BDO Recovery Day

I can’t move today. Well, not without complaining. So sore. So tired. So damn worth it.

I went to the Big Day Out in Melbourne yesterday. In forty degree heat. With 51,999 other insane music fans and mosh pit freaks like me. And hot or not – and believe me, it was hot – I think I went a little overboard.

Or maybe I just have to acknowledge I’m no longer 20 years old and this slightly older body takes slightly longer to recover, heh.

Yes, I ache in every place it is possible to ache, I am covered in bruises head to toe from multiple mosh pits, and the exhaustion is still set in my bones even now, but it was ooooh so worth it. I have been attending BDOs for, oh, twelve or thirteen years now, and the official verdict is out: 2011’s has to be one of the best I’ve experienced.

Rammstein. Can I just repeat that: Rammstein. All kinds of awesome. The utter highlight of the day. Probably the best BDO experience I’ve had in all the years I’ve been going. The theatrics, the music, the fireworks. The mosh. My god, that mosh.

Brilliant.

The cheering young men around me screaming out for more when lead singer Till Lindermann straddled a massive cannon which shot clouds of white soapy suds all over the crowd. I can only presume said nice young men in the mosh with me got the obvious symbolism.

Of course, after the explosive fireworks and the fireballs which were throwing out heat into an already overheated audience, most were probably just glad to be cooled down a bit. Not sure what happened to the BDO’s water sprays this year, but they were noticably absent at the front of the main stages. Event staff were doing a fine job bringing out water, but if you weren’t within reaching distance of a cup, but were still well within the thick of the squeezing, swaying, belting mosh – as we were – well, you went without.

The heat was worse for Deftones earlier in the day; mid-afternoon, right in the heat of it all, for those guys. Not that that deterred me and a full D-sized crowd of others packing in and slamming it together. The heat did sap some of the crowd’s combined energy, but Deftones slow beat/upbeat alt metal kind of allowed for pauses to catch our collective breaths before the push and shove was on again.
I would say, drawing upon my no-years experience in and exactly nil knowledge of weather science and meterology, that it had to have been 50-billion degrees in that mosh pit in the direct sun in the middle of the afternoon. We all came out of there looking like we’d just climbed out of a swimming pool, anyway. Soaked. Dripping clothing. The combined sweat of hundreds of moshers, ah.

Now, acts I wanted to see, but missed, included Ginderman (yes, really. I’ve only been listening to Nick Cave since the freakin’ 80s, you’d think I’d have remembered to catch him, don’t you?) Die Antwood. Operator Please. Wolfmother. Primal Scream. Gypsy and the Cat. Jim Jones Revue. The gods only know how many others.

But that’s okay. I’ve tried to run BDO’s like well-oiled time-tabling machines before, plotting out each moment, determining travel time between stages, factoring in queuing time for the D. These days, I’ve learnt to just go with it. Like an Aussie uni student spending the three month summer break travelling around Europe on Daddy’s credit card (or was that only me?), it’s a point of fact for Big Days Out – you will not see everything, much will be missed. Live with it.

So, for those still to go in Adelaide and Perth, other highlights to look out for at this years BDO include… The Vines, first act up on main stage and deservedly pulling a huge crowd for that time of day. Dead Letter Circus were rocking not long after them. Bliss ‘n Esso put on a blistering set. Seeing them from further back in the crowd made me regret that I hadn’t put in the effort to get right down the front. Then there was Blue King Brown, who were impressive. And CSS in the Boiler Room mid-afternoon grabbed my attention when I wasn’t expecting it. Tool, of course, were excellent, though I only caught half their set.

Finished up with MIA. Ah, if only it hadn’t been for Rammstein, who totally blew away everyone else on the day and in whose mosh I finally exhausted every reserve of energy I had, I would have really got into MIA. I like her stuff, I was at the Boiler Room early enough to push down front, there was a pretty good DJ set before her to get the energy levels up and keep them there prior to her coming on.

But I was exhausted. And mind-blown from Rammstein. And lumbering a backpack (cloak room closed at 10pm, in a pick-it-up-by-10-or-lose-it deal. Yeah, I know, wtf? Next year I’m going guerrilla style, no bags.) So I watched half of her set from the back of a crowd, could barely see her, then gave up.

Besides, by then it was time for final, if not-so-fun, mosh of the night:

Squeezing onto a train to get home with tens of thousands of sweaty, exhausted, aching others about twelve hours after arriving.

See why I need a Recovery Day now?

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