Review of BIG DAY OUT@ Glasgow - Summer Revisited!

Big Day Out At The Green – 24/08/03

Less of a Big Day Out and more of a sunshine holiday to the remote inner-city island of Beerness-by-the-river-Buckfast, the journey to the suburban Mecca for Glasgow’s festivals (that’s Glasgow Green to you, me, and anyone else present) wasn’t gonna be an easy or sober one. This was Scotland after all. Land of my family, a country where it rains more than it pours and where a handful of Neds frequent every possible area not already populated by football shirts, Goths, or Big Issue sellers. Bit like Carlisle really. 6 bands in total and all of them are headliners in one way or another. How much fun could this be? Would this finally be an event that was too good to be true? Could the splendour of Glasgow Green be nothing more than brown field with some patches of forest-like colour? Green it was. Sunny too. I mean this was Celtic green with Rangers blue skies, a truly twin coloured surrounding everywhere, except for the burger stalls (12, oh yeah, I counted). It might’ve already felt like day 2 of a full weekend festival even though it was only a one-day event, but that’s always a good thing because you always want more than the day before. Got that?

We came, all fifty thousand of us, plus a few more media tarts backstage who were there to look cool or ogle at Martin O’Neill and generally ignore the rabble from some of the finest bands on the other side of the high metal fence, for loud music. Drinking was uniquely optional. Passes and beer tokens sought so, let’s cut to the grisly beef.

First up were The Distillers, ergo, Brody Armstrong, the ‘new Courtney Love’. What, has someone misplaced the old one? Go figure, but feel free to make the idle connection that every band post Kurt’s shotgun haircut was ‘the new Nirvana’. I’m the new Nirvana. You are the new Nirvana. Brody’s the new Courtney. Yet nobody is the new Pearl Jam. Trying to get through The Distillers set without looking at Brody’s tats wasn’t easy. I said tats. A third of the crowd were male, she’s a woman, never apologise or burp in a ladies face. This was Dead Kennedy’s punk with some nasty assed guitar playing from Miss B and much much more. That’s the review. Short, quick, aggressive. That’s punk. Am I getting through to you? Stand these words next to a Hole CD and make yourself laugh next time you’re shopping for the Transplants in HMV. The Distillers set was chiefly, yeah, chiefly, Rock cliché word no.25, made up of new material, none of which I’d heard so only they knew what they were hollering. All except for the last song, ‘City of anglers’. Sorry, ‘….Angels’. Hey, it was that loud. Farewell, you bunch of aussie-mexican-italian-uhhh punks. Beats the shit out of Rancid anyway. Or maybe that was just a highly offensive but eerily pleasurable dream.

Electric 6 are without any retro-beat of a shimmying glitterball of doubt, the best and yet somehow the only disco-metal act on the bill. The Darkness can fuck off with their retro-70’s schtick, Turbonegro have been doing it for years. Their music, Electric 6 that is, not The Darkness or the mighty Turbonegro, and you can call it comedy splashed with a hint of gimmick if you’re cynical, sticks like a sexy tapeworm in your sleeping colon, wriggling around to the bulbous perpetual beats of ‘Gay Bar’. Dick Valentine, the singer, and despite appearing in their videos, has to be the curliest haired Rock-type dude in crumpled-suit wearing person…..Ever. This man really knows how to dress. Badly. Whatsmore, this band sets the trends that others fear to delve into. The haircut was nearly a shag-affro. It was that twisted. The hits were there, keeping the crowd swaying back and forth to ‘Dance Commander’ and ‘High Voltage’. I was a confirmed believer anyway so praise be to a band that has the balls to come to Glasgow in the afternoon that finished their short set with an uber-quixotic (no, me neither) rendition of Queens ‘Radio Ga-Ga’. People clapped in time too. Well, you would, wouldn’t’ you! You probably did.

This is a crime of being totally misunderstood. This was PJ Harvey. The amount of whining I heard before, during, and after her set was appalling. ‘She was shite in Ireland yesterday’ jabbered one security guard. Shit the fuck up that’s why you’re working security. Now, I have the highest respect for security people, you’ve got to, the job’s in the title. But just don’t tell me you thought she was shit ever. Telling the kids this is even worse because they’ll believe it even though a lot of them just shouted through her set for the Foos. Fuckwits. Here’s the truth. If you’re clever enough to have bought ‘Sheila-na-gig’, stand up. If you know who she worked with on ‘Mansize’ (which was as fantastic live as it’s ever been as well as a personal fave), again, stand up. If you knew that she’d been working with Josh Homme on the Desert Sessions, pull on that invisible rope and get up off your bum. If you went only to see the Foos and RHCP yet figured that the rest of the line-up "um, ooh, sounds like fun, heeheeheehee", stay sitting down and shut the fuck up. They should make you sign an idiot’s disclaimer and wear a hat with a badly drawn cock on it. PJ Harvey was on the bill partly as a request from QOTSA. They’ve got good taste. Trust me, they’ll go far. Well, they were on next so that proves my theory even more. She might’ve made the mood a bit mellower, but Polly Jean is a goddess, d'ya hear me, a FUCKING GODDESS in a small dress and red undies, no less, hey, we were all looking so don’t give me that just because you’ve just never bothered to worship under her. The answer to the ‘Mansize’ puzzler was of course Steve Albini. Who? Ahh fugedaboudit.

