It's not an easy task to please all of the people all of the time, but the eclectic and crowd-friendly bill of The Big Day Out appeared to do just that. Despite sporadic bouts of light rain, the audience of about 15,000 collectively shook off the weather with a mixture of resilience and indifference and settled down to enjoy the music.
Sparking off the crowd was Junkster, the only Irish band on the bill. Their brand of memorable tunes and solidly-configured arrangements - every single one of which the audience sang along to - marked them out as a band whose songs seem tailor-made for mass acceptance. All things considered, it was a minor triumph, with lead singer Deirdre O'Neill clinching the day's first crowd hurrah for dedicating Going Down to all the girls.
Delayed because of equipment difficulties, Anglo-Asian outfit Cornershop played a mere four songs. On paper, it looked as if the crowd was shortchanged; but, while one could argue the toss over that, there's no doubt that what Cornershop played was a crowd-pleasing highlight of the day. The truncated set, way too short to be fully focused, included Sleep On The Left Side and Brimful Of Asha. They also performed an extended sitar wig-out which could have gone on for much longer, such was the hypnotic effect. For a brief moment - in what was perhaps the sole transcendent point of the event - the West was East.
Next on stage was Ian Brown, former Stone Roses' icon, Mr Incoherent, a.k.a. The Monkey Man. For someone with such an enviable reputation as the sometime spokesperson of the indie/dance crossover generation, the totally out-of-tune Ian Brown sure knew how to disappoint. The music, a ragbag of amateur cliches and rhythmic fragments, picked up towards the end with My Star, but one song out of a mediocre set wasn't enough to prevent Brown from receiving the day's Golden Raspberry Award.
"Ireland's in da house!" That's what The Beastie Boys said, anyway, and who are thousands of people to argue? Dressed in fetching day-glo industrial wear (with those all-important reflective strips for night walking), The Beastie Boys were the act which a large portion of the younger audience were here to see. There were backing tapes a-go-go and lots of stuff from their new album, Hello Nasty. They dedicated a semi-instrumental, Something's Got To Give, to non-violence. It was the only "political" comment of the day, and it connected with the crowd, who went AWOL during the Boys' set. My humble opinion? The Boys were achingly, stupendously boring.
By the time Garbage came on, the sky had cleared and all possibility of a torrential downpour had disappeared. The band were virtually hot to the touch, dressed in regulation black, playing streamlined, wonderfully strange rock music which captured the spirited mood of the day perfectly.
Headliners Pulp ambled on stage and played a corker of a set which was shorter than normal due to time restrictions. Despite this, Pulp and Jarvis Cocker - a K'nexx figure skiing up and down the stage - deviously opted for a muted greatest hits collection. Combining some of the obvious hits (no Disco 2000, mind) with what amounted to finely-tuned art-rock moments, this was a courageous hour or so of perversely paced, dynamic music.
A curious band to be so successful, Pulp have musical influences far older than their core audience. The band blended experimental pieces such as This Is Hardcore - hardly an arena favourite - with Sorted Out For E's And Whizz and the single whammy of Common People. The result was an immensely satisfying gig. At the end of Common People, Cocker deliberately poured a large bottle of water over his head, soaking himself to the skin. This was something the crowd could relate to, in an ironic, blurred and blissed out kind of way.
The Big Day Out: we were cold, wet, tired but not miserable. The hot dogs were actually quite tasty. A Good Day Out.
