The Big Day out - Melbourne Australia

Well, I left my ticket at home. Here I am, 25 minutes into my one hour bus ride to the city to meet a friend and I realize I don’t have my ticket. I’m already way tired from lack of sleep the night before and the added frustration of not being able to get through to my house by phone (my brother online) and mobile (turned off) made me cry with frustration. I eventually grabbed a taxi home and ended up on the train to the city instead. So, I meet up with my friend Dave, who scored himself a backstage pass cos he writes for a local mag, which came in real handy alcohol wise, as all you could buy at the ground was expensive bottledwater, light beer and cans of Stoli Lemon Ruskis and Bundy and coke for $7.50. Backstage, however you could get whopping big cups of bourbon and coke or full strength beer, which was all I could have asked for!  Water, food and Marilyn Manson was all I wanted yesterday. And I got it with bells on =D

First band I went to see was The Mavis’s. I *like* The Mavis’s. I love the glam thing they’ve got going on. However, they sounded way too bassy (is that a word?) and were kinda boring in the grand scheme of things ( the anticipation of MM was too much!) Like MM, these guys need darkness and lights to really pull off the glam thing. I’m sure they kick ass in other situations.

I’ve been told there were up to 50,000 people there and with the sardine crush just trying to get from one spot to another, even the fresh squeezed juice line (!) was a nightmare. By about 6:30pm we were down on the main ground. The smell of the place was rank with a mix of hay ('cos it’s a race track and farming showground) and stinky feet. It was not something you could get used to and I think I caught a few whiff’s of the smell on me when I woke up the next morning.
So Powderfinger are playing and Dave is backstage smuggling out drinks and I’m counting the strewn clothing around the place. The two main stages are side by side and so long as you are at least 10 rows or more back you can be in front of one stage and still watch the other.

Korn follow Powderfinger, everyone gets into them and then they finish. Hehe, great review.

Let’s jump now, to 7:45pm.
I’m about 10 rows back with what looks like 200+ rows behind us and then grandstands of maybe 30 rows. A girl on her b’friends shoulders attempted to count the rows of people. I’m in line with John 5 and Manson’s stage positions this time around but 5 minutes before it starts the crush becomes unbearable (as it would with that many people behind me I guess) so I get out to the side more which actually gets me closer to the stage. :o)  All day the weather had been really dull with the threat of rain. At 8pm the sky clears and the sun is shining brightly. The Gods are smiling on Marilyn Manson perhaps? Poor Rev. Fred Nile :-p Hehehe.

When the band come on everyone goes nuts. I can’t for the life of me remember the set list except for Cake and Sodomy and RnR Nigger, 'cos I must have been surrounded by newbies who didn’t have a clue which album these songs were from and were going on about it to each other. John 5 looks and plays so fantastic, and Pogo!, otherworldly is about all I can muster from the awe of his presence. Manson looked so skinny in the black mesh number. I checked out his butt when he came on in the red sequined outfit, it looks as though he’s been doing a few butt crunches. I’d been watching that Stern episode on video the day before, the most recent one, where Howard harasses Manson because his butt looked flabby on the MTV awards. So I just had to see for myself. Ginger looks so hot with his hair and the makeup thing. Twiggy looked so weird with the purple dress. He looked more crossover than ever and, the poor thing, he got way harassed but dickheads throwing water bottles (plastic but full alot of the time) at him all the way through.

The band sounded so hot and Manson’s voice was sounding fab as well. Half way through, both Manson and Twiggy were copping the brunt of the bottle throwing. Twiggy, all the way through is yelling at people in the crowd and picking up the projectiles and hurtling them back at the crowd really hard. A shoe hits Manson so he rubs his crotch with it and throws it back. It comes back immediately and really hard. (Actually, at one point he sticks the mic down his g-string and it looks like his penis is gonna make an appearance because he pulls the g-string waaaay down) Guess he hit a critic who doesn’t appreciate where that shoe had been.   Lol!  Because of this Manson stops the show. He says he won’t play another song until the crowd beat the fuck out of that guy in the blue singlet. He says he wants the throwing to stop, and so he is showered with shit being thrown from all angles. He laughs.  Twiggy is visibly upset but this whole incident. He had even been walking completely off stage while playing, obviously talking to someone. In the gear he was wearing, as much as I love him and would be just as pissed in his position, he looked like a prissy girl chucking a hissy fit! I think I get that image in my mind because I often notice he has a limp wrist thing going on, making his camp look all the more real. It was extremely funny!   I was laughing about it out loud it tickled me so much. Someone asked me what they were missing, but I couldn’t find the words to explain it.  Somewhere around this time I apparently did something to some girl who, with her friends, barged their way past me and then threatened to hit me. Of course, she didn’t say it to my face. I’m twice her height. The way I had been feeling after the morning frustrations I was wishing she’d have attempted something, cos I still really needed to vent.

