Big Day Out: The Day Australia Rocks

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Big Day Out: The Day Australia Rocks
by Alexis Andrews - November 18, 2008

Big Day Out fans

I have a friend. His name is Drew. He is from Sydney. One day last week he put on a purple shirt, soft and perhaps made of 100% cotton, with the colors of the rainbow on its design. “Big Day Out 07,” the print on the t-shirt said. I thought it was one of the most swaggeringly gay shirts ever. And immediately I assumed that the shirt was from a lavish, glittery parade that marked another step towards the promotion of equal rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transvestites.

“This shirt cost 70 dollars,” Drew said. I humored him by saying that if I had 70 dollars I wouldn’t spend it on a shirt like that. But he continued: “See this? Big Day Out is the biggest music festival in my country, and it tours many popular rock bands around Australia.” I was humbled. It’s always humbling to have one’s presumptions negated, and to know that one’s not abreast of big things happening elsewhere.

Because Big Day Out is a big thing. As Drew said, it’s a major Australian music festival held annually in late January (only taking the year off in 1998), attended by some hundreds of thousands of fans and which has seven to eight outdoor stages featuring a number of top international and local contemporary rock and popular music acts. Organized and promoted by original founders Vivian Lees and Ken West, it began in 1992 at Sydney, feting alternative bands Violent Femmes and Nirvana, among others; it was about the same time that the latter’s hugely successful Nevermind alternative / grunge studio album was released.

Since then, artists and bands like Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bjork, Iggy Pop, The White Stripes, Chemical Brothers, Black Eyed Peas, Kraftwerk, Coldplay, Blink 182, Sean Lennon, Patti Smith, Beastie Boys, Metallica, and Australia’s very own The Living End and You Am I have performed at the Big Day Out. It has also become a launching platform for not-so-well-known local bands and artists to promote their music CDs, albums, records, and singles – and bring their sound live to the masses of people. Since 2002, the tenth year anniversary of the event, an annual compilation album of various artists has been produced to coincide with the festival. The first was called Discrespective, under the label Shock Music; the following years, Big Day Out 03 and Big Day Out 04 were released under Universal Music, while Big Day Out 05 and Big Day Out 06 were released under EMI.

The Big Day Out has grown big enough to extend to Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Gold Coast, and Auckland in New Zealand. In Big Day Out 2008, almost 300,000 people were said to be in attendance.

“The line-up of performers is always great at BDO,” Drew told me while hunkered over a sofa chair in his house with a can of Victoria Bitter. “We Aussies love our rock and our beer.” I almost told him I now love his shirt.

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