Metal City - Hai Ina Ia Mai Ana Ka Puana

Big Day Pout.

So, I went to the Big Day Out. I'm not proud of myself - and you should not be proud of me - but I went, and that's that. Don't go thinking that my actions weren't unpunished, though - as a receipt for my purchase of some Pure Rock Fury, I endured sore feet, sunburn, blisters, dust in the eyes, deafness, and the feeling of my spinal column being slowly transformed into a tubular flesh sack, stuffed with broken glass and missing baby teeth. By the end of the day, I was a mess - jabbering pointlessly in my own mind, while becoming increasingly disturbed by the simple grunting sounds that seemed to be all my mouth was capable of producing. But, that wasn't the greatest pain of all. No, dear reader - the absolute acme of my skyrocketing torment came not via the utter destruction of my body - but by something far more sinister. More disturbing. A moment of realisation that will haunt me to the grave.

I am old. Yesterday, I officially turned Fucking Old. And I can't say I liked it.

Oh? Wipe that smirk off your face. Save your bullshit 'But you're ONLY TWENTY SEVEN' speech. I've heard it before. And, we both know that it's a bunch of shit - so knock it off. I'm sorry, boys and girls, but if you're over 25 - you're old. You're not a kid anymore. You have advanced beyond the JJJ listening demographic - and this aligns you with the colostomy bag and blanket-over-the-legs set. You're no longer represented by Michael Tunn and Miff Whateverhernameis. Your mouthpieces are Neil Mitchel and Stan Zemanek. You're old - you old fucking bastard. And it sucks.

It certainly sucked yesterday, as I cast my eye around the frolicking, devil-may-care inheritors of the Yoof Generation. As SMS's were wildly sent, and cans of Red Bull were gleefully consumed, The Kids truly embraced their Day Of Rock - shirtless young men cavorted at full arousal with firm-breasted jailbait in hotpants, while mirror-shaded females bumped elbows with overweight goth chicks, who tongued their lip piercings feverishly in the hot sun, yanking their AFI and NIN shirts out of their wetly folded bellies, while smiling knowingly at their knee-high leather boots, which only just managed to conceal a glimpse of fishnet, riding high upon grey, veiny thighs.

But, that wasn't all. Fauxhawks sat precariously upon bronzed skulls, glowing proudly in their blonde-tipped glory, while tattoos of chinese symbols adorned lower-back after lower-back. Every conceiveable body part was pierced somewhere on the grounds - organs both external and internal being forced to accomodate loops of silver and gold, while earlobes were stretched to comically exaggerated proportions by black plastic rings, the skin red and shiny. Bubbly blondes stood next to mopey brunettes, and mopey blondes stood next to bubbly brunettes, united by their Green Day shirts and genital-hugging hotpants, as their boyfriends Stevo and Wayne paid an entire month's worth of KFC earnings for a plastic cup full of beer each, which they tapped together in a show of rock and roll solidarity, their winning smiles sitting beneath their oversized sunglasses, shirts tied around their waists, as they chortled devilishly over the sex they were undoubtedly going to enjoy after dark.

And the lower denizens of the freak heirarchy showed their pierced and tattooed faces for their once-yearly trek out of St. Andrews, as wildly oversized plumes of thick, stinky dreadlocks exploded like phallic totems out of the backs of inked and shaven skulls. Beaded and plaitted ropes of tick-infested hair hung over the sweating, pimply shoulders of hemp-loving, VW Microbus driving, Ironically-Captioned-T-Shirt-Sporting advocates of the communal lifestyle, who rode the crest of acid that coursed through their veins, shooting up and down their arms and legs as it marinated their brains in a twisted ocean of colours and sounds, heightened by the cacophony of sound that erupted from the many stages. Eyeliner was thickly applied, encircling eyes that housed pupils that were either extremely dilated or extremely shrunken, floating like marbles in a fishtank over pierced and powdered noses. The ubiquitous Redder-Than-Red lipstick was painted over cracked and dry lips, and would undoubtedly leave telltale smears on the ripely-scented genitals of their dreadlocked partner - a partner that they knew they'd truly love, ever since spying each other at the Vegan Collective, while purchasing that month's mung beans.

And then, there was me. Broken, battered, smelly, ancient me. With my haggard hands - paper-like skin covering nets of blue and purple veins, wrapped around chalky, calcified bone. Pasty bulbs of blubber looped without dignity from my cracked and disjointed ribcage. My spine, long having left the inside of my body, exploded outward from my back, in a hair-lined festival of scratched, chipped bone, pus-filled, reddening flesh, and the occasional dribble of thick, syrupy spinal fluid. Eyes pale, hair awry, legs faltering, penis broken, and from my mouth - nothing but the smell of rotting organs, slowly transforming into sacks of purplish goo, combined with wordless squeaks and squawks - shapeless sounds having long since taken the place of words. I was a shambling, depraved parody of humanity - and on top of all this, it was hot. And I was thirsty.

