ARTICLES

On Foreign Soil: A Lot of Big Days Out

Author: P-Money

P-Money was one of the few NZ acts to play all the Big Day Out shows this year, the one in Auckland and five in Australia. Playing as part of Scribe's newly formed band as well as doing his own DJ slots made for an interesting, albeit exhausting trip. He generously agreed to share his BDO experience with NZM...

What up yo? I'm in the middle of a three day break between tour dates for the Australian Big Day Out festival. It's a reasonably long tour for this part of the world. I'll be getting home next week. Right now I'm in Melbourne and in the morning we travel to Adelaide and then on to Perth.

I'm travelling with Scribe and his new band. It's been an interesting experience so far and we've definitely had some fun. All the players in the band are very skilled and experienced musicians plus they're genuinely good people, so that makes touring pretty easy.

Our first BDO gig in Auckland went down a little worse than anticipated (although my hopes weren't too high considering there were only four days of rehearsal!). The band had the material down pretty well considering the lack of preparation. We played to our best but not having our own monitor engineer for the tour was a big oversight as none of us could hear ourselves (or each other) on stage. So our timing was out and Scribe strained his voice quite a bit. It could have been a lot tighter show in many ways. The audience was unforgiving as well. We failed to move them in any great manner. Reality Check! LOL

Some relief came for me later that evening when I DJ'ed for PNC. The Local Produce stage had been given the worst production standards ever (dodgy mixer, overworked and minimal crew, shitty backstage etc) but PNC still managed to pull off a superstar performance. He killed it and single handedly quadrupled the audience at his stage within the first two-or-three songs. He was in a really good place performance-wise. Positive and hungry and with something to prove. The crowd gave him his props! (I can't help but think we may have been better off playing a smaller stage with Scribe and benefiting from that hip hop friendly audience.)

(Above P-Money with Scribe and Band at Perth BDO.)

The next gig was Gold Coast. Our chance to redeem ourselves as a band. And to be honest it was a complete flip of the Auckland gig. I might even go so far as to say it was too easy! We definitely played better and Scribe's energy levels were consistent throughout the show. But all in all I'd say it was the positive energy from the crowd that lifted our game and our spirits during the set. Australian audiences are generally more responsive and they certainly do go nuts for Scribe which makes it much easier to play for them.

After that I had my own DJ set booked for the Hothouse stage before Lupe Fiasco. I rocked a bunch of classic hip hop and some current hits which went down a real treat. It was lot of fun!

The next show was Sydney... now, in my opinion (not speaking about Scribe in particular but the band as a whole) this was probably our sloppiest performance. But funnily enough the crowd went off! I mean fuckin' going nuts. They were chanting "SCRIBE, SCRIBE, SCRIBE" before we even hit the stage. And when we kicked shit off they were right there with us for the whole ride. Everything went down well including the new songs and the DJ tracks (we perform some songs without the band). It was crazy to see. Plus its great to know that Scribe still has that major following in Oz. It hasn't really died down at all, he is still a rockstar over here. (Time to get some new shit out right away!)

I went and did my DJ set over on the Hothouse stage again but for some reason they had switched my slot to a later time. I went on after Lupe instead of before which kinda' sucked a bit because I think some people would have missed my set, thinking that I was on earlier. I still rocked it and had fun with the people. Big shout out to all the heads who caught that set. I really enjoyed it.

Melbourne's Big Day Out was pretty good. We played maybe our best set with the band so far and the crowd were very supportive. Not going totally crazy like Sydney, but still into it.
And once again I played my DJ set, this time my slot was moved (again) to after Lupe and before Shapeshifter which was actually a really dope line-up when you think about it. I started with the classic hip hop (KRS One, Tribe, Nas) and ended up playing funk and breaks and cuttin' shit up. The Melbourne crowd really felt my performance and this was my favourite spot of the tour. Shapeshifter followed me with their mean live drum'n'bass, soul jazz and hip hop styles. Good stuff.

And that brings us up to date, where it's about 12:54am Wednesday night/Thursday morn and I should get some sleep. Lobby call at 8am and we're off to Adelaide. Wish us luck!