OMG!
I have SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH TO WRITE ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First. Let’s start off at the beginning of the day… and then I can talk about the concert side of it… and then compare this with other concerts I’ve been to.
Ok, so. The beginning. I’m so glad that I avoided a HUGE disaster in the morning by waking up MUCH earlier than I’d planned. I woke up at 5.40-ish that morning (because I was so excited) and tried to go back to sleep again because I didn’t want to feel tired… BUT I couldn’t go back to sleep because I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to take etc… so I got outta bed earlier than my alarm which I didn’t actually set. So if I hadn’t decided to get up earlier and had actually gone back to sleep I would have woken up late… not you’d find that interesting…
So Laura got to our house early to drop her stuff off because she was staying the night and we headed to the bus stop where I almost had a heart attack because Mona didn’t get there until the time that the bus was meant to arrive, but luckily/predictably the bus was NOT on time so it was all good.
We arrived and we waited in line for a while and we played Give a Life using the freaky looking guy on the bus and we named him Robert-Harris.
OK! So I’m going to stop being BORING and start telling you about the BEST BIT OF BIG DAY OUT! THE ACTS! I was lucky and got to see the following acts:
The Kiwi Act: The Tutts
Mona had a minor obsession over them a while ago and so she wanted to see them play, and I stayed and watched too. There were a couple of songs that I liked. The lead singer reminded me of the lead singer of The Strokes because he looked kinda drunk and he also looked similar to the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, he looks more similar than Gerard Way’s actual brother. The crowd went off when they played K but apart from that the crowd was pretty low key. I found myself thinking a lot because I generally don’t REALLY engage myself when I don’t know the music well. It wasn’t completely shit though and Mona enjoyed it.
The British Act: The Ting Tings
Now, because we were already there for The Tutts we just decided to chill out in front of the barrier for The Ting Tings so that we’d be RIGHT AT THE FRONT!!! During this time we used the texts to communicate because the music from the other stage (Luger Boa, another NZ band and they were pretty good) was REALLY loud. The thing about BDO is that your hearing really goes because there is not a quiet corner anywhere. So Mona and I were right in the front-centre for The Ting Tings, it was THE BEST SPOT! The Ting Tings were really good, heaps of energy and their set was really good too. Although I didn’t know most of the songs they played the last two songs were their two most popular, Shut Up and Let Me Go and That’s Not My Name. Looking at the videos right now and I wonder why I didn’t just film them without dancing, that way the video wouldn’t be shaking. They had a HUGE crowd.
The American Act: Lupe Fiasco
There are only two rappers in the world that I would go and see and they are Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco. I hired Lupe’s albums Food and Liquor and The Cool just so that I’d know his stuff when we saw him at BDO… His stuff is really good and it isn’t talking about the normal crap that most rappers talk about. He was in the Boiler Room and if there are two words I could pick to describe the boiler room it would be ‘hot’ and ‘weed’ because there were so many people smoking weed in there… The music was different than on the album because he had a band and the songs were transformed to fit a concert setting. Lupe was very good, but not to the taste of Mona and Laura so they took a look at Sneaky Sound System. Genie and I sweated it out with many others and went crazy when he did Superstar. My other favourite song was Go Go Gadget, I very much like the lyrics in that one.
The Suprise Act: Serj Tankian
I didn’t really plan on watching The Tank (as dubbed by Laura) but we wanted to get into the D (the area in front of the two main stages) early so that we could get close when we watched the Arctic Monkeys. At first I was really weary because I thought that The Tank would have really HARD OUT fans who would get angus at us and that they would be really scary people… but we ended up being the scary ones. The crowd at the back was quite placid and we were being really random and dancing really spazzily, we were the most energetic ones there (at the back)… I was laughing so hard, I remember when Genie was dancing like a spastic retard, a guy had the “omg what a weirdo” look on his face and he was like “hey look over to that spazzy dancing girl” to his friend. I read that conversation all through facials and hand gestures. The Tank wasn’t as freaky as I thought, he actually sampled ABBA in one of his songs… But I think I can speak for Genie, Laura, Mona and I when I say that our favourite song was the “Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammunition” song… hahahahahaha :) The Tank was DEFINATELY one of my favourite parts of BDO. I just wish I got some of the dancing on camera.
The Headliner: Arctic Monkeys
These guys are the reason that I spent $130 on my BDO ticket… In any concert I would say that there are two main aspects that contribute to how you experience the show: the crowd and the band.
The Crowd: So we rushed up front once The Tank had finished so that we’d be in prime position for AM so before the show started we were about 3/4 people from the front… most people would say this is close enough, but it isn’t close enough if you can get closer. HOWEVER (!) we were stuck behind the TALLEST guy I saw at BDO… he was stupidly tall. Genie was standing behind him and she wouldn’t have been able to touch the top of his head, even if she tip-toed. You can check out the tall guy and other of our BDO photos here http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=59550820030&saved#/album.php?aid=84030&id=700435030 and here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=58685&id=694787373. ANYWAY(!) the guys in front of us were SO TALL (tall guy and his friends TOWERED above us) and there was a chick on my right who was trying to steal my space. BUT because Genie has MAD SKILLS I got into the second row from the front, shoulder to shoulder with Genie and the tall guy (well it was more like shoulder to elbow with tall guy) by the time AM started to play. Generally before the band starts I get excited cos there’s like all this anticipation and all that BUT this time because I was concentrating so much on trying to get a good place I didn’t get MEGA excited… so that sucked.
The Band: Well, let me just say that the Arctic Monkeys are SOOOOO AWESOME and their music is amazing… and Alex Turner (lead singer) was quite sexy. But I don’t give them many points for their opening… because although they performed really well I think their choice of song wasn’t very wise. Their first two songs were new songs that no one really knew so even though the crowd was mega hyped (don’t believe the hype) they weren’t as excited as they could have been. The rest of their set was pretty good, they did one more new song and a cover (of some person that I’d never heard of) and they played my favourite song When the Sun Goes Down as well as Fluorescent Adolescent but they didn’t play Balaclava, which was like my favourite song to sing with Mona during yr 12 English just because of the mean instrumentally-drum-soloish bit which is really fun to sing. When they first started playing I thought the mic wasn’t on because I totally couldn’t hear it but it was actually because we were too close to the stage… If I had to put the band members in order of best performances I would say it went drummer, lead singer, guitarist, bassist… to be honest the bassist was quite boring but the drummer was really energetic, he had MEAN FACIALS and I reckon he was better than the lead singer which is a hard thing to do as a drummer.
SO much more to say but I have to go and pack my bag to go camping!!! Will finish this (one day) and ALSO do a comparison of all of the concerts I’ve been to.