Today is Australia Day, our national holiday a day this year
on which everything is open because the holiday is on Monday. For Melbourne’s music fans this year
Australia Day is also the day for the Big Day Out, the biggest annual festival
in Australia.
I have found memories of the Big Day Out having attended the
great majority of the ones held in Melbourne since 1993. Nowadays, my attendance is dependent on two
things, an adequate line up and tickets not selling out before I could purchase
one. This year’s event is apparently not a sell-out but I’m also not going. There are some acts on the bill worth seeing,
Gary Clark Jr, the Crystal Castles, The Killers and some of the smaller
acts. But I don’t favour having to watch
a 90 minute Red Hot Chili Peppers main set especially given the album they’re
touring. Band Of Horses does not strike
me as a main stage act and as much as I love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums, for
some reason I simply cannot warm to Karen O’s onstage persona.
What I used to love about the BDO was the sheer diversity of
the bill. In the early years a day at
the BDO was akin to a day of musical discovery.
A typical bill would contain a mixture of acts you wanted to see, acts you
were curious to see but not sufficiently to pay for a concert ticket for a
standalone gig and acts you almost certainly would not have seen under any
other circumstances. (Of course there
are always acts on the bill that you would never go to watch under any
circumstances.) Each year, I would start out with a plan to my day but always
ended up varying it to stay or move on if the act exceeded expectations or
proved disappointing. Ken West, now the
Festivals main organiser, acknowledged in an Age E.G article yesterday that the
BDO has largely lost the people who went to the early days. He thinks it might be because they’ve aged
and would now feel out of place and wants to lure them back.
Well I’m one of those and I’m pretty sure that I’m not going because I’m getting
older; I’d like to think that my sense of musical exploration and willingness
to experience musical diversity is as strong as ever. But to my way of thinking
there are two global factors and three factors specific to Melbourne that are conspiring
against me. The first factor is the competition from other festivals which is making it harder for the organisers to attract a varied line up that would sufficiently appeal to me. When the BDO started it was almost the only one major festival around and organisers had the luxury of knocking back acts begging to be on the bill. Today it has to compete for acts annually against the national Soundwave, Harvest and Future Music festivals. From this year, it is also competing against All Tomorrow’s Parties finally with a Melbourne presence. On top of that it has to compete against The Falls Festival at Lorne each New Year’s Eve, the Meredith and Golden Plains Festivals in Country Victoria, the Roots and Blues and Splendour In The Grass festivals in New South Wales and every two years Womad in Adelaide. Many of these other festivals niche market their audience and it would appear that acts of a certain ilk, and their audiences (say hard rock acts to Soundwave) gravitate to those. For the BDO, this means some acts – Band Of Horses is a great example – that would have been a great to see on a smaller stage are thrust onto the main stage. Thus pleasure of discovery from the smaller stage is denied whilst diminishing the experience of the main stage.
This directly feeds into the second factor. As it seemingly becomes harder to attract a diverse bill, BDO organisers have increasingly resorted to paying huge sums to secure big name headliners thought to guarantee a sell-out. To justify these payments these acts – the Chili Peppers this year, Soundgarden and Kanye West last year, Tool and Rammstein the year before that, etc - are increasingly playing just the BDO without side shows. Hard core fans of these acts and not necessarily other acts on the bill buy BDO tickets to ensure they can get in practically from the moment the tickets go on sale whereas veterans like me who were not accustomed to this are waiting for the second announcement of acts and publication of the timetable before deciding whether to go. The fans of these megastar acts effectively treats the day as though they are going to see that act at Rod Laver Arena, and the overall bill is treated as though it is a 10 hour support act and the atmosphere of the day as a whole suffers as a result.
Complicating both of these factors are the Melbourne
specific factors. First has been the
loss of the original venue, The Showgrounds.
This was a wonderful venue as all of the stages were within a discrete
distance of each other which helped foster a sense of community among the
audience. This feeling has completely
dissipated in the Flemington Racecourse car park next door. The main stages are a considerable distance
away from the remaining stages and this acts as a disincentive, particularly on
hot days, to what to move around too much.
The second is a factor that has always existed in Melbourne and
is now a crucial one. All of the
Melbourne BDO venues exist among residential areas and so a strict curfew for
the outdoor stages has always applied.
As a result, the Melbourne BDO has to devise a timetable with a hour
less that that available to some of the other Australian BDO venues. Clashes between acts have always existed, but
as the overall quality of the bill declines, there has been an increased rather
than reduced risk that two of the acts you really want to see are put up
against each other. This is the main
reason why BDO veterans wait for the second announcement and timetable. If there are a lot of clashes it becomes more
appropriate to buy tickets to the side shows but the megastar instant sell outs
prevent that.
Even more significantly, are what I think might be the
expectations of the Melbourne audience from the early days compared to the rest
of the country. I suspect it is a tale
of radio stations. When the BDO first
started, the Melbourne audience was predominantly listeners of Melbourne’s
3RRR. Indeed for the first few years at
the Melbourne event, the main stage outside the main stages was known as the
3RRR stage. 3RRR is a community radio
station, staffed mainly by volunteers and funded by subscribers and it is unquestionably
this cities’ dominant broadcaster of alternative music. In doing so it has minimised the influence of
the national youth broadcaster JJJ which today is the major radio partner of
the BDO. Consequently BDO bills are
effectively JJJ bills reflecting the tastes of the Sydney and Brisbane
audiences but not necessarily that of Melbourne’s. This wouldn’t be an issue if both stations
played the same music and herein lies the problem. JJJ is essentially part of
the wider music machine and a significant portion of its playlist, whilst
alternative in nature, would simply not get a look in at RRR.
Tomorrow, I’ll take you through the BDOs I’ve attended over
the years. Meanwhile, the music played
today was all of acts who distinguished themselves in past events.
(80) Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger
Their unbelievable set in 1994 was probably the finest ever
delivered by a headliner. Even though
Superunknown, now an acknowledged hard rock classic, was just days away from
release their set borrowed heavily on this.
The opening quartet of Rusty Cage, Outshined, Slaves & Bulldozers
and Jesus Christ Pose is staggeringly good.
The rest, highlighted by the Searching With My Good Eyes Closed (the
ending of which appears to foreshadow Black Hole Sun) is almost as good. If it had the same production sound as
Superunknown, it would probably today be regarded as its equal.
(81) Helmet – Strap
It On
The previously unknown Helmet were one of two discoveries of
the inaugural Melbourne BDO in 1993.
Although their subsequent album Meantime was to garner critical
accolades, it was this album that basically established the Helmet
template. Brutal opener Repetition sets
the tone and the rest of album, especially Sinatra and FBLA, follows through
admiringly. This is the sort of album
that gives hard rock a good name.
(82) The Disposable
Heroes Of Hiphoprisy – Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury
This was the other great discovery of 1993. I’ve never viewed
this as either a rap or hip hop album.
Rather, it is an album in the tradition of rap forefather’s The Last
Poets built largely on unusual instrumentation, vocals that are half sung, half
spoken and lyrics about the social or political concerns of the day. Highlights include the now legendary and
possibly overused, Television The Drug Of A Nation, Famous And Dandy (Like Amos
‘N’ Andy) an attack on media stereo typing of Afro-Americans and the self-explanatory
title track. A cover of the Dead
Kennedys' California Uber Allies is effective too. Unfortunately, the duo went their separate
ways after just this album – guitarist Charlie Hunter who formed a jazz trio
and Michael Franti went on to form Spearhead – but it is more than possible
that this contains all they needed to say together. 
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