Hard News: The Big Roundup
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I popped along to Hot Chip on the back of something I read on Public Address. Even dragged a few sceptical folk along. I really enjoyed that and will have to look them out next time I find myself in Marbecks.
The Killers sound was crap - even from the East Stand. Muse sounded much better (and put on a better show I thought - I quite enjoyed them).
I really enjoyed ending the night with the Violent Femmes. Great sing along stuff! Only band of the day where I knew all the words! I thought that was a better way to finish the night than last year with Fat Freddies.
Did anyone else try to use the trains to get home? What a shambles and quite frankly unacceptably so. They didn't seem to have special event trains put on and there was a very long wait, so much so that they had to block access to the over-bridge.
When a train finally arrived it had TWO carriages. The next one that we did get onto had four and was bound for Waitakere - not that anyone bothered to tell us. Half the train had to get off at Boston Road when we realised the error of our ways and try to flag down taxis (it already being 1am) to get home. A shambles and not good enough for a city trying to push people onto public transport for such events.
Didn't ruin a fantastic day though.
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Glyn,
From what I saw, who was great at BDO? Hot Chip and John Butler Trio (both fantastic), Lily Allen, Muse, Violent Femmes, SJD all really good and Jakob (a local Hawkwind-like revelation!).
Who was average? Jet, Killers (even though I like them), Streets, Dimmer.
Who was crap? Scribe. Oh and the Herald coverage on Sat which was sad ( I sent a rave to Graham Reid about that particular aspect yesterday if you can dig it out). It's disappointing when you have a great day out and Granny Herald totally misses all the good bands (except one or two)! What were their gang of journos doing there all day? Noshing in the corporate boxes?
Missed Minuit who I heard were good but were on at 11.45 AM?! Hello - they're a dance band. Doh (should have been in Scribe's slot!).
Access to the stands was pretty good and gets better each year. New East Stand is a huge improvement. Alcohol policy is immature (ironically!) - NZ will grow up ONE DAY like the rest of the world and let over-18s wander with a beer.. Please!
Stagecoach was also silly - we had to queue for ages to get a bus ticket home. Here's something revolutionary Stagecoach - let poeple buy RETURN tickets! Or a bus pass with their BDO ticket! And have more than FOUR staff collecting the money for thousands of poeple! Gosh outside the square thinking or what? Took me well over an hour to get home cos of that you sadly misguided folk.
What does BDO/Auckland need more of? A reggae roots element (NZ has so many great bands in this department) and ideally a larger festival site so people can spread out - eg a 2-day event perhaps like Splore?
Aside from that it was a Great Day Out! And I met some nice but tired people in the bus queue...
Cheers all
Glyn
Aged 41 -
Who was crap? Scribe.
I didn't go, but everyone I know who went and saw Scribe said he was rubbish. Apparently it was a dull dull, dull, falling back on hip-hop performance cliches like "All the ladies say oh-oh" stuff.
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It never ceases to amaze me - now there's a big "hoohaa" about videos of the BDO from cellphones being posted on YouTube. For christ's sake! People aren't about to stop buying DVD's or stop going to concerts just because they can watch a shaky, lo res, 60 second slipwith barely has any sound other than two yobbos on either side of the camera man yelling at the tops of their voices. Big deal. Forget about it and move on.
People are having to pay up to $300 for a ticket to go to the concert in the first place - haven't we got bigger problems to solve? For $300 I'd expect to take something more than a bruise and tinnitus home with me.
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It never ceases to amaze me - now there's a big "hoohaa" about videos of the BDO from cellphones being posted on YouTube.
It's a total media beat-up. I'm pretty sure no one involved with the show cares about cellphone video.
They did try and ban camera phones the year they first appeared (under a different local promoter), but then they realised what a ridiculous idea that was.
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Should anyone not have their fill of other people's BDO experiences, take a look at this link to the Auckland BDO myspace blog
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A great day, great bands, great friends, great crowds - one of the best BDO's ever! This was the first year I did not have access to the private bars and I didn't miss it one bit. Highlights - The Vines, The Veils, Lupe Fiasco and Shape Shifter, dancing with Russ, MD and Andy in the Bolier Room. Lowlights - Katies bad party pill experience (which saw me miss The Streets), crap sound for The Killers, and Scribe's momentum stopping set before the Killers. Kasabian would have owned that slot - as would The Vines!
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If that gentle zephyr on Friday was enough to throw out the sound then I can only imagine what a Big Day Out in Wellington would be like... I had a great day and thoroughly enjoyed Minuit, Voom, That One Guy, Hot Chip, Lily Allen, Kasabian, the Killers, Muse and the Streets.
It's great value, especially when you consider the dubious pleasure of watching Snow Patrol in West Auckland will set you back over $80. I was about 10 rows into the Killers mosh pit and i thought the sound was fine and the one -two punch of When We Were Young and Somebody Told Me was truly moshtastic. The highlight of the day though was in the middle of Hot Chip's set where they incorporated bits of New Order's "Temptation" into No Fit State....sigh.
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Yes indeed, a truely epic day. In my top 3 BDO's ever!
Highlights for me were the Veils, the Killers, Lily Allen, the Streets and Crystal Method dj's,also phildogs dancing steeze, RB's enthusiasm levels, Daves adventure stories and the Goofballs!
See ya next year.... -
Nice overview, RB, I'd have to say that I agree with your assesment in regards to all the acts, but there is something genuinely punchable about the Killers' Brandon Flowers that's just inescapable.
This is my fifth BDO in succession and it says a lot that out of all of them, I spent the least time amidst the main stage and in the Boiler Room, whose lineup proved comparatively eclectic and refreshing, not least due to a greatly improved performance from Mike Skinner/The Streets, and cute, sassy stuff from Lily Allen (I saw her wondering round backstage just before the set and she looked stunning. Tiny, though).
The Veils put on a good set, but there's a "Stars in your Eyes" quality about Finn Andrews performance that renders it somewhat hollow- depending on the song, he's channeling Nick Cave, Jeff (or Tim) Buckley and maybe even his dad's old band XTC (some of Finn's mannerisms are vaguely Andy Partridge-esque).
The talent's clearly there, but the parts are so transparent in their echoes of what came before. Still, he definitely had stage presence and it's nice to see that he's employed a leggy female bassist- always a good move to boost your band's visual appeal.
Incidentally, the lead singer from Hot Chip looked so authentically nerdy that he was at one point mistaken for a member of the lighting crew!
Nice to see some antipathy towards Tool- much like Russel Brown, I find their whole aesthetic distinctly unappealing and not as forward-thinking or "groundbreaking" as it'd like to be.
I'd write more, but I see this thread has gone off into a digression about flags and such, so I don't want to distract people too much.
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Wow, I just realised that I used pretty pretentious language to dismiss Tool there! Talk about Pot, Kettle Black and all that.
Anyway, although they're anything but my cup of tea I would have to say that their fans have to be THE most dogged I've witnessed at a BDO so far- even more so than Metallica back in 04, which just tended to be an accross-the-board thing. (But of course, I saw the Flaming Lips instead...)
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I have the Veils' album, Nux Vomica, and like it well enough, but they're a revelation live.
I agree, but I haven't seen anyone complaining about the way the Veils' set was cut short - they seemed to have been asked to stop early and came off about 7 - 8 minutes before the John Butler Trio were due to start. I'm pretty sure JBT didn't start till their allotted time. Anyone know what happened?
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