Brisbane's Big Day Out Sideshows

A recurring issue on my blog is the lack of festival sideshows in Brisbane. Big Day Out this year are doing an alright effort to overcome that. Sure we don't get the massive amount of sideshows Melbourne and Sydney gets, and we even miss the big ones (no Soundgarden and the Bronx... *cries*).

However, we are getting these:

Hip-hop guys Das Rascist at the Zoo January 24. 18+  (This song reminds me of my younger, more confused days were I spent a lot of time at that store).
My Chemical Romance at Eatons Hill Hotel January 24 (I was obsessed with this album when it came out. They lost me quickly after it). And if you're wondering, Eatons Hill Hotel is north of Brisbane, even further out then the Entertainment Centre.
Former Sepultura and Soulfly boys in the Cavalera Conspiracy will play the HiFi February 6.
Foster the People play the Tivoli January 23 (my vote for the song most likely to get stuck in my head and annoy the crap out of me 2011).

Big Day Out first announcement: as it happened

For 2012's Big Day Out, the promoters took a leaf from the Soundwave festival school of promotion: they leaked the artists one at a time over Twitter. However, unlike Soundwave, they did it over 2 nights, instead of just whenever they hell the feel like it for months at a time. And now, here's the list, with my initial reactions as I sat at my computer:

But before we start, let us not forget what you will see a lot of during your day if you do decide to go: bad patriotism tattoos.

Why yes, that is the map of Australia. And yes, the interior is the Australian flag over a bunch of $100 bills. And yes, apparently Tasmania isn't part of Australia. (I took this picture during Matt and Kim this year. Couldn't stop laughing).

Anyway, the first announcement, with my reactions:

• Best Coast "huh.. first band announced, and I'll probably want to see them. This could be a good year... maybe..."
• Foster the People "Triple J listener's cliche band of the moment at the festival."
• Cage the Elephant "Yes, I'll see them. They're good and a lot of people won't see them! They'll be on a side stage outside of the crowds"
• The Getaway Plan "Christ I saw this band like 100 times in 2004-2008. Pass"
• Girl Talk "An artist that will get me to the boiler room this year!"
• Frenzal Rhomb "Already seen them twice in the last year, they must be desperate for money now!"
• OFWGKTA "Weren't they here a few months back? Probably still trying to cash in their short-lived earning potential. Don't want to see them though"
• The Jezabels "They are becoming one of those Australian bands that play every festival now!"
• Battles "YES! Highlight of a Big Day Out a few years ago... But are they as good without their old frontman now?"
• Architecture in Helsinki "They wrapped up a tour only a few days ago. Back on it already?!"
• Mariachi El Bronx "OH HELL YES. I hope that means the Bronx does a sideshow too!"
• Parkway Drive "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
• Boy And Bear "More Australian music content filler. Should not be as high up over some of these great overseas bands"
• Hilltop Hoods "well it's not a Big Day Out unless the Hilltop Hoods play... is it?"
• Royskopp "Was not expecting this... More of a V-Fest or Laneway band, but could be excellent late in the afternoon"
• The Living End "It's not an Australian music festival unless they play it"
• My Chemical Romance "They've never been the same since their first album. Glad I saw them in lots of small club shows when I was younger"
• Kasabian "ohhhhhhhhhhh yes. Excellent festival band"
• Soundgarden "wait.. Back up. WHAT?! They're back together? HECK YES"
• Kanye West "not a logical choice. He was too expensive for Splendour (yet still played it) and they didn't even get close to selling out. Just gives me a reason to leave early"

So will I go? At the start it was a definite no. Now it's a maybe. Soundgarden together again will probably be the one band that tips me over the edge into "fuck it, I'm going." But we'll wait for the second announcement.

January 22. Gold Coast Parklands

Big Day Out news

So, as someone pointed out to me, Big Day Out is this weekend. Woe! I haven't got anything organised yet! And there's a lot of conflicts in my schedule for the day. But unluckily, one of them has just been resolved.

The conflict was Black Keys/Crystal Castles/Matt and Kim.

Well it turns out the Black Keys are just gosh darn worn out. So much so that they are cancelling the Big Day Out and sideshow tours. So no Big Day out on Sunday and no Tivoli on Tuesday. Slackers.

The Black Keys are sorry to announce the cancellation of the New Zealand and Australian tour including all appearances at the Big Day Out touring festival as well as a portion of the European tour in March. An arduous year of touring and promotion has drained the band and necessitated time off. Dan and Patrick wish to thank all of you who have shown such incredible support since the release of ‘Brothers’ and have helped make the album a success.

