BDO 05 - Morning

Up bright and early at seven thirty ready to drive to Auckland! It's a yearly ritual for me and my sisters, and as usual our mum has to complicate things. “You drive me to the airport, and I'll pick up the other car...” (blah blah blah). So at 10.15, when Chuganaut, the first band (who I was interested in seeing) were playing, we were only just getting to the airport. By the time we found a car park and walked to the stadium almost an hour had passed. Fortunately the queue wasn't too bad. There were a lot of people (I ran into someone I knew before I even got in the gate), but the line (OK, mob) moved pretty quickly, so it was only 11.30 when we got inside.

Me and my sister had a brief argument over whether we'd missed the Bleeders, and then discovered that our timetables disagreed, and neither of them agreed with the one in the programme they handed out at the gate. Well gee, that's a good omen for the day. Anyway, we made it to the Bleeders, but we wouldn't have missed much, as it was a pretty lackluster set. Although that may not have been entirely their fault since the mosh was pretty tame. I felt like I was the only one there over 18. A few hardcore looking punks in front of me started a bit of a circle pit, but it was a bit sad watching the lanky, awkward 17 year old boys try to join in.

After that it was straight to the small stage to catch Deja Voodoo. On the way out (it took at least five minutes for everyone to file out of the moshpit even at that early hour) I was subjected to Steriogram's first song, and was surprised to see that they actually had an audience. I thought Steriogram were just one of those bands that get signed by a big label and have a huge promotion campaign behind them, so all the radio DJs have to pretend that they're really popular, when actually no one likes them.

Deja Voodoo were in good form as usual, with a very entertaining set (no one on fire this time though) and a reasonable mosh going on. During the new song 'Weed On Green Man' I was struck by the thought, 'This is what Led Zeppelin would've sounded like, if they had been really really shit'. I was also disappointed that I didn't see any one light up during that song. I remember (just going into old person mode here for a second) when Marylin Manson played 'I Don't Like the Drugs', and you could see the column of smoke from a mile off.

There was even a bit of a circle pit at the end when they played 'Beers'. No doubt pissing off the security guys, who told everyone off after the Bleeders for engaging in 'all this circle nonsense'. I don't understand why they thought anyone would pay attention to some old Aussie guy who talks to a moshpit full of drunken munters as if he were a teacher telling a bunch of five year olds to be quiet at the school assembly, but hey, I'm not a security expert. In my experience the moshpit is usually safer when there's a circle going on, because then the most violent behaviour is confined to one area, and everyone else can avoid it.

Well that was my morning, hopefully I'll have another post up before I go to bed tonight.