So finally it’s 1994 Big Day Out, my very first one and the last post about all this! I’ve written just a little tiny bit about it below!
$45 for all those acts plus more back then, you know? I have say fuck all seems to be online about these old Big Day Outs shows, before looking them up I was thinking I’ll find heaps about them but I seem to be wrong about that so I’m just doing it myself!
So to start with Fremantle Oval seems like a such a tiny venue today, I when to a South Freo Aussie footy game last year and I looked around, that’s what I thinking! It’s an oval for Aussie rules footy but that’s it really, only one grand stand sitting area with real plastic seats but around the rest is just grass sloped up area for kids to play and family’s to have picnic or something. The stage was facing out at one end where the goals, the end closest to Freo Hospital and old Freo Jail which were backstage area for the bands would have been. The two main stage set up plus a third smaller stage closer to the main entry area.
1994 was the first year I when, missing the year before which was the first time touring the fest to Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne and 92 was the very BDO only playing in Sydney. Gold Coast was added in 94 as the first date and Perth as the last or Freo, I should say?
I came up from my small tiny country town by bus about six hrs with my then gf and young sister. I was 16 at the time or was it 17? Well I was some aged something then, BDO was all-age and back then you didn’t need to go with an old person. Both of them pissed off pretty early because my gf started vomiting non-stop even before the first band started to play, she sat under a tree while I ran down front for the first two bands and when I came back to see she was going home. In the day in age before mobile phones she when to the corner deli down the road to use a pay phone called her mum. BTW she did see Tex Perkins, lead singer of The Cruel Sea reading a newspaper and eating lunch there but she didn’t care because she was trying to stop throwing up. Plus my little sister was totally freaking out by all of it too so didn’t want to stay too but I did, off course!
On the now defunct website faster louder the festival founder Viv Lees says he and partner Ken West finally “got it right” in 1994 and they also rated it number two of all the years BDO played in Australia. I would say it’s tied top spot for me with 1996, then comes 1995 and 1997 plus whatever after that like 1999 was still pretty good!
Happy snaps!
Now on with the line-up or well, what I vaguely do remember: Soundgarden, Björk, Ramones, The Cruel Sea, The Breeders, Teenage Fanclub, The Smashing Pumpkins, Tumbleweed, The Meanies, Straitjacket Fits and Severed Heads plus a few others played the day but I missed them!
Opening band on the main stage of the day was New Zealand band Straitjacket Fits, does anyone remember them too? Sorry I’ll stop say that because it’s pointless. I love them ever since that day and still got their stuff today. She Speeds song was totally amazing starting the day.
Next was an Aussie band Tumbleweed from a town/city called Wollongong and then Melbourne’s The Meanies but they played on side stage or maybe it was later on? Maybe I remember them together because of the night before, I did see a side show the Saturday night before with both The Meanies and Tumbleweed at want now is a sport bar. Daddy Long Legs by Tumbleweed is just above and The Meanies’ Cruelty’s Fun is just below.
Now this might sound mad today but I’m saying The Smashing Pumpkins played next on the bill, maybe this was before Mr. Billy got his big head ego trip but he did have a head of hair then. Now remember it’s only just 94 and Siamese Dream was only release a few months earlier which I did always think was a much nicer album and less manic than what followed. I think I’m skipping them in videos and Teenage Fanclub because it’s the OK oversea bands on the day.
Released in 1993 was The Breeders‘ Last Splash album and the Cannonball song was much bigger so they played next on the day, I when crowd surfing just the bass line finish and the rest of the band kick into to the groovy bit of that track. At the time UK’s Teenage Fanclub was amazingly a bigger band in the indie world then but my highlight of their set was when Kim Deal of The Breeders came back on to play a song with them.
Then into the final four bands of the day, Aussie The Cruel Sea was huge at the time and only three acts played after them. I don’t think they do mean much outside Australia but I dig them as much as any Aussies growing up in the 90’s, they didn’t seem to stop touring at this point in time because I think I did see them again this year. This Is Not The Way Home is just ultimate 90’s track.
Ramones played next in full leather jackets and jeans even if it was middle of the Aussie summer here but the sun was going down in their set. It’s unbelievable looking at that photo above with all three main guys no longer with us now. Wanna Be Sedated is the song I wanted them to play and they did!
Somehow Bjork played in between them and headlines. At some point in the middle of her set the sound, lights and everything just die and Freo was in the dark but I like to think Bjork started to fly, float above the crowd and just kept singing and crowd had to be very quite to hear her singing without a microphone above us but everything came back to life after a bit in the dark so everyone when a little bit more nuts for her. It was just when her Debut album was out so it’s Human Behavior.
Headlines were Soundgarden and they were insane that night, it’s was only a couple of months away for the Superunknown album to being dropped but I remember Spoonman as if it was only played yesterday. Some dickhead throw a beer bottle and hit the bass player in the face too, I was closest to his side of stage saw it and I don’t think the others knew what happened because the bass guitar was on the floor and he was off the stage and into the crowd, just were I was standing watching. So a very anger Ben Shepherd was climbing in on top of me and everyone around me, the security guards were putting him back while the rest of the band finished the song. Then Ben’s screaming at the security but when back on stage to play the next song while the security guys climb in but at some point Shepherd started to smile and nodding his head so they must have got the guy or something. Jesus Christ Pose finished the set that night too.
Oh, it was Severed Heads playing on a side stage after the headliners finish so here’s Dead Eyes Opened.
After it all finished Freo on a Sunday night was like a ghost town the 90’s, all these kids sleeping doorways, lining up use phone boxes, no public transport at all, every cab that came into the area was chased down. Lucky I met up with friends who had just moved to the big city because I didn’t even have a plan what to do but I sleep on the floor back at there share-house and then caught a bus back to my gf’s mum’s to see she had stop vomiting and my sister wasn’t having panic attack!
I hope someone out there enjoy my very long and too detail post about this day in my life?
Cheers 🙂
a1000mistakes 
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