However, they have been replaced by Paul Dempsey, the lead singer of Something for Kate, who's been going great guns on his own solo stuff lately.

Paul's stuff. it's good.

What can I do? The river's overrun. We're swimming in a flood, you know

All of my flood related blog titles are songs from my soon to be "Flood - the Mixtape". It's actually hard to find songs about flooding and I haven't had much time, but it will happen hopefully. Even just to live in my car.

As you can see from above, the water line on my apartment was barely head height. I got truly lucky. All I lost was the stuff in my garage: a drum kit, old golf clubs, some furniture, a fridge, a keg and random other things. Mere metres down my street was different. Poor souls. You can see my pictures on my Flickr, including a huge boat found in a park down my street.

But now, flood related music news!

Big Day Out released a release releasing the fact that they are still open for business. And they're donating $20k to the flood efforts. Honestly, I forgot that BDO is like a week away, I still have to sort out my transport/accomodation/etc. Obviously I had thought of other things this week.

The cancelled Mos Def/Talib Kweli show at the Tivoli has now been moved to January 26. EDIT: Now at the HiFi. Existing tickets will be honored.

The Beautiful Girls show at the HiFi tonight has now been moved to March 18.

As I mentioned yesterday, Burst City was hit by the flood water. Last night's Danish punk show was cancelled, but tonight's show with Blank Realm and Feathers will be going ahead.

Woodland is still open, with the Health/Death Set/DZ gig in full force tonight.

I would encourage anyone going to gigs to use public transport where possible please. It's free right now, and after being stuck in traffic for 5 hours last night trying to get to and from my place to clean, it's kind of annoying. You're not helping the flood people by being on the roads unless you have to.

And now the big one: Flood Bank, a benefit for flood victims, will be held at the Old Museum on February 3. Some of the best local indie bands will be playing, including:

Violent Soho
Ball Park Music
Inland Sea
The Medics
Bang Bang Boss Kelly
The Baby Seal Club
Blonde On Blonde
Grand Atlantic
Texas Tea

Tickets are $30 and go on sale this week from Oztix. The event is 18+ and licensed. Get in quick, it should be great and will help people much worse off than me.

If you're under 18 and want to help buy listening to music, an all-ages show will be announced in the next few days.

Good luck my fellow Brisbane music-fans that were affected by the flood.

Grinderman Tour

As I copied and pasted a few hours ago, Nick Cave is without a doubt the greatest Australian musician of all time. His current musical project is Grinderman and they've just released an excellent album which combines Nick's brooding and gloomy music stylings of past and puts it all in a garage rock setting.

Ah, it's so refreshing to see some real music.

They'll be touring as part of the Big Day Out festival in January, but they're also going to play some sideshows. We get them on January 24 at the Tivoli.

Website

Big Day Out Sideshows (I am going to for sure)

So this year's Big Day Out has seen Queensland being forgotten about when it comes to sideshows. No surprise there, every festival tends to do it. The only 'official' one is for Tool. But we're lucky enough to get two unofficial ones which I bloody well want to go see.

First up, Ratatat.
Two guys. Guitars. And an audio-visual experience you must witness. I saw them play the HiFi not long after the venue opened, and I was blown away. These two don't just make music, they put on a whole act. The stages of the Big Day Out will not do them any justice, so take the opportunity to see them do it properly, in a club. January 24 at the HiFi.

The second band is another two piece: the Black Keys.

Two guys playing blues inspired garage rock. Amazingly so. They've put out so many good albums over the years, and toured countless times, but I've never actually gone and seen them. And I regret that, a lot. January 25, at the Tivoli.

Both bands are much better suited to club shows, so if you like what you see at BDO, catch these two shows!

I don't know how I missed this...

I never caught an official announcement, but I saw this ad while looking at other websites:


We normally get passed over here in Brisbane for BDO sideshows, so Tool fans enjoy it while you can!

24th of January, Entertainment Centre.

Bloody Beetroots vs Refused

Announced last week as part of the Big Day Out festival, Italy's electronic group Bloody Beetroots have announced a very, very special guest for their Australian tour. And it's made me oh so bloody well excited. Clue:

The lead singer of one of my all time favourite (and classic) hardcore bands, Dennis Lyxzen of Refused (and International Noise Conspiracy and AC4) will be joining them for the Big Day Out. There's no news what they'll be playing yet, but apparently their current live shows include a cover of the classic Refused song New Noise (the above video). If they do that, I will probably die happy on the spot. It will be the closest I will ever get to seeing Refused, apart from my DVD.

