Big Day Out 2010 Perth

Big Day Out is one crazy carnivale. Not for the faint-hearted, BDO is one heady festival full of rock, electro-pop and a few dance acts thrown in. Held annually at Claremont Showgrounds, this was my first BDO. Nevertheless I felt so old compared to the mass of 18 year olds around me. Perhaps the fact that I wasn't wearing a) high waisted shorts or b) a cut-out swimsuit was a dead giveaway.

BDO is comprised of seven separate stages, the Orange and Blue stages are next to each other for easy transitioning between big names.

On the Green stage we watched Lisa Mitchell beg the crowd NOT to throw coins at her during Coin Laundry. Her small voice carried over the crowd, surprisingly, and she sounded great live.

I knew Eskimo Joe's oldest song in their set "Wake Up" which definitely shows my age! Frontman Kav Temperley proudly spoke about writing songs "down the road" in Fremantle. He may need to rethink the all white ensemble though.





After surviving the mad push into the 'D' area we got ten deep close to the stage for Ms Lily Allen. Lily strutted out onstage, blinding us with her silver cape. Her set seemed longer than most covering big hits Smile, LDN, the Fear and 22. Underneath the giggling, smoking, beer-drinking and that Brit accent though - Lily struck a chord with her mostly female audience. "C'mon ladies, you know what I mean!" she screamed before breaking out into Not Fair. She changed three times and declared it to be her last gig before she branches out in a new direction, a shame that...







Buzzed after Lily's set, we pushed through to the front for Powderfinger, waited an hour, and stood right in front of Bernard Fanning. The oldies like These Days and My Happiness won the crowd over, as did Fanning's constant teasing of the crowd waiting for Muse on the Blue stage.





By this time we were exhausted, had drunk way too much free iced tea and were in desperate need of dinner and a sit down. We did manage to fit in a bit of Groove Armada's set before we caught Peaches and her massive mess of fake hair.

In 11 days time I'm going to Good Vibrations... wish me luck!

It's been a long night in New York City

Listening to John Mayer songs always makes you feel better after a rough day, week or even year.

Can't wait for Battle Studies to come out!

Incomplete Weekend

Whilst checking out some of Lisa Mitchell's music videos I came across this older song called Incomplete Lullaby which feels like a summary of how I feel at this very moment in time.

Mitchell's debut album "Wonder" was released on Friday and her songs have had a lot of JJJ airplay. I remember Mitchell from the Australian Idol days where she and Dean Geyer shared the stage, took songs and made them their own and experienced their own personal Idol journey with a montage to prove it. She's a lot more mature now, but still has this innocent aura that surrounds her and her music. She seems so delicate and her voice doesn't have a massive range. I suppose that's the appeal of her music, it's utterly charming and puts you into daydream mode where girls wear pretty floral dresses and boys wear bowler hats. Mitchell is a really talented songwriter and her lyrics are sublime.

My Top Ten Hottest 100 Songs Of All Time

This is my list, mostly comprised of modern classics with some golden oldies. Good songs remind you of a certain period of your life, you may have been happy or sad at the time, but the song simply makes a strong impact on you whenever you hear it.

Coldplay - Yellow
This songs reminds me of being a young teenager and is so full of hope and optimism. I think it defined my generation. That's a cliche but when I heard this song live earlier in the year, surrounded by people singing it word for word it was utterly heartwarming.

Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
It's true. We do. Cyndi knows it and when you want to have fun, you have to sing this holding a hairbrush.

Alex Lloyd - Lucky Star
I probably only started listening to triple j a lot when this song was on high rotation. I was living in my grandparents house at the time and the line "contraceptive rubber bands" always got to me. Think about it.

Amy Winehouse - Rehab
I love Amy for this one song. No, no, no! Perhaps the opposite of good girls having fun, this epitomises the bad girl who can't find her halo.

Beatles, The - Let It Be
I chose this one Beatles song over all the others because it's softly reassuring. It slowly starts off and then reaches a crescendo. If the Beatles say it's going to be ok, it's going to be ok.

Ben Folds Five - Brick
An incredibly sad song for listening to when its raining and you feel absolutely down. The whole narrative behind the song is what's so powerful about it. It's such a tearjerker!

John Mayer - Gravity
This is one of my fave John Mayer songs because of its bluesy qualities and woefulness. But the lyric "just keep me where the light is" is still optimistic. Classic Mayer.

