BDO's disappearing acts

By GRAHAM REID

The annual Big Day Out festivals which have run every year - except in '98 - for the past decade have brought to Australasia some of the biggest and best bands on the planet. And then some.

The "some" being bands who came, saw and conked out.

Since the BDO was inaugurated here in '94 we have seen some careers which have burned with all the brightness and brevity of a skyrocket.

So from our file marked "Whatever happened to?" we can pull out some names which will bring a smile to our faces, like Elastica. Or Placebo. Or Urge Overkill.

Alien Ant Farm's post-BDO career was sideswiped by a car crash, and because Fred Durst went Hollywood and guitarist Wes Borland walked out, the Band Formerly Known As Limp Bizkit seems to have vanished from our screens. That remix album a year ago really damaged the charts, huh?

Rammstein's progress to world domination seems to have gone down in flames this past year.

This year's Germans at the BDO are Kraftwerk who follow in the footsteps of Rammstein (2001) and Atari Teenage Riot (2000). Oh come on, you remember ATR, the anarchists who banged on about police oppression and so forth, but also made an ungodly racket?

Okay, then maybe you remember Hardknox with shouty Lindy Layton who pumped up the Boiler Room the same year? No? Or Sweden's terrifically hairy Hellacopters who hammered together garage-band rock and metal two years before it became popular and mainstream?

You don't? But I guess you've followed the career of Sean Lennon pretty closely since he and band played the '99 festival. Since then he's ... well, done not a lot really.

Marilyn Manson who appeared the same year has kept touring and so forth, but to diminishing returns. Can you name his last album, the one which plummeted down the charts on release?

America's Fun Lovin' Criminals are still doin' it. But without an American record deal. And I wonder what the Jesus Lizard are up these days? On a 12-step programme maybe.

And weren't the Prodigy really really big at one point? That last single Baby's Got a Temper - their first in what, five years? - hardly impressed despite banging on about the date-rape drug Rohypnol. They just sounded desperate to regain some Smack My Bitch Up cred and controversy.

But the Prodigy - much like Mudvayne and Severed Heads perhaps - captured the mood of the times. Much like Japan's Shonen Knife. Incidentally, do you still play their album that you bought after seeing them in '97? Filed alongside your Killing Heidi and Luscious Jackson albums also bought on the Monday after, huh?

The Australian and New Zealand cast list of past BDOs tosses up some memorable names if not moments: the Clouds, Sisters Underground, Yothu Yindi, Tumbleweed, the Hard Ons, Mother Guru, 12 Tribes of Israel, Second Child, Jungle Fungus, Pumpkinhead, Thorazine Shuffle, Semi Lemon Kola ...

Yes, the Big Days Out may have brought us the brightest and best, but they've also been a barometer of the fickleness of rock, pop and dance culture, a high-volume measure of the fleeting promise that fame can offer.

So to Def FX and those many other bands, we salute you. You flew in, you rocked out ... and were never heard of again.

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