Big Day Out 2011

In my bitter old age of 25 now, I tend to huff of each Big Day Out lineup as "shite and past it's prime." But given the announcement of last night, I may actually be forced to eat humble pie and join in the masses to go. The lineup is (I've bolded the ones I want to see):

Tool
Rammstein
Iggy And The Stooges
Bloody Beetroots Death Crew 77
Lupe Fiasco
Grinderman
Primal Scream Screamadelica Live
Deftones
The Black Keys
Andrew W.K
The Jim Jones Revue
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
M.I.A
LCD Soundsystem
Booka Shade
Die Antwoord
Vitalic
CSS
Plan B
Ratatat
Crystal Castles ( East Coast only )
John Butler Trio
Wolfmother
Airbourne
Birds Of Tokyo
Kids Of 88
The Naked & Famous

Australia only locals:

Angus & Julia Stone
Dead Letter Circus
Children Collide
Operator Please
Bliss N Eso
Gyroscope
Pnau
Kid Kenobi & Mc Shureshock
Sampology
Blue King Brown
Will Styles
Little Red
Gypsy And The Cat
Lowrider

Sure, it's a slightly washed up and reused old Big Day Out lineup (I'm kind of surprised there's no Living End to be honest), but there are two of my all time favourite bands on there: The Stooges and the Deftones. Not to mention everyone's favourite Tool and Rammstein, the latter of which I've never seen even though I was obsessed with them over 12 years ago. Andrew W.K. is known for the song Party Hard which is apparently what he does when plays live. It may actually be a good day, especially if there's a few good bands thrown in a second announcement. I've now just got to get over my hatred of most of the punters that go to the BDO just to drink and be idiots.

Sunday January 23 at the Gold Coast Parklands

New My Chemical Romance Song

I Brought you My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love was a huge album for me. It introduced me to post-hardcore with it's fast guitars, progressive drumming and insane live shows. I saw My Chemical Romance play some amazing live shows on the back of this album (with some amazing tour mates such as From Autumn to Ashes, Taking Back Sunday, Recover, Murder by Death and Vaux) for some ridiculously cheap prices. I don't think I paid more that $15.


They were insane, one of the highlights for me was at Gabe's Oasis in Iowa City back in high school days. In one song, I think it was Drowning Lessons, the guitarist was jumping around like a madman, eventually running across the stage, jumping feet first into the wall, pushing off it, landing on his back, all without missing a beat.

If you had talked to me before the release of the Black Parade, I would have mentioned this band. Hell, I used to wear their shirts to uni almost weekly. And then the Black Parade came out, pretty much ruining their music much in the same vein as American Idiot did to Green Day (shit, it turns out both albums were produced by the same man. Thanks Wikipedia for confirming how jointly shit they were). When I saw them at Big Day Out they just stood there playing their instruments. It seems their energy went away with their good songs.

Well anyway, enough reminiscing. They have a new album coming out soon with a horrible name: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Bleh. There's a song leak on soundcloud too http://soundcloud.com/attentiondrain/mcr-na-na-na/s-m3qv7. And it sounds just as horrible and modern-rock-pop as the Black Parade. I've given them one more album until I write them off, so I have a feeling this may be the parting of ways for me and this band. We've had some fun and I will still continue to play songs from I brought you my bullets on my guitar.

First Big Day Out band for 2011

This band let slip in a New Zealand interview that they will be playing next year's Big Day Out.

Yeah.
South African rappers Die Antwood.
Probably another reason not to go.

Enter Shikari

I saw Enter Shikari at the Big Day Out 2008, well at least I thought I did. I got hit on the head pretty bad during Anti-Flag and was a bit concussed. Then in Enter Shikari a fight dancer punched me square in the testacles. The rest of the day was a bit of a blur, to say the least.

After playing a Big Day Out and a Soundwave, they are finally bring their dub/dance/hardcore mix for their own headlining show throughout our lands. Their older songs were of a hardcore sound, but lately they've been leaning more towards the dancing and dub step side of the spectrum.

Edit: turns out the poster is wrong. I have a feeling they changed it to not clash with Parkway Drive.
They'll be playing two shows in Brisbane, both at the HiFi. 20th of September is the 18+ show, while the 21st is the under 18 show. With them will be Australia's House vs Hurricane. They do a similar thing, mixing electronica with hardcore.

Enter Shikari
House vs Hurricane