We got there in time to see the end of My Chemical Romance's set. Sounded pretty ordinairy to me. Next up were Eskimo Joe. They were alright I suppose. For some reason the singer wore a red hankerchief around his neck.
My favourite point was when - after playing a ballad - their singer told the crowd it was time to rock, and played a song that sounded almost exactly the same as the last, although maybe just a little bit faster. At this point I turned around and saw Corey standing next to me - what are the chances eh?
Next band was the John Butler Trio. I'm not a huge fan of his, but it wasn't too bad. He got points in my book for stealing Ribar's wardrobe circa 1999. Corey pointed out that he only played a few songs, but I think he played more, they just all sounded the same. He was a bit quiet too - any time you're 30 metres from the stage and can have a normal conversation with a friend standing next to you, that means the band isn't loud enough.
I'd really been looking forward to The Killers, but sadly they were a bit of a let down. The performance was OK, but the sound was horrible. It might have had something to do with the fact that they had their keyboard/guitar ratio all screwed up - two keyboards and one guitar is not a recipe for a rocking performance. It did improve a little bit during their set though.
Also, I'm pretty sure I spotted my old Temple College classmate Kevin Sheldrick on bass.
When I saw that Jet had the 6.30pm spot right after The Killers, I thought it was a bit strange. I wasn't wrong. Almost noone stayed around to watch them, their 15 minutes is well and truly up. For some reason they actually had really good sound, just not good songs. Lots of people threw plastic bottles at them. About half way through we moved to the other side of the oval to wait for Muse, and found there were more people sitting in front of an empty stage waiting for them to start than were on the other side watching Jet. I saw Tim Pearce, and attempted to catch up on three or four years in a five minute conversation.
I was really surprised with the reaction to Muse. My friend Mirjana is a big fan, but I'd always suspected that she was perhaps the only one. But they got a really good response. They did play really well, Time is Running Out was a definite highlight. Pretty good light show too.
Finally, the band I'd been waiting for, Tool. We got a pretty good spot near the front, but about five seconds after the band started playing all hell broke loose. That's why I hate festivals, a bunch of kids get all drunk and excited and decide to jump all over each other for no good reason. Anyway we moved back a bit and found a slightly more suitable spot. Only slightly, because I had some fool dancing Peter Garrett style next to me, bumping into me every few seconds. It wasn't enough to ruin my enjoyment of Tool though, who were absolutely brilliant. Every other band there yesterday was a collection of musicans - guitarists, bassists, drummers, singers, sometime keyboardists - but Tool live are so in sync its like you're just listening to the one instrument.
I wondered how bands like My Chemical Romance could watch these guys every night and not want to quit music. They really were so good it made the other bands on the bill look amateurish. Deep, hypnotic grooves, huge riffs, great vocals - by far the best performance I've seen by a band at the Big Day Out before (in case you're wondering, the worst was Hole I think in 1999, where Courtney Love claimed she was bitten by a bee on stage and left the rest of the band to go on by themselves after she stormed off. Ah, good times).
So that was my Big Day Out in 2007. Not the best I've been to, but one I'll remember thanks to the headline act. Now just two weeks till Damien Rice, a month or so until the Mars Volta, and apparently Tool are going to be back later this year. I'll definitely be there.
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