Josh Pyke - Memories & Dust
Oh Josh this song is sublime. It's so full of singer-songwriter earnestness that when I hear it I feel happy. When do I get to see Mr Pyke live? Soon I hope.

Waifs, The - London Still
Another rainy day song from my teenage years. It's so emblematic of the typical Aussie in London/overseas that its always on my playlist when I'm travelling or feeling wanderlust. I love how it captures the sensation of never leaving a place and what it meant to you at the time.

MGMT - Time To Pretend
I first heard this song at the end of the Skins season two series. It's wild, it's rockstar. It's basically saying we're young, we do stupid things and there's nothing wrong with that. One day we'll have our shit together. Maybe.

What's Up Pussycat?

I'd like to say that the Pussycat Dolls and Lady Gaga Perth concert at Burswood Dome was absolutely mindblowing, but it was just short of being awesome. Yes, they had fantastic costumes, the music was great and their dance moves were very sexy but the concert lacked a certain "special something".

Jules and I had a tactical plan of getting as close to the front as possible and along the way we made some new LG and PCD friends. The crowd was very young (or I must be getting old!) and a lot of the girls had kitty cat ears that they'd bought from the merchandise stand. I don't want to dwell on how much they probably cost.

Lady Gaga is an intriguing character. It's easy to write her off as an overly manufactured pop sensationalist who is riding out her 15 minutes of popularity. Is she male or female? What does she look like under her hair and makeup? Does she control her image or is it a complete fabrication? Lady Gaga comes across as a singing robot, particularly in the video clips accompanying her concert, she has a postmodern persona that doesn't come across as being human.



Despite her crazy outfits and nude bodysuits, LG has an impressive voice. She played a short set of about six songs. The best part was when she played the piano and broke down Poker Face leaving the audience guessing as to what song she was actually performing.

Pussycat Dolls came onstage in a blaze with their corsets, stilettos and big hair. PCD is an all girl group where what you see on You Tube is pretty much what you get. They played a "by the book" concert and I felt like, despite all the booty-shaking and shimmying, Nicole Sherzinger lacked the stage presence that I expected from an international performer. She needed to do a couple of ballads where the music shined through rather than all the glitz. After all LG did it, so Nicole should've been able to as well.





Nevertheless my favourite songs like Hush Hush, Don't Cha, Buttons didn't disappoint. The best song of the set was definitely Jai Ho which led to a lot of Bollywood dancing on my part. For some reason it didn't rev the audience as much as one would've thought...

The next gig I go to will have to be a nice, cozy initimate performance where I don't feel like just another ticketholder.

I did end up making a DOLL tank top. All up it only cost me $12!

The Great Tasmanian Road Trip Soundtrack

Before I start blogging about my trip to Tasmania I wanted to share my soundtrack. My brother and I drove over 900km in a little yellow Yaris through big city centres, quaint townships, amazing national parks, over Mount Wellington and down many winding roads. This is the soundtrack to our journey, built on Triple J playlists.

1. Scattered Diamonds - Hungry Kids of Hungary

2. Zero - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

3. The Waitress Song - Seth Sentry

4. Not Fair - Lily Allen

5. You Want History - Kaiser Chiefs

6. The Summer - Josh Pyke

7. So Human - Lady Sovereign

8. No You Girls - Franz Ferdinand

9. Buttons (Remix) - Sia

10. Battle for the Sun - Placebo


The Waitress Song is a beautifully understated narrative by Melbourne MC and triple j unearthed artist Seth Sentry. It won me over on the first listen. Listen to it!

V Festival at Melbourne Showgrounds

Footage of the Killers performing Human last night at V Festival


There was no raining on thousands V Festival concert goers parade yesterday at Melbourne Showgrounds. Despite Friday's all day downpours, the skies remained fine whilst international acts like Kaiser Chiefs and the Killers took to the stage. V Festival is a recent addition to the summer music festival scene in Australia catering to a rather mixed demographic of rock, pop and a little bit in between.

Wei and I, and everyone else hopped on the express train to the Showgrounds and were greeted with long lines at bag check so we made it a little late to Duffy's set. Duffy is a 24-year-old Welsh jazz singer whose recent hits Mercy and Rain On Your Parade have been on high rotation on commercial radio. Her sultry voice combined with her overall blonde Brigitte Bardot looks perhaps attracted a lot of the males to her set. Either way her softer ballads were ill-fitted to a festival crowd and would be more suited to a nightclub or lounge. In her black tank top and denim shorts, Duffy teetered around the stage, singing mostly side on to the audience. Her ballads like Stepping Stone, Warwick Avenue led her to confess that she wasn't "relationship obsessed" but found it more compelling to sing about than political issues. She does have an amazing voice live and I would love to see her play in a more subdued setting with an orchestra.





