Concert Week

The week is finally over.  Not that it was a bad week.  There was just a lot of music in it and I didn't get a lot of sleep because of late concerts.
It started out with the Cocorosie on Tuesday night at the Sydney Opera house.  They had very strange music and an even stranger stage show, but they were still very entertaining and it was amazing to see inside the opera house.

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Than on Wednesday Leighton and I went into Sydney to enjoy the Australia day celebrations, including free concerts throughout the city center.  This was a full day of walking and listening, but we had to go home before we could listen to The Hungry Kids of Hungary or Cloud Control.  It was probably for the best that we went home before those two bands started playing because Thursday turned out to be a crazy long day as we went to the Big Day Out festival in Sydney Olympic Park.  It was a great festival with tons of really good bands to listen to on six different stages.  There were more people at this festival than I have ever seen at any concert or show in the Inland Northwest.  Leighton and I arrived just in time to catch Little Red and the Kids of 88 with their really upbeat music.

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We than waded into the mosh pit where we were crammed together, jumping up and down to the heavy metal music of Airbourne.

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Throughout the day we had the pleasure of listening to quite a few more bands both big and small.  Ratatat gave a good showing although they had a smaller crowd

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The two bands that stick out in my mind the most have to be John Butler Trio who did an amazing song called Oceans which blew me away to see.

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The second band that sticks out is Rammstein.  I have always heard about them growing up as a crazy German band that has really good stage shows, and I was not disappointed.  There music was very very dark and creepy and all in German so I have very little idea what was actually said, but their stage show was to die for.  It started out with them playing behind a huge black curtain that hid the whole stage.  As the song picked up and the beat got more enticing the black curtain dropped to show an equally large curtain the colors of the German flag, and as the song reached its climax and the base began to really boom out the flag curtain dropped as well to show a crazy castle scene and each of the band members dressed up like they just came from a bloody dark ages battle.  The crowd loved it and they cheered and clapped and that was only the beginning.  Throughout their show Rammstein used more pyrotechnics than the Moscow 4th of July firework show and so many flame throwers and drip torches that I'm sure every fire fighter in the crowd was gaping.  It was a really cool spectacle to see and I will remember it for a long long time.

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Last but not least I want to say a little bit about the band that I believe had the best stage presents in the whole festival and they were one of the smallest.  Matt and Kim spent almost no money on their show.  they didn't have any fancy lights or flame throwers, although they did pass out balloons for one of their songs, but still the crowd loved them the most of all.  They spent a lot of time talking and interacting with the crowd which fun and added to their music.  Most importantly to me though, they were the only band out of the 40ish band at Big Day Out that came out after their show and talked and hugged and took pictures with the audience.  To me that is almost worth more than all those other bands we saw.
 

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I do need to spend a second on one more person before I'm done with this post and that is Sufjan Stevens.  Leighton and I watched him at the State Theater in Sydney last night and he was so much fun.  Both Leighton and I have liked him for quite a while and although we arn't huge fans of his new "electronic" sound direction, I still have to say he put on an amazing show.  He got into his own songs, had crazy glowing uniforms on his band mates, and really worked the light show to a point where I was so excited with his preformance that he could have left in the middle and I still would have thought it was worth the money.  That's one life goal I can check off, I got to see Sufjan Stevens live.

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