I want you to cast your mind back ten years ago, and consider a time when I wasn't so bitter and twisted by self-parodying levels of 'Is He Serious'-esque hatred and snotty egocentricity. A time before university. Before 'writing'. Before anything. A time when I was nothing more than a little nobody - a worm writhing helplessly on the belly of the beast known as the Alternative Nation. These were trying days, friends. Kurt Cobain was now nothing more than a headless corpse, a few of his perfect teeth embedded in the wall of his Aberdeen greenhouse, surrounded by a Rorschach-esque splatter of blood, blone, brain, and hair. The Spice Girls were riding high on the charts, with their zippy brand of effervescent, ironic pop propelling a marketing machine modelled largely on the success of KISS. The alt-rock phenomena had come to a close, with the shuddering, heaving bowels of MTV finally managing to excrete a few final lumps of musical effluvia in the form of Angsty-Teen mainstays Nine Inch Nails and the Smashing Pumpkins - both of whom were enjoying mainstream success as they taught middle-class white kids the most important lesson of all - if you have nothing to be miserable about, make something up.

But, I wasn't part of any of it. Not for me, the joys of late-night JJJ sessions around the wireless, in a room covered in posters of Rage Against The Machine and The Crow. No, I was too busy beginning my secondary career as a truly obnoxious musical snob. I spent months practising my perfect 'Tch!' sound in the mirror, and listening to Led Zeppelin. Somewhere over the course of this period, someone took a look at one of the little stories I would write from time to time, and said 'These are pretty good. You should study english.' Of course, to my ears this was nothing but queer shit, and I was going to let nothing put me off my chosen career - that of an international mercenary and soldier of fortune.

My point, presumably bored reader, is that I felt a great amount of self-pity as I stared across the Big Day Out festival grounds. I wished that I was 17 again, and that I'd had that kind of lifestyle. I may have just spent the last few paragraphs taking the piss, and shamelessly making fun of the Yoof, but I can admit that it's only because of complete and total jealousy. There are moments, dear reader, where I think about how awful my time as a late-teen was, and how I knew literally nobody - I never went out anywhere, I had no friends, and I barely left the house. Of course, that all changed a few years later, after I met a sheep-haired A/V technician named Iain - but that's a story for another time.

Sitting with the unstoppably flamboyant KathyrnOh, I felt a sting of jealousy. Looking around at these young boys and girls - with their mobile phones and their band shirts, all hugging each other and pouring water over each other, and getting into typical teen hijinks, I became thoroughly depressed - and unnerved by the fact that as a crusty old coot, I even care. After all, we're talking about ten years ago. I don't really have an excuse. I know that it's sad and pathetic - but, who cares? I found myself lamenting the passing of a youth I never enjoyed. I just hope that these kids can look back fondly on 2006, after they begin their Business Administration degrees.

What? Oh, the music.

Sleater-Kinney were great. Edgy, chick rock - with the guitarist pulling out the leg kicks and other Jimmy Page-inspired tomfoolery. Not being the owner of a vagina, I am incapable of maximising my enjoyment of a band like this - but, dear reader, I assure you that I tried my best.

Henry Rollins was Henry Rollins - and Henry Rollins is great. Although there was a brief spike of idiocy as he explained to us that the Ramones can bring about world peace, I found his set oddly moving. With his clumsy elegance, Rollins speaks from the heart - to the mind. Unfortunately, the crowd were less than accomodating, and I wished that Rollins would jump down and start punching people in the face - but it wasn't to be.

The spirit of Nick Cave used the vessel of Tex Perkins to fill the RRR tent with bluesy, heroin-laced toasts to self-destructive hedonism and degenerate idolatry. The Beasts Of Bourbon are a great band - I'd never seen them live before, and I was amazed at how powerful they were. Their sound is incredibly muscular, and Tex Perkins fills the role of the front man with aplomb, providing a central image to the performance that maximises the sexuality and sense of theatrical danger that his sensually elastic body is capable of generating. He even made fun of the death of Michael Hutchence, which I was hugely appreciative of after spending the last few weeks revisitng the INXS back catalogue and coming to the conclusion that - with the exception of a few tracks - they were uniformly fucking shit. How Tex Perkins never became an intenational star, I'll never know. He is like Jim Morrison with testicles.

It was at this point that my spinal column was sending urgent messages to my brain, informing it that where bone and flesh once sat, there was nothing more than a jigsaw puzzle of shattered body parts, floating in a dirty, diseased sea of gelatine and broken glass. To add insult to injury, I was thirsty like the wolf - so, I sent my faithful Girl Friday KathrynOh to fill up my water bottle while she filled hers, so that I could collapse pathetically against a cyclone fence.

But, I was about to be blessed. For, as I stared up and through the clouds of pain, what did I see grinning down at me?

Why, could it have been Desci? Blogging uber-celebrity and reticent figurehead of the gothic lifestyle?