Josh might’ve been up for 3 days. It’s not uncommon. He looked like a 6 foot 2 inch white dog poo with ginger hair. In black of course. Nick looked better. In-between gigs, where the Queens parties last way past the oxygen tank limit (see: Sam Kinison & Bill Hicks), he might’ve had a sausage roll a few days ago, stomach fuel sandwiched around the booze, maybe a cheese fondue a couple of weeks ago, some digestive biscuits, I don’t know. Queens of the Stone Age are that rare tequila-fuelled fag-munching monster of a band that never stops. They party hard like that dirty gimp in white jeans sang. This band can do something wrong in the eyes of the audience, but, you’d be wrong yourself to think that, plus, they never do anything badly. Just different. Covers a multitude of sins that word does. Halfway through ‘Regular John’, Josh and Troy (other guitar bloke) start noodling up and down the fretboard. It’s at least 96 degrees in the sun, there are no clouds, people are naked, drunk, their peeling skin is falling off with the sweat, and we’re watching a pale bloke slowly indulge in his cocaine-addled interpretation of whatever Ry Cooder riff he had in his mind. Now that’s cooooool. That’s what Queens of the Stone Age do. We’re out here, roasting our bones for soup, and Josh, mentally, is on some offshore-unknown location with only his guitar for company, buggering about playing tunes for the crabs on a beach. 8 minutes worth of it. The actual song's only around 3 and a 1/2 itself. And naturally, they get away with it. If Queens of the Stone Age scream, they’re the loudest. If they drink, they take the longest gulp from the biggest bottles. Drugs? It’s not uncommon. They are the party band with the best in-house soundtrack. Primal Scream for the metal fraternity. And as one pissed-up fella puked, ‘you fucking ROCK by the way Big MAN, blahbluhwaahheyywooo!’ They finished with ‘No one knows’ so riffs ahoy, which was lucky indeed because the Foos were next.

It was gonna be a frumpy teenage night. Godlike, would be, like Dave Grohls legs, too short an expression. We’ve used it for PJ anyway. In the case of Grohl though, not my choice of words though. What you’re reading is obviously my words. I’ve typed them; you’re reading them. Yeah, but….but no, not since the Beatles has one man (and I do know there were 4 Beatles, but two are dead and McCartney wrote The Frog Song, and yes, like Ringo, Dave Grohl used to be a drummer, connectionnnnn) inspired such cretinous screaming from hordes of hollering teenage girls. Is he that good-looking? Many moons ago, maybe 6, possibly 5, certainly more than 4, the Foos were sitting backstage on the T-in the park press lawn. I commented on the size of Dave’s legs to a complete stranger, he agreed, Dave Grohl, great all-round musician but short-arse to the stars, but then we both felt a little, yeah, like Dave’s feet, insecure about the comment and the agreement as Mark Owen had just come in. He’s 4 foot 1; Dave’s at least 5 foot-ish. I felt foolish. Tainted. Inept, yet in need of an answer and a beer. Anyway, a girl of around 20, very pretty in a kinda ‘fuck me I’m good looking but I’m gonna pretend I’m shy because I don’t wanna look too available to Dave’, dark haired, a little like Kate Bush minus the broadsword, ballet and weird whining noises kept walking back and forth past me as I sat leaned against a security fence. 20 minutes of this later, she suddenly, but graciously, you know, faster in the air, but a little slower towards the ground, walked over to Dave’s direction, and as she got around a few feet away, she said ‘hi’ to him rather, um, dreamily. He said ‘hi’ back, well he’ s not rude is he, despite realising that his first thought was ‘yeah, could’ve had her’, but by then, she’d already carried on walking. She should’ve stopped, replied back, quids in for a shag with the bloke from Nirvana who’s not the bass player or the one that died. If….he’d have been a gent he would’ve asked for her phone number, taken her out to his favourite hotdog stand, can of vimto?, go on treat yourself, bag of Revels if you please, but no, 20 minutes to prepare for one flirtation with Dave Grohl and it must’ve lasted, ooh, 6 seconds. And naturally, he noticed her practising, which she hadn’t noticed. That’s what this man inspires. Dedication. What a ruthless bastard. And we like him even more for it. Oh yeah, their set was great, huge, monumental, triumph of the soul, and everything you’d expect it to be. Tour de force. Shit, I almost considered buying a T-shirt. Zen out of 10.

The final band, the Chili’s, rocked the Scottish casbah for a good 90 minutes. I read a review that said that they’d plundered heavily from their ‘greatest hits set’. Can you see where this is going already? What do people expect? Bloody Moloko’s set?! ‘Bring it back, sing it back….ooh, suck my kiss….’. They’re older, wiser, tighter than James Brown’s band but without the heavy fines, so I refuse blankly to name any of the songs. Think of one. Go on. ‘Under the bridge’? Played it. See! ‘Scar Tissue’? Ah, such sweet memories. Keep going. ‘Give it away’? Um, probably. They’re the Chilis. They do what they do; it says so on their sleeve. Headliners for a day, Rock funksters for life. Their bus rolled on.

Big Day Out might’ve been the successor to the two-day event that was Gig On The Green, but this was a far superior event. Plus, it’s now inaugural. We would all like it to be two days, yet this was a bill filled with bands that weren’t playing the Carling Weekend at Leeds and Reading. It was one stage only with the best parts of V2 & Lollapalooza and it only cost 35 quid. Moan no more. You couldn’t miss a band. Jane’s Addiction, and god I love that band, in November are playing at the Carling Academy, that’ll set you back 26 quid. Are you kidding me? 35 quid for 6 bands, it was like finding Fopp record shop for the first time. Deep-fried slice of heaven. This had to be one of the most organised, secure, fun lovin days in the sun. Okay, too many burger vans with only one stall to buy anything different, but, you could get a beer and relax on the grass with the worlds biggest stereo that played some fucking great tunes from noon till 10.30 at night and the Ned count was a near zero.

Will Skiddle be back next year? If they’ll have us, but to be honest, we'd be stupid not to ask first. Long live Big Day Out. Goodtimes outdoors in Glasgow are back. Vote for Grohl!

Big huge thanks to Lee+Artie from Burt Greener.