I haven’t been to a Big Day Out since 2004 and with good reason, people are music festival’s are disgusting. This particular music festival just so happens to fall on Australia Day, the most offensive national public holiday on our calender. People feel compelled to cover themselves head to toe in Australiana paraphenalia in a proud display of nationalism and their committment to all things they consider to be distinctly Australian like the beach, beer, bbq’s and freedom. In otherwords the large fuckwit population of the country turn the flag into a cape and get completely shitfaced in the name of National Pride and the genius promoters of Big Day Out decided that this would be the perfect day to hold a music festival. 

I digress.

Generally it’s my fear and distaste for big crowds that keep me away from most music festivals, but the line up this year was too good to miss and my love and dedication for Noel Gallagher was stronger than my hatred of crowds.

With the exception of the token dickheads (like the row of men pissing on a fence AT THE FRONT OF A STAGE, or the intelligent fellow who decided to fill up his water bottle from a fire hydrant), this year wasn’t too bad. The crowd was extremely comfortable at about 40,000 (in an 80,000 capacity venue…not good for the promoters) and there were virtually no lines for food, drinks or toilets plus there was breathing space. Rejoice!

The downside to this was that for some smaller bands like Kitty, Daisy & Lewis the crowd was scarce which was a real shame but did allow for some swing dancing action front of stage.

My highlights of the day were the Cage The Elephant with their energetic punk rock blues sound, Mariachi El Bronx - seriously fucking amazing and Kitty, Daisy & Lewis (who were strong despite the lack of crowd).

Then came Kanye, who a friend of mine has so accurately dubbed “the spinal tap of rap”, was typically 15-20 minutes late but rose from the centre of the crowd on a scissor lift amidst plumes of smoke, almost looking like the God he thinks he is and most definitley playing into the delusion of grandeur he clearly has.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy Kanye’s music. His rhymes are great and his live show is BEYOND entertaining, it really defines epic. Luckily for me he played the two songs I wanted to hear most (monster and hell of a life) in the first half hour so I was able to run to see the person I was actually here to see - Noel Gallagher.

Truly deserving of the title “Godlike Genius” he came onstage bang on time and launched into a shorter version of Monday night’s set focussing mostly on the High Flying Birds tracks with a few oasis sing alongs thrown in. Much to his amusement there was underwear down the front of the stage. As expected there was some hilarious retorts to crowd requests and some great commentary thrown in. Noel Gallagher is without a doubt, one of the musical greats of our generation and I really hope to see him back on our shores again soon.

The rest of my photo’s from the day can be viewed at my flickr account