The somewhat random surprise hit of the V Festival was Vanilla Ice. V Festival was determined to break down the stereotype of Vanilla Ice being an uncool one hit wonder and took him to the Virgin Mobile stage at all the concerts. Most of the fans were admittedly embarrassed to be watching Vanilla Ice, but once he hit the stage he won the crowd over with his rapping and short mixes. When he performed Ice Ice Baby, the crowd was dancing and singing at the top of their lungs. What embarrassment?

The Kaiser Chiefs, in the opportune playing period right before the Killers, revved up the crowd with old favourites like Ruby and I Predict a Riot. Frontman Ricky Wilson stood on the railing, held up by a security guard grabbing the back of his jeans and seemed to be on the cusp of crowd surfing. He taunted the audience several times and briskly climbed the ten metre tall scaffolding to get a good look at the crowd. The Kaiser Chiefs set consisted of songs from Off With Their Heads and favourites like Never Miss a Beat and finished off with a rendition of Mark Ronson's Oh My God. An insider reference to Ronson's influence on the latest album perhaps? Interestingly they didn't play Addicted to Drugs - hopefully not for censorship reasons at a festival...




By the time the Killers hit the stage at 8.15pm the crowd was impatient and in high anticipation. Brandon Flowers and the rest of the band delivered a great set, going from song to song without a break and giving the audience what they wanted. Flowers is a suave performer, wearing an-all black suit and waistcoat, he strutted around the stage confidently. He seemed less like the arrogant opinionated muso that the media often plays him out to be. Flowers said few words although confessed that we was having a much better time than the V Festival in Sydney! Crowd favourites included Human, Bones, Mr Brightside and the encore of When You Were Young and Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.






My absolutely favourite moment at an outdoor music festival like V is when an amazing band is onstage at dusk and the sun sets to their performance - in this case Kaiser Chiefs and I Predict a Riot.

The Marriage of Figaro by WA Opera

Sex. Secret liaisons. Cross dressing. Just another Saturday night at the opera.

The Marriage of Figaro, performed by WA Opera, is a hilarious comedic opera. The plotline is slightly complicated and reminiscent of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream due to its scheming lovers.

Basically Figaro and Susanna are set to be married, yet their employer Count Almaviva has decided to intervene and seduce Susanna - despite the fact that he is already married to Countess Rosina. Yet the Count is jealous of the young page, Cherubino, who has a crush on the Countess and forces him to join a military regiment in Selville. Figaro, Susanna and the Countess conspire to expose the Count's infidelity. There are also many cases of mistaken identity in between the farcical set of events.

I don't blame the little girl sitting in front of me needing a running commentary from her mother. But once you've got the characters straight, you can begin to enjoy the beautiful arias.

Sara Maciver as Susanna and Zoe Kikiros as Rosina share many poignant scenes together as they lament the pitfalls of loving a man. I really enjoyed their harmonies.

Also commanding an impressive stage presence is Luke Gabbedy as the Count. His first appearance onstage in a dressing gown with chest bared gets a welcome reception from the females in the audience.

But the stand out performance is Fiona Campbell as Cherubino. The flirtatious page boy swoons over the Countess but falls apart when he is sent away to the regiment. Cherubino is so adorable that you forgive him for his youthful naivete. My favourite piece was the aria dedicated to the Countess: Voi che sapete che cosa é amor — "You ladies who know what love is, see if I have it in my heart".

Last year I saw The Barber of Selville, which was my first operatic experience, and I found it easier to appreciate the sequel The Marriage of Figaro. Yes it is an accessible opera and attracted many people to go see it. However judging from the mixed audience of old and young I think opera has been grossly underrated. Opera is sexy after all!

The Best Is Yet To Come

Life is constant source of highs and lows. Sometimes it feels like there are more and more lows and less highs. To my dear friends, these are some songs that help keep us high off the ground.








Only 10 days till V Festival! Can't wait to see Duffy live.

