihad should note this.

Muse
By this stage I was getting a little disillusioned. I sent my brother away to get some food, and tried to find an angle to dig Muse’s set. They that That Song and The Other Song, which were both cool. And there was some nice keyboard stuff. But that was about it. Ok.

The Strokes
I was sitting down, starting on my curry and rice when The Strokes started played. Suddenly I realised that I there was no way I could sit through their set over on the other side of the stadium. I scoffed down the curry and quickly made my way over to the Strokes side. As well as having a pretty good view of the stage, there was also a giant video screen showing various scenes from the stage. Occasionally the video operators got overexcited and used cheesy video effects, and sometimes they mistakenly thought that the audience would rather see stuff like a guy in the audience with a Cat In The Hat hat instead of the Strokes, but most times they got it right.

The Strokes were brilliant. Everyone around me was dancing around and singing and being happy. The Strokes sounded like they do on their albums and they looked like they do in their videos. Julian claimed to be drunk, and he was charming and funny. He taunted the Metallica fans waiting over on the other stage, causing them to give him the finger en masse.

They played “Together Alone” which is my favourite Strokes tune. I felt very glad to have been in the audience for a such an enjoyable show. Finally, finally, the Big Day Out was picking up the pace.

Metallica
I wasn’t planning on seeing Metallica, but then they started playing and they were so cool. There had been heaps of guys walking around all day with Metallica t-shirts on. They were all packed up the front of the stage, but the rest of the stadium was full of people who maybe weren’t Metallica fans, but were interested in these metal godz.

They worked through a number of songs from their older albums and new ones from “St Anger”. Lighters were waved during “Nothing else matters”. The grand finale involved massive fireworks, explosion and GIGANTIC FIREBALLS. And then they played “One” and it was good. But there was more. “Enter Sandman” was played, with a huge burst of fireworks when the loud bit kicks in at the start.

Metallica were so rockingly great that I have totally forgiven them for that Napster business a few years ago.

I got home expecting to be completely worn out, but oddly enough I feel about the same as I normally do at the end of the day. Could it be that I’m in much better shape than I was last year, and that I’m not so old and haggered?

Kick it

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I just got back from the Peaches show at the King’s Arse. Wicked.

1. I missed the Coolies, but I might be able to catch them at the Big Day Out. The Cortinas were the other support group and I arrived about halfway through their set. They were cool. I think I’m only mentioning this out of some sort of feeling of obligation to mention the support acts. But they weren’t why I was there. I was there for Peaches.

2. Peaches rocked. She rocked so hard that the random guy standing behind me gave me a shoulder massage halfway through. She had a really simple set-up. She sang along to the backing track and was sometimes joined by two dancing girls. She performed most of the cool songs from “The teaches of Peaches” and “Fatherfucker”. For “Kick it,” the duet with Iggy Pop, a giant screen was brought out and a film of Iggy singing the song was played so that Peaches could sing along with him. She’s got fuzzy thotch, y’know.

The show was very joyful and celebratory. There were a few dudes in the audience who’d just showed up to see some sexy laydeez, and a few bFM hipster types, but most people were just there to have a really good time. My absolute favourite song of the night was the karaoke version of “Fuck the pain away”. Fangirls were picked out of the audience to sing along with it and they all knew the words and they all performed it really well.

Seeing Peaches makes me want to move to Berlin and become a performance artist.

If the Boiler Room isn’t living up to its name too much tomorrow, I think I’ll see Peaches again.

3. So, I arrived at the King’s Arse and stood around at the front for a bit then decided to go up the back where it was less crowded and hopefully a bit cooler. I was working my way through the crowd when I came up to two fellows. I was having trouble finding somewhere to put my feet and stepped on the foot of the guy on the right, and ended up having to kind of touch my hand on the other guy’s arm to get through. I looked up to be polite and give a friendly excuse me and realised who I was walking between: Julian and Nikolai from the Strokes.

Yeah.

