Big Day Out and Australia Day

Music festivals are kind of a big deal in Australia during the summer, and the most hyped-up one has got to be Big Day Out. Held in Australia's major cities - Sydney, the Gold Coast, Melbourne, Parth and Adelaide, as well as Aukland, NZ - BDO attracts hundreds of thousands of people for a full 12 hour day of music, sunshine (being that January = summer!), and friends.

A group of about ten of us - most being my new flatmate Paddy's friends from down south, plus Nizam and Dylan from Geegal - caught a train to the Sydney Showgrounds at the Olympic Park in Homebush the morning of Friday, January 23rd, grabbed a couple beers (or for some, a vodka slushie - what a strange phenomenon), and headed out to check out the FIVE outdoor stages (plus the indoor Boiler Room, which was just that: boiling hot). Among the highlights of the day were...

- TZU, an Aussie hip hop band who put on a great show. One of the band members proposed to his girlfriend at the end of the set.

- Birds of Tokyo, a Western Australia band with very catchy rock songs. I ended up sitting down in the stands to catch their entire set.

- Pendulum, a fast-paced rock band also out of Western Australia. I'd never heard them before, but they were one of the best performances.

- Cog, another surprisingly good live rock band.

- Sneaky Sound System, whose songs makes you want to jump up and dance ("UFO" and "I Love It" are big ones.)

- Cut Copy, whose electro-dance beats I caught at a show the previous month. My music taste has certainly changed since I moved to Sydney...

- The Living End, whose frontman has a great voice. Download "White Noise," their hit single at the time.

- Neil Young. His set was incredible, and the crowd was a mix of twentysomethings through people in their sixties, all rocking out to "Old Man," "Keep on Rocking in the Free World," and many more of his classics. Dylan and I literally stood there and hugged each other through the set, captivated by Young's gruff voice.

Needless to say, it was an awesome day.

On Sunday, my friend Rob and I drive down to Canberra with a few of his old school mates to hang out at his friend Bum's (that's not his real name, haha) for Australia Day. (As the weather in Canberra was beautiful and hot, this was a smart plan; it rained all day in Sydney). This is basically celebrated like the 4th of July in the States: pool, BBQ (sausages, white bread, eggs and bacon, the works), music, and copious amounts of beer (plus fireworks, but we just barely caught those by the time we got back to Sydney.)

This Australia Day commercial pretty much sums up the day's nationalism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGZEBjzkZMg

Despite the fact that I'd literally walked into a high school reunion with a bunch of people I'd never met, I ended up having a blast playing volleyball in the pool, sunbathing with the girls, and listening to the Triple J Top 100. (Triple J is an extremely popular radio station in Oz that's actually broadcast in every big city in the country.) Before Australia Day, listeners login to their website and vote for their favorite songs of the previous year, and these are then compiled into a list and played from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. on the 26th. I recognized a fair amount of the songs, but what I found hilarious was the fact that, in the top 5, four of the tracks were by American artists:

5. "Kids" by MGMT
4. "Walking on a Dream" by Empire of the Sun
3. "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon
2. "Electric Feel" by MGMT
1. "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon (which received the most votes in the countdown's 19 year history and is easily the most overplayed song on the radio; when it won, they actually played it twice in a row)

Some fun facts:

* Both Vampire Weekend and Kings of Leon scored four tracks each.
* 48 of the Hottest 100 songs were by Australian artists.
* Both Kings of Leon and MGMT placed twice in the top 5 - the first time two bands have done this. The last bands to achieve two songs placing in the top 5 were Gorillaz (2005), Powderfinger (2000, Nirvana 1991 and The Offspring (1994)
* The song "Ice Cream" by Muscles which placed at 14 in the previous years countdown is in again at 45 with a Triple J live acoustic version.

One day, I hope to come back and experience this weekend all over again. Amazing.