SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
Whether it was the summer dates, those incredible line-ups or the feeling you were a part of something bigger than yourself, there was nothing quite like the Big Day Out – before or since – in Australia’s musical landscape.
Thirty years ago this month, music promoters Ken West and Vivian Lees first set their sights on transforming the Sydney leg of the Violent Femmes’s 1992 Australian tour into something bigger than just another gig. “There was not a festival scene then,” West reflects now. He felt both protective of the growing alternative music scene, and conscious of the bigger promoters hovering around underground acts, ready to out-spend the little guys like West who had earned his stripes touring international acts. But to justify filling the Hordern Pavilion, they needed to round out the bill with a few more bands – and a couple more stages, for good measure.
As well as some local punk, indie and hardcore actswent number one on the Billboard charts. It changed everything.