So the show is still stopped, Manson is full on wanting to beat the shit out of the guys and girls he knows threw stuff. He even gets one of his bouncers over and points to the blue singlet guy and the bouncer prepares himself to dive in! He doesn’t though. The blue singlet guy runs away. Yes, really. I don’t think the bouncer would have gone in, in reality. Next thing I know someone has said something right in front of me and Manson has come bounding over and John 5 is next to him and Pogo is behind them (I think) at the corner foot of the stage.They are yelling abuse at someone! It was a split second thing and I have no idea why it happened but John 5 is one evil looking angry dude!! Manson just looks silly in his feathers threatening to kill. He kinda reminded me of a psycho chicken. If he had started flapping his wings and pecking someone’s eyes out it would have been fitting. The show begins again and basically continues along the path of playing the hits and doing the costume changes and podium thing. It was interesting to be around fans who didn’t go to the last tour. They were nearly pee-ing their pants when the podium came out. I don’t Like The Drugs and Beautiful People closed the show (I do remember!) and they had the crowd eating out of their hands. It was so unreal being in a crowd this huge, everyone going crazy and by these last 2 songs the sun had gone down and the lighting was magical. The band looked surreal, from another planet. I was so glad to be there and I wish they’d take me back to their sequined world!  When the band finished the set, Twiggy continued his tirade on the stupid people who’d been harassing him. He was pointing at them, yelling stuff like "Fuck you, come up here you pussy and I’ll kill you ", the usual. I felt bad for him, myself and a few others were yelling out "Go Twiggy!", I think he waved to us when he left. He was obviously being harassed the whole way through. Someone had to *remove* him from the stage, he wouldn’t stop. If he could have got his hands on those people…

Hole were next up. One the other stage, which meant we had to walk from one end of the crowd to the other to get any kind of view. We ended up in the equivalent of where I was for Manson. Courtney is way too nice for her own good these days. It’s too contrived. Maybe she’s being genuine ,but it feels fake. She was applauding Australia on not being connected to England, The Monarchy. Last I heard we still were!?!  Have we become a Republic overnight? She kept going on about how wonderful we were because it was Australia day and all , and how she’s so glad we aren’t like England. We have chins! Whatever…I've since learned that she seems to think Australia Day represents our seperation from England. Whereas it is actually representing the discovery of Australia by the First Fleet.

Guys were doing the usual "Show us yer tits" thing, which was a bit odd in my opinion cos from 15 rows back I could clearly see her breasts through her sheer top. By this time Dave was kinda slightly drunk, backstage had apparently been dead boring by the way. Not even anyone famous. Who’d have thunk? Hehe. He couldn’t get over how big boned Courtney is and with the drunk thing going on it was funny to listen to. Musically Hole have lost it in my opinion. Sure they sound shit hot technically, but this whole show was one big ballad. Celebrity Skin rocked out like crazy at the end, Miss World fell flat for some reason and Pretty On The Inside is definitely for the die hards - one of my highlights!. Otherwise it was ballad city. People threw stuff at her too. She reckoned she’d really do it to the culprits, unlike Manson’s lame-o threats. Unfortunately, the sinister element of bloodshed just wasn’t there.

Time to go home.
As, let’s say 20,000 people simultaneously want to get on a train to leave, it’s no wonder I felt like I wanted to start baying like a sheep. Waiting on the platform, when a train pulled up, the crush to be on it was worse that my fucking near death experience (yeah sure) front row at the last Manson tour at the Palace! Eventually I get on a train to have my finger fully bent at the first joint between
one persons shoulder and another’s back and I couldn’t pull it out. So I’m screaming in pain thinking I’m gonna have a broken finger or maybe fall between the train and the platform! Neither occurred, I’m just bruised and aching from the ends of my hair to the tips of my toe nails. If I wasn’t in pain then I wouldn’t have had a good time, right?

Oh yeah, the protesters. How can we forget. Didn’t see any at the train entrance. They were at the road entrance. From what I heard they picked out fans as they were coming in. On the news a kid said he had one in each ear trying to convert him. How scary.

By Rebekah

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