The End is Near (of Summer) - Beck's Music Box

Me and my brother, Ryan

The Perth International Arts Festival has wrapped up and on Saturday night I had the pleasure of visiting Beck's Music Box (BMB). BMB is a temporary stage set up especially for the festival which features a mosh/dance pit, elevated seating and couches and two bars selling Beck's beer. Its not so much a stage than a mini festival for Perth music lovers.

BMB sits on the Perth Esplanade, overlooking the Swan River and directly facing the Wheel of Perth. Each night during the festival a different concert is held, ranging from well-known artists like Jose Gonzales to Mogwai. After 10.30pm, the free "after-parties" begin which brings about summer shenanigans.

Architecture in Helsinki DJs spun some beats and a mixed 20something crowd flocked to the dance floor. There was a bit of That Beep and dance tunes that soon melded into old school tracks. Michael Jackson, Madonna and a version of Beyonce's All the Single Ladies acapella had everyone stomping their feet.

BMB has that cruisy festival vibe, everyone is relaxed and friendly than other Perth nightlifespots, there are lots of HYTs and it is a safe and secure venue. Now if only it would last all year round...

Coldplay - Viva La Viva Perth Concert 27/02/09

Going to a Coldplay concert brings high expectations. You expect to hear Yellow and have a huge singalong, to see Chris Martin and the band in military jackets and generally have a rocking good time. You don't expect to see giant yellow balloons being tossed around the Dome, the band running off the stage 3/4 of the way through the gig to sing in amongst the audience and wishing you'd caught one of the thousands of paper butterflies released into the crowd during Lovers in Japan.

The first Aussie concert of the Viva La Viva world tour ranks as one of my top five absolutely amazing concerts. The sheer scale of the show - from the lights and lasers, the hanging globes and projected screens and then there's the music. Mostly songs from the current CD with a good dose of Coldplay classics with a few medleys of songs thrown in.

Chris Martin has a great voice and ability to make the audience hang off each word. He brought the Dome down with his emotional encore of The Scientist and seemed almost self-conscious before he sang The Hardest Part solo. 

Fix You - a song that failed to inspire me on iTunes was heartwarming live. My favourite song - Lovers in Japan - was beautiful (even if the butterflies hadn't been there). 

The best part though - the Viva La Viva chorus that had the audience chanting all the way back to the carpark and stuck in my head all weekend.

My top five concerts are, thus far:

Michael Buble, 11 June 2008

Justin Timberlake, 9 November 2007

West Coast Blues and Roots Festival, April 2007

John Mayer, 22 April 2004

The Swell Season Concert at Fremantle Arts Centre

Last month I went to the lovely little "mini festival" Swell Season concert at Freo Arts Centre. The Swell Season is also known as Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the movie "Once". The Irish band the Frames (of which Glen is a singer/guitarist) make up the band members,

It was a warm though breezy Sunday afternoon with girls in sundresses and boys in shorts and mandals. There was a seated area and a picnic area at the back, though Glen nearly caused a stampede when he encouraged everyone to come on down near the stage to get a better view.

Glen's a bit of a charmer, he told us funny stories about meeting Bon Scott's son and bantered about the songs. He has an incredible range going from rock god to acoustic singer/songwriter in a matter of minutes.

Marketa was absolutely gorgeous, however her songs are all ballads and a friend made the comment that she almost gets washed out in comparison to Glen.

All in all, it was a nice relaxing concert complete with Irish hecklers, badly taken concert photos and a warm and fuzzy singalong at the end.

Summer Concerts Calendar

Last year I saw this little indie movie called Once that absolutely gutted me. Its a melancholic, unrequited love story between a busker and a flower seller set on the streets of Dublin. The actors are part of the duo known as The Swell Season and sing (and wrote) each of the beautiful songs in the movie.

All their concerts at the Sydney Opera House are already sold out (!) and I can only imagine how awesome it would be to see them perform there. I'll be heading to the gig at Fremantle Arts Centre on the 25th of Jan. I cannot wait for this lovely little concert.

The next three I've booked tickets for are:

• Coldplay at the Dome on 28th Feb
  

Been playing Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love on repeat in my car each morning just so I can sing "dreaming of the Osaka sun...." whilst driving through the CBD

• The V Festival at Melbourne Showgrounds on 4th April
  

Hello The Killers, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs...I have a feeling that this may turn out to be one rowdy trip to Melby.

• PCD at the Dome on 30th May. Don't cha?