Livid 99
Brisbane RNA Showgrounds, 2 October 1999
by Chay Neal [webmaster]

The day started off at 8am when we left for the bus stop on the Gold Coast. We got there nice and early to make sure we didn't miss it because they were quite particular on the ticket that the special Livid bus was leaving at 9 am SHARP! There were a fair few people waiting for the Livid bus/s... Eventually at about 9.30 am I think, a Livid mini-bus came in and took a few people, but of course there was nowhere near enough room for everyone. So the rest of us wait for over an hour longer before the bus finally arrives... So we left the Gold Coast at about the time the concert started so that really pissed me off - missed Gota Cola.

The bus trip felt like years! The traffic was terrible too! Anyway, eventually we neared Brisbane and everyone started to wake up again and get back into the mood of it. :-)

The RNA showgrounds were a good venue but very hard to get from one place to another in a hurry because the walkways are only so wide... We started off the day watching a bit of native aboriginal music which I must say didn't do too much for me.

Then Coloured Stone came on. I can't remember exactly what they were like, probably because I've never heard too much of their music so I didn't really get into that either.

I really think they should have arranged the timetable better... I mean how many people reading this have not even heard of the bands on the bill that play before 1pm (Coloured Stone, Gota Cola, Toothfaeries, Jackson, Taxi, Propaganda Klann, Nick Earls & Iczer One, Kiley Gaffney, Andy McDonell Contraption, 2 Dogs, and Native Rhyme Syndicate) - okay, perhaps you may have heard a few of them, but can you honestly say that you would go out of your way to see more than a few of the bands above? I think the bands should have been more evenly spread throughout the day - like they are at Homebake and Big Day Out. The lesser known bands should have been over at the smaller stages, and the bigger bands should have been on at the main stage, rather than the lesser known bands at the start of the day, and the better known bands at the end of the day (at the same time!!!). Has it been like that at Livid every other year? Anyway, enough winging about that, on with the day...

Next on the bill was Gerling! The first band that we wanted to see... These little dudes rocked! They did their usual act (in their school uniform & back-packs) jumping around the stage doing all their cute little dances. hehehe. They got two lucky girls and guys up on stage to dance with them too. The people were pretty stocked about that! The girls had a hell of a time up there, but the two guys sorta looked like tools just standing there with no idea what to do... The crowd seemed to really enjoy Gerling too. Even with a bit of a mosh pit happening there...

Straight after Gerling we ran over to the Big Top stage to see Darren Middleton's band - Drag. Now they rocked!! Darren's very talented in case you didn't notice from his work in Powderfinger! I'm seriously gonna have to track down their CD or something. They drew a pretty big crowd too and everyone seemed to be impressed.

Anyway, after Drag we had a quick look at Not From There which looked OK, but we didn't have a chance to hear enough of them. I can't remember what we did next, I think we were off to Violetine... These guys were unreal! My friend John managed to score himself a free Violetine girls T-shirt too! LOL

When Violetine finished we went over to the Loudmouth Stage to check out Area 7. Now these guys were really goin off! They played a nice cover which I can't remember the name of as well as some new & 'old' stuff... The mosh pit was pretty violent though! We were right down the front when I got a boot in my mouth... Normally the crowd surfing is okay because the feet just hit you on the head, but when they hit you in the mouth then it can hurt!! My front tooth went straigh into my bottom lip and it hurt. hehe.

After that we headed back to the main stage and saw about a minute or two of Sebadoh before Ben Lee. I must say Sebadoh sounded better than I imagined, but I didn't hear enough to really comment much more on that... We had a bit of a rest to recover from the A7 mosh, before heading down closer to the stage to catch a bit of Ben Lee. I must say that Ben Lee was slightly disappointing... I love live music, but there are some bands that I prefer just to listen to the CD, and I think Ben Lee is one of them. Some of the songs sounded a tiny bit umm out of tune or something but not enough to matter or anything. Anyway we left Ben Lee early to head over to Merrick & Rosso. I realise now that instead of seeing Ben Lee we should have been at Shihad cause I really wanted to see those guys, but I guess its a bit late now! Aparently after we left Ben Lee, he did a stage dive! And got a bit snapped too I think. Hopefully somebody elses review can tell us more about that!

Anyway Merrick & Rosso took their time coming on!! They were about 10 minutes late, I think because of the fact that people were getting the stage ready for Stella One Eleven who were on after M&R. Merrick & Rosso were god damn hilarious as usual of course! "The difference between us live and on the radio is that we can say Fuck a lot live" - so they did of course. I can't remember how many times Merrick said the F word. Rosso showed us his man-boobies too! hehe. They should have been given more time though! So as Merrick & Rosso said, we should all write to the Livid organisers and complain!! (along with the Livid buses, the timetable, the cost of drinks, and the people going overboard on the crowd surfing during Powderfinger! But more about that later). :-) Oh and we heard a minute or so of Stella One Eleven as we were leaving too, and they sounded great.

I think next on the line-up was Alex Lloyd. My one major complaint with Alex's show, which I think really spoiled it, was the volume was a bit too hight. There's this certain point where you just can't heard that much... the screeching and distortion just becomes so great that you can't enjoy the music properly... Compared to the main stage, Alex Lloyd (under the Big Top) was probably nearly twice as loud. I think the accoustics of the Big Top stage weren't too well suited for Alex Lloyd's music either. Electronic bands seem to generate a better sound in enclosed spaces like that... Anyway, we went right to the back and he sounded a bit better from there. It was a great show though. I am definately getting "Black the Sun". I heard all my favourite songs off the album played that day too.