It absolutely was. And I felt a little bit ashamed of myself. After all, we are talking about a winner of "BEST BLOG EVAR!!1!" or some shit, and I had neither gold doubloons with which to pay homage to her, nor rose petals to sprinkle on the ground beneath her feet, as she observed the 'rock combos' with regal authority.

So, I called her a nerd for winning blog awards, and then KathrynOh returned, and they talked about something or other - by this point, I was barely conscious, and I was busy stocking up my mental and physical energies for the gruelling brutality that I was about to endure.

It was time to bid adieu to Australia's official 'bestest bloggar lolz', and it was time to come face to face with one James Jewel Osterberg - better known to posers like yourself as Iggy Pop.

For those of you who don't know about this most sinewy of rock icons, Iggy Pop and The Stooges are one of those bands that cunts like Thurston Moore really, really like. Their music is loud and primitive, a sort of proto-punk cacophony that sounds very, very good when you're wasted. In recent years, The Stooges have deposed The Velvet Underground as the ultimate in hipster masturbatory icons - and are now enjoying a resurgence as 'Band Most People Own The T-Shirt Of While Never Actually Hearing Any Of The Albums'. The Kids love The Stooges because they are told to, and The Adults love The Stooges because they were told to - years ago.

So it came to pass that the ampitheatre was packed to the gills with rabid, out-of-control Yoof, slavering madly and chomping at the bit to get a glimpse of the one man who can make all their Hip Credential dreams come true. And then, he was there - the man who would be Pop - dancing and shucking and jiving, howling like a reject from the island of Dr. Moreau - a composite beast, with lungs packed full of a catalogue of animal sounds that could be blended into new, terrifying sculptures. He danced. He swore. He did 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' twice. The girl behind me with the large breasts went apeshit, screaming like a maniacal banshee, and pressing her hot, sweaty body against me - causing my penis to rocket back into pathetic life. Fortunately, even at full arousal, I am so unimpressive that even as I ground my pelvis against the back of the guy in front of me, he noticed absolutely nothing. The blood was sucked out of my genitals, however, when the redhead announced that she'd just pissed herself, and I returend to my normal, near-invisible flaccid state.

The White Stripes appeared to play us some music to go home to - but it would only have been appropriate if 'home' was a place that involved by anally raped by a horse. The White Stripes are fucking horrible - a truly incompetent, pretentious joke of a band. Nice tits on the drummer - that much is a given - but from a musical standpoint, they are the sonic equivalent of an overweight drunk holding me down and moving his bowels into my ears after a night of beer and curry. By this point, my pelvis had torn itself free of my body, dashing away across the grass - and was last seen attempting to pick up a chick at the slurpee stand. My feet were nothing more than lacerated chunks of blood and raw meat, gore literally flowing over the lip of my Blundstones, leaving a snail-trail of crimson in my wake. The White Stripes droned on, their bassless drivel causing a latent anureyism in my brain to explode, and I fell to the ground, screaming as blood spewed out of my nostrils. I felt myself losing control of my bladder and bowels, and I howled in shame and agony - yet, still, the band wouldn't stop playing their horrible, horrible music.

And then, it was over. A gaggle of girls were pulled off a stand by security, and were dragged away screaming and clawing the earth. A young bogan ran a hand through his frosted hair, and yanked his wraparound shades from his face, sucking the last few drops of beer from the plastic cup, which he crushed and tossed over his shoulder. A vegan girl threw a heavy dread over her shoulder, her Clockwork Orange-inspired eye makeup having long since been rubbed away, and she took her boyfriend's hand in hers, squeezing the dirt on the skin between them, as he dropped the last few embers of their roach on the ground, grinding it beneath a filthy Converse one-star. A group of teenagers talked about how tired they were going to be when they returned to Box Hill North Secondary on Monday morning, and Mazzy texted Scotty, because the Mars Volta were fully sick.

In the distance, a single, solitary goth girl pulled her black backpack on, as her thick legs sweated inside their black lace stockings, and she fingered her lip piercing nervously, looking over her shoulder, and wondering if Jameo - that surfie looking boy who spent the day with Chrissie and Cindy - could ever see through her thick mascara and black lipstick, and could ever truly love her. She lit an Alpine and headed for the train station. This was a question that only her Livejournal could answer.

And I? I headed back to the Torana with KathrynOh. But, she looked different, somehow. Younger. Happier. A a woman riding on a wave of euphoria, who gushed and jabbered about the virtues of the Stooges, in a voice that made her sound like a teenager again. It was the effect I had desired, so badly, but I couldn't quite grasp. For KathrynOh, the day had energised and reconfirmed her love of live music, and of the spirit of Rawk that so infects us all. I felt it too - particularly when watching Tex Perkins - but, at the same time, there was a sense of melancholy there, as I watched the kids having their minds blown for the first time, and I wished that I could go back in time and be one of them.

But, for KathrynOh - the day had turned her into a teenage girl, effortlessly gushing and gleefully grinning through a sermon on the glory and majesty of Iggy and the Stooges. And it was a nice thing to listen to on the way home.

Posted by David at January 30, 2006 11:03 AM | TrackBack