Two down, one to go….

Two down, one to go….

Roll up! Roll up! Rock ’n’ roll ringmaster SERJ TANKIAN has donned his top hat and will be cracking the whip at BIG DAY OUT 2009. The System of a Down front man has gone solo with the multi-layered album Elect the Dead. Backed by his band the FCC, TANKIAN’s show is a vaudevillian explosion – part comedic, part heart-attack serious. A showman like no
other, SERJ TANKIAN is guaranteed to bring the drama at BIG DAY OUT this summer.

BIG DAY OUT is dedicated to providing good times. And to help us do this in 2009, we’ve called on the band dubbed Boston’s answer to the Ramones – the legendary DROPKICK MURPHYS. This loud, raucous and chaotic seven-piece Celtic punk combo hits the stage with one goal: to play music that creates an all-for-one, one-for-all environment where everyone is encouraged to participate, sing along, and have a good time. Sounds good to us! So let the good times roll with DROPKICK MURPHYS at BIG DAY OUT 2009.
Having destroyed as much of their surrounding NZ music environment as was deemed acceptable (at last count, one Big Day Out stage with a chainsaw, one Victorian plaster theatre ceiling shaken loose with high volume, sundry limbs, instruments and a bass player) the three remaining MINT CHICKS decamped in early 2008 to the relative safety of Portland, Oregon. Their second album, the award-snatching Crazy?Yes!Dumb?No!, has just been released Stateside on Milan Records and the trio have been releasing a steady stream of incredible new tunes from their Portland home studio onto itunes and the internet in recent months. If you thought the last lot of art-damaged spazz pop was brilliant, the forthcoming Screens album will lift-off like Saturn Five.

Summer Down Under is so hot, BIG DAY OUT is calling in The Cool – the head-spinning wordplay of Chicago hip hop trailblazer LUPE FIASCO. Once protégé to Kanye, Jay-Z and Pharrell, LUPE’s second album, The Cool, whose first single “Superstar” (featuring Matthew Santos) has shot him into the big leagues in his own right. This smart, charismatic and energetic performer and his band are coming to teach you the art of being cool. School’s in for summer with LUPE FIASCO at BIG DAY OUT 2009.

Do not underestimate the charm of BLACK KIDS. They won’t teach your boyfriend how to dance, but this feel-good Florida five-piece will help you put your best foot forward at BIG DAY OUT 2009. Led by Reggie Youngblood’s “catchy tunes about dancing and desire”, BLACK KIDS have put a fresh spin on retro sounds with their irresistible debut album Partie Traumatic. From artist-to-watch to buzz band to real deal in the space of only three years, see BLACK KIDS continue their stratospheric rise at BIG DAY OUT.

When BIG DAY OUT felt that burning desire to get on the floor, there was only one band to call: please welcome back everybody’s favourite synth-wielders, London’s HOT CHIP. “The most effortlessly cool band in Ravesville” (thanks, NME) are set to scintillate and shake up the summer with tunes from their third album, Made in the Dark. For a festival experience packing personality and electro-pop perfection, it gets no hotter than HOT CHIP at BIG DAY OUT 2009.

Forget the father and the son, all BIG DAY OUT needs is HOLY GHOST! Part of the DFA stable, HOLY GHOST! is Brooklyn duo Nicholas Millhiser and Alexander Frankel. Obsessed with analog synths, thumping disco, and older than old school production, the pair busted out their own moves on the majestically squelchy single Hold On, and have spiced up other people's moves with remixes for Cut Copy, MGMT and Moby. Let the spirit move you when HOLY GHOST! enter the body of BIG DAY OUT 2009.

He’s best known to folks back home as the creative force and one of the voices behind multi-platinum downbeat act, Breaks Co-Op, but it’s an altogether different vibe when London-based Kiwi ZANE LOWE gets behind the decks. Now established as the UK’s premier new music DJ with his award-winning BBC Radio One and MTV Gonzo shows, Zane has parlayed that success into a burgeoning live DJ career that now sees his Home Taping live DJ tours sell-out around the UK. 2008 has exploded for Zane’s DJ career, headlining his own tent at Gatecrasher with Mark Ronson plus Ibiza residencies and numerous festival appearances as well as smashing it up on the mainstage before the Foo Fighters at Wembley, Killers at Royal Albert Hall, Prodigy and Pedulum at the Brixton Academy and the Arctic Monkeys at the Lanchashire Cricket Ground. He’s hitting the brits for six and bringing the bangers to the Boiler Room.

