The Big Day Out
| Big Day Out | |
|---|---|
Big Day Out Sydney, 2010
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| Genre | Heavy metal, punk rock, rock, hip hop, electronic, industrial, indie rock |
| Dates | Late January – early February |
| Location(s) |
Australia
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| Years active | 1992–97, 1999–2014 |
| Founded by | Ken West and Vivian Lees |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
Australia
New Zealand
The Big Day Out was an annual music festival that was held in five Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Adelaide and Perth, as well as Auckland, New Zealand. The festival was held during summer, typically in January of each year.
The Big Day Out debuted on the 1992 Australia Day public holiday in Sydney and expanded to Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth the following year. The Gold Coast and Auckland were added to the schedule in 1994. As of 2003, it featured seven or eight stages (depending on the venue), accommodating popular contemporary rock music, electronic music, mainstream international acts and local acts.
In early June 2014, American festival promoter, C3 Presents, attained full ownership of the Big Day Out festival and announced the cancellation of the 2015 event on 26 June 2014—the option for the festival to return in the future was left open. The event also did not return in 2016 or 2017.
Founded by Ken West and Vivian Lees, the festival began in 1992 as a Sydney-only show, with the headline act, Violent Femmes, playing alongside Nirvana, and a range of other foreign and local alternative music acts, at the Hordern Pavilion. In 1993 the scope of the festival was extended to include Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide. West revealed in an interview that he was looking to create "urban mayhem" and "controlled chaos".
In 1994 the Big Day Out was extended further to include Auckland (New Zealand) and the Gold Coast, and was held over a three-week period. The geographical locations of the 1994 festival occurred on an annual basis until 1997, when organisers West and Lees announced a year-long hiatus, causing concern that the festival was nearing the end of its existence; however, the festival returned in 1999.
Following the start of the 21st century, the festival was involved in two major controversies. Firstly, 16-year-old Jessica Michalik was killed after she was crushed at a 2001 Sydney show during a performance by the band Limp Bizkit. Michalik's death temporarily placed the future of the BDO festival in jeopardy, but the event continued after the Sydney Coroner's Court criticised the crowd control measures at the site and inflammatory comments made by Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst after the crush occurred.
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