When I finally got closer to the back of the bar I saw Nick from the Strokes standing a little bit in front of me. Later I was out in the garden bar and by then the whole band was out there, hanging out. Julian, who is beautiful, was looking at the rain drops falling down, lit by the outdoor lighting. He’s very tall and skinny. So is Nick. Fabrizio is really hot, but everyone knows that. Albert looks cooler in person, and Nikolai still has girly hair. They were all excellently dressed.

Most people around were pretending not to notice them, but was also sneaking glances in their direction. A few people had photos taken while others were just happy to be in the same area code.

4. All the street parking was taken, so I thought I might have to park blocks away and walk to the King’s Arse in the rain. Then as I circled back, a van was leaving a space right across from the King’s Arse. Perfect.

Ex-Shortland Street star in Britney video shocker

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I was hooning around on CNN.com and came across an article about the new Britney Spears video. It’s purported to be a bit of revenge on Justin, with Britney playing a femme fatale (or as close to that as Britney can manage), who is trying to poison her ex-boyfriend. She’s trying to poison him because the song is called “Toxic”. Geddit?

But here’s the exciting part. The boyfriend is Stuart Neilson. Yes, the floppy fringed son of Marge from “Shortland Street” has done good and become a video boy.

Stuart Neilson or “Martin Henderson” as he seems to prefer being called these days, was the love interest in the American remake of “The Ring”. Also, about ten years ago, back when he was on “Shortland Street” he was at this party full of East Auckland hipsters including my cousin. She told me that no one there liked Master Neilson or would talk to him and he ended up spending most of the evening on his own.

But surely his new role in the Britney video proves that he has made it as a big shot Hollywood actor and will be the next Russell Crowe.

Ja Rule is said to be worried about this threat to his position as the king of video actoring.

Notorious M.A.L.L.

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I was waiting in line at an ATM at St Lukes and noticed that the fellow standing nearby playing with his cellphone was none other than Savage from Deceptikonz. As tempted as I was to break into the chorus of “Stop, Drop and Roll,” instead I stayed incognito.

After I’d finished with the ATM, I was hobbling along in my blister inducing shoes (I’m breaking them in, very slowly, very painfully) and I noticed I was catching up to Savage. He was walking really slowly, like he had sore feet too. Maybe the burden of fame is crushing down upon his being.

It’s said that television makes people look fatter than they are in real life, but he looked fatter than he does on TV (That’s ok ’cause he’s doing all he can just to lose some weight, trying to feel healthy and get in shape.) But, not surprisingly, he looked a lot shorter. He also proved one of the “What Not To Wear” pieces of advice: if you’re short, wearing long shorts just make them look like short trousers, which tricks the eye into thinking that your legs are shorter than they really are. He also had some white cloth tied around his head.

We were both headed up the escalator and as he got up to the second level, a group of teenage boys were sitting on some seats in front of the escalators. They all saw Savage, recognised him and their eyes bulged and jaws dropped. They had a quick conversation that seemed to be like “Is that him? OMG, it’s him! Let’s follow him!” and, keeping a safe distance, they followed him down to the other end of the mall.

See, I’ve always maintained that hanging out at the mall is really hardcore, and this just proves it.

Cheese is evil

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I’d heard about cheese nightmares. A friend of mine claimed that if he had cheese before he went to bed he’d end up having really freaky nightmares, but I didn’t think too much about it.

Last night I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep. I was sort of in a half awake, half asleep state. I was thinking about various things, and sometimes my thoughts turned into dreams. I was thinking about walking along the side of a harbour. Suddenly Christopher Walken appeared in my dream and his face suddenly became hideously disfigured.

The cheese!

About two hours before I went to bed I’d had a fairly small about – only about 25 grams – of Kapiti gouda with cumin seeds. It was messing with my head!

I lay in bed wondering what to do. Every time I closed my eyes I kept experiencing weird sensations. I decided that the best antidote for this evil cheese was some berries. I trudged into the kitchen and finished off the blueberries, raspberries and boysenberries in the fridge then got back into bed.

The weird dreams stopped.

I have decided that cheese will no longer play an active part my diet.