BIG DAY OUT is going back to the future, and the man at the wheel of the DeLorean is Z*TRIP. The LA DJ once regarded the originator and king of the mash up movement, Z*TRIP is now mixing things up differently – classics, soul, up-tempo and b-boy jams, rock riffs, old school hip hop, all feeding into something new, something totally Z*TRIP. He’s DJed for change for Obama in the States, now Z*TRIP will be changing it up at BIG DAY OUT 2009.

Late 08 has seen P-MONEY crash back onto the airwaves with the number one single “Everything” featuring Vince Harder, an instant dancefloor classic showing that the producer behind massive hits for hip-hoppers Scribe and the Deceptikonz continues to evolve and deliver the big tunes – as he always has since his 2001 platinum debut, Big Things. Money's world famous DJ sets are known to include a good lashing of 90's dance, 80's pop and a steady undertow of timeless hip-hop... all influences that have been making an impact on his latest productions. Expect to hear him dropping the likes of Armand van Helden, David Bowie, Daft Punk, Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Jay-Z all cut up and mixed to perfection alongside a solid dosing of hits produced by the man himself, P-Money.

A healthy dose of conscious reggae is a foundation of every BIG DAY OUT and this year, Whaingaroa seven-piece CORNERSTONE ROOTS are there to ensure that the tree-blazing vibe is complete and the skank quota maintained. With two albums and literally hundreds of shows around all corners of the Western Pacific under their belt since forming in 2001, these guys show a masterful touch across all elements of the reggae spectrum from dub-heavy excursions to lovers rock anthems. What’s even better is that their name resembles that of the chick played by Christina Applegate in Anchorman, Veronica Corningstone, plus the word Roots. Top work, rasta-mons.

Led by the four distinctive voices that make up the Deceptikonz, NZ’s leading hip-hop group, and showcasing the captivating new talents of Frum Tha Stablez, Axeman, MZRE, Lyric, John Matrix, othr ppl hoo txt alot and producers DJ Montana, DJ Shady-1 & DJ Blaze, THE HORSEMEN FAMILY is a trailblazing collective that has been around in a loose form since 2000 but has coalesced in the form of My Shout: The Album, a 2007 release that has brought the good time grooves of hip-hop, reggae and r’n’b. The top ten hit “Feels Like Magic” set the pace for a true summer party vibe that is sure to set the BIG DAY OUT alight when the Horsemen bounce onstage. No-one owns South Auckland like these guys and if like them you’re feeling like “a plate of kalo, corned beef and a sixpack” then good times are guaranteed.
Dance music guru PEE WEE FERRIS returns to the BIG DAY OUT in 2009. One of Australia’s most influential DJs and producers, PEE WEE FERRIS is a trailblazer of the dance music movement world wide. He’s had residencies in Australia and around the world featuring guests like Paul Oakenfold and Paul van Dyk, played alongside Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk and The Prodigy, received ARIA nominations and ARIA Gold Records and has a swag of composition and remix credits to his name. He takes his rightful place behind the decks at the BDO and will hammer out one huge party set for fans this summer!
Straight-talking rapper of integrity ETHICAL chose this moniker because he knew he was never going into politics. Otherwise he woulda called himself MC Winston P. The kid has been hustling his rhymes on the battle circuit since coming out of the Naki on his way to support slots for big names Dizzee Rascal, Sage Francis (who he?), De La Soul, Mobb Deep, Ying Yang Twins and Busta Rhymes to name just a few. Not to mention a whirlwind tour of Asia with the legendary Grandmaster Roc Raida in 07. This year he has been spitting what his label peeps at Move The Crowd call “verbal napalm” on nationwide tours in support of his album Age’s Turn with labelmates Young Sid and Neesh. His latest single “Tied Up part 2” features Aussie Daniel Merriweather, the blue-eyed soul boy who Mark Ronson made a superstar. Not bad for a boy from the bullring.

As soon as the BIG DAY OUT’s mums told us that gossip columnist Bridget Saunders had snarled in the Sunday Star Times that THE DHDFD’s were “the worst”, forcing fashionistas to leave some lame gig “with their hands over their ears”, we penciled these Point Chevalier teens in for a 2009 slot at our show. Of course we already had our finger on the jerky pulse of the quartet’s hyperactive sound, one minute like Primus gone hardcore, another like angel-dust fuelled indie, since hearing their brilliantly-titled debut EP, Pastor of Muