Big Day Out 2010 // Royal Adelaide Showgrounds // Fri Jan 29

It was the biggest day out ever. With cooler temperatures than previous years, more than 35,000 people packed the Adelaide Showgrounds for what truly is Australia's premiere touring music festival. Rip It Up managed to squeeze through the crowds and catch some of the highlights on the day. Read all about them here:

Smearing sunscreen on your bare bits is still a necessity, but a cool gentle breeze suggests wearing black might not be the life-threatening challenge to the big yellow disc of previous years. Karnivool fill the pleasant early afternoon air with the low rumbling warning sounds of an approaching storm. Ian Kenny twists and sways like a Thunderbirds puppet gone emo, his powerful wail cutting through the brooding thunder with crystal clarity. The crowd’s appreciation is registered with flailing arms synched to every thunderous beat.

Decoder Ring appear calm as they build their delicately beautiful science fiction melodies to a bone-jarring intensity. The rhythm peaks so powerfully that it takes two blokes at the drum kit to keep it going.

The smoke machines at the Hot Produce Stage give the Coerce set the feel of a family barbie gone wrong, where Dad suddenly starts screaming and yelling at the kids while mum murmurs quietly into her Chardonnay. The calm-storm-calm dynamic works its arse off as the lads lash together a set that broods, menaces, then smashes all of the plastic furniture out by the pool.

Over on a Green Stage full of plaid and rolled up sleeves, The Decemberists’ guitarist Chris Funk looks a little out of place in his striped polo shirt. Macabre infanticide ballad The Rake’s Song is interrupted for a quick tune-up that fails to dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm. The set is dominated by an audacious recreation of the epic grandeur of The Crane Wife 1 & 2, while the ‘la-dee-dah-dee-dah’ sing-along centrepiece of closer 16 Military Wives draws howls of appreciation.

Eskimo Joe’s Kavyen Temperley looks all set for a stint at fine-leg in his white trousers and long-sleeved white shirt, though maybe not in those boots. Nevertheless, on their fourth go-round the BDO stalwarts’ shiny pop rocking clearly appeals to the punters.

Wagons unleash an uncompromising hoe-down where the between song banter is as powerful and entertaining as the music. The group look like they chose their outfits based on photos of a seventies American country rock band hanging out at a rodeo. Henry Wagons is likely out of his mind, and seems determined to jar you right out of yours.

Strolling across the Orange Stage to the strains of LDN, Lily Allen arrives in a summery slip boasting all of the colours of the rainbow. Kicking off her golden slippers, Allen gets busy with her blend of sugar-coated pop defiance and delicious sneering put-downs. Dedicating Fuck You to “all the arseholes”, Allen delights in being presented with a middle-finger salute from the adoring masses. There must, however, be some concern among the men of Adelaide about the number of women energetically singing along to the country boot scoot of It’s Not Fair, Allen’s show-stopping sexual frustration finale.

The elevated platform and leaf garland on the tall skinny beardie from Midnight Juggernauts makes it seem like Jesus just went techno. Despite appearing at just about every festival on the summer calendar the boys are giving it a red hot go.

A psychedelic backdrop and a lonely Latin-tinged trumpet signal the arrival of The Mars Volta. Adelaide gets a good delousing as the group take the bulk of their material from their incredible first album. Cedric’s stage antics are as outrageous as ever, including an intentional fall most wouldn’t get up from. Omar leads an epic free-form jam version of Cicatriz ESP that is wryly identified as “the single”, its powerful rumbling bass literally making the ground shake. A mercurial howling tour de force, the stage is vacated to the sound of gently fading looped samples, a dignified and uncharacteristically subtle retreat.

Inter-festival starship Muse arrives to the Dr Who strains of The Uprising. All three towers at the front of the two stages become video screens and are later augmented with a spectacular laser light show. This is the kind of festival performance you would expect from a supergroup at the height of its power. Multi-instrumentalist Bellamy’s Undisclosed Desires are accompanied on an eighties relic keytar but Time Is Running Out and the crowd are singing every word. Plug In Baby gets its bicycle kick guitar hero intro and a two-handed tapping outro. Jet’s Nic Cester lends Aussie pipes to a raucous encore run through Back In Black, while the inevitable finale of Knights Of Cydonia is an equally enthralling highlight from a band that revels in a festival.

Groove Armada keep the crowd bouncing at the Boiler Room while gyrating singer SaintSaviour wins costume of the day with an outfit somewhere between The Fifth Element and Beyond Thunderdome. The slide-trombone of At The River reduces the bounce to a grateful sway, but blazing closer Superstylin’ has the crowd going apeshit, the frantic dancing spilling beyond the confines of the enormous circus tent.

Suddenly it’s all done and the post-festival analysis begins as I’m swept into the streets by a wave of punters clinging desperately to the events of another very Big Day Out.

Review by Troy Foster
Photos by Benon Koebsch and Aaron Schintler

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