Ben's Big Day Out

Kasabian

Finally after all these years I made it to a Big Day Out and had a fantastic day. I went with a couple of mates from uni, one of whom lives in Carton so it was a short walk to the venue at Princes Park (right next to the Melbourne General Cemetery, RIP my arse...) from his house.

In no particular order the bands we saw were:

• Muse
• The Killers
• You Am I
• Kasabian
• The Herd
• The Vines
• Little Birdy
• The Sleepy Jackson
• Evermore
• The Violent Femmes
• Tool

I can't really think of any more that we saw. The full lineup is on the Big Day Out website.

The highlight was without a doubt Muse, who performed a killer set. The Killers were pretty good as well. Notable mention goes to Kasabian (I thought I didn't know any of their songs, but recognised quite a few from the radio). The headline act was Tool but none of us are into tthem so we didn't stick around for long after they started. Apparently they had a pretty cool laser show after we left though. Oh well.

The two big mistakes I made were forgetting my small rollon sunscreen and camera. Even though I put some on before I left home I ended up forking out $4 for a small tube of sunscreen. That was $4 well spent, and have very little sunburn, well maybe a few small bits on my arm I missed. I certainly was not lobster red like many people I saw on the train on the way home. Years of airshow experience and very fair skin (did anyone mention freckles?) have taught me that lesson. As for the camera, the reason I didn't take it was because I thought i would loose or break it, but lots of people had them. I did take some dodgy shots with my pohne but got nothing worth displaying in public (one included to illustrate this post, atmospherics etc...). I really regret not taking my camera.

A smaller mistake was not taking a bottle of water. Supposedly they were confiscating water bottles at the gate, but a mate managed to smuggle one in, I saw some “dudes” with a goon bag, so they can't have been looking that hard. I bought a bottle for $3 and stupidly threw it out when I'd finished it. I didn't realise that they had taps where you could refill, needless to say I bought another latter for $3.50, and refilled it several times.

At the outset i said that I was going to buy a T-Shirt. And so I did, a black one with giant blood shot eyeball. Tre chic! It was either that or a Muse T-Shirt. I should have bought one of the counterfeit Muse T-shirts being sold on the footpath outside as well (or “half price” as the man selling them said when he overheard me say counterfeit). I think I'll head in to the Queen Victoria Market and see if I can pick one up there instead.