Anyway we headed off to catch a bit of Frenzal before Alex Lloyd finished... Unfortunately we only caught about two songs, but they really rocked! They had a huge fan base in the audience too as we could also tell from the number of Frenzal t-shirts that people were wearing! Frenzal Rhomb finished with (I think) Never Had So Much Fun.

Next on the other main stage was one of my favourite bands - Powderfinger. I really think the main stage volume should have been louder though, because when people are yelling in your ear and stuff it is very hard to actual hear the music, especially Bernards amazing vocals! I just wished there were not so many bloody crowd surfers! It was pissing off everyone! You just can't watch the show when you get kicked in the head and squashed and pushed over every 10 seconds!! As always, Bernard gets the audience to do the clap along (is it to Private Man?). I lasted about 10 seconds clapping with my arms above my head but I just couldn't do it after pushing along so many fat-arse crowd surfers! I was totally buggered by the end of Powderfinger! In brief, Powderfinger were excellent, but the show was spoiled slightly by the crowd surfers and "noisy people"!!

Another complaint (geez this is a pretty negative review hey? It's not meant to be!!!) - Fountains of Wayne were on at the same time as Powderfinger - I really would have liked to see both!!! Anyway, next on the main stage were spiderbait. I've seen Spiderbait live before and seen them live on TV & heard them on the radio, and I must say, as much as I like Spiderbait's music, I have always preferred the CD version to their live music, especially with their newer stuff which would be harder for them to perform live...

We left about half way through Spiderbait to go and see Mercury Rev. They were great! Unfortunately I didn't stay long enough though to hear my favourite songs... I would have loved to hear more of their show, but I also wanted to see Kellie & Tim (of Screamfeeder) so we moved on...

Kellie & Tim were really impressive! Just with their voices and accoustic guitars... They are both very talented and both have amazing voices. They peformed a heap of their own songs as well as a heap of covers. Including one of my favourites - the Sneakerpimp's6 Underground. We watched a fair bit of Kellie & Tim's set. They drew a much smaller crowd than the rest of the bands I had seen, but it was good because the people who were there were there to watch and listen to them, and not to mosh and crowd surf...

On the way over to Something For Kate I caught maybe a minute or two of Suede - they sounded unreal! I wished I had time to see more of them too! Something For Kate were unreal though as well. They were pretty loud too, but luckily not quite as loud as Alex Lloyd, so it wasn't spoiled by the volume. Unfortunately time was a problem with Something For Kate too as there was no way I was missing out on Garbage (who are maybe my favourite band at the moment). I heard Electricity and another one or two of their new tracks which all sounded just amazing, but then I had to move on.

We got to Garbage and made our way just into the mosh pit area when Shirley Manson walked onto the stage. The crowd went wild. I kept making my way to the front - I was quite determined to get as close as I could - as were about 10,000 other people!! LOL. The mosh pit was probably the most squashed one there... It was amazing... not a millimetre to move anywhere!! So it was exactly a mosh-pit, more like a squash-pit. This was actually good though I think, because it meant that not too many people could crowd surf (because there simply wasn't enough room to get out on top of the crowd - everyone was totally stuck).

Shirley & the band were... words escape me... just amazing! I wished everyone would stop screaming so much and yelling out "take your top off!" - she's not Courtney Love for fuck's sake - she may be sexy but she obviously wasn't taking her top off so I wish they'd shut up!! The volume was too low to hear Shirley talking while hundreds of people were screaming their lungs out in both my ears. Shirley was great though. Inbetween songs she would talk to the crowd breifly - half of which I couldn't hear though. The sound was far greater than that on CD too! They played all my favourite songs too I think (well all Garbage songs are my favourites! But I mean my favourites of my favourites... yeah).

After Garbage I jumped the fence, to save pushing my way through the crowd, and could've gotten backstage if I wanted to, but I probably wouldn't have gotten too far and plus I was in a hurry to recover before Offspring. So off to get a quick couple of drinks and recover for a few minutes. I reckon they would have made a few million dollars off drinks alone at Livid! I would've spent about $20 or more myself.

The Offspring soon came on stage. We quickly made our way down there to get nice and close to the action as usual. The mosh-pit was surprisingly less cramped up than Garbage (I think everyone just wanted to get as close to Shirley Manson as they possibly could!! I noticed in the Garbage mosh pit that at the front where I was it was 95% guys). Anyway, Offspring were actually really good!! They did a few crowd-pleasing shows between songs too, such as beating up the backstreet boys, and hosing down the crowd with the fire hose. And they also had an 'intermission' where a damn ugly fat dude with a toy elephant over his dick sorta danced on stage! Eww!! Anyway, I must say that the crowd was really good - really getting into it, but not too much crowd surfing, and it wasn't too cramped up...

Anyway, that about sums up my day. The bus trip home wasn't quite so bad as the trip in thank god.

That's the end of my little review. I know I've basically just dribbled crap and haven't actually told you a real lot, but I haven't got the best memory for remembering any more details! Sorry! Please email me any other Livid reviews, or just comments, to me at chayn@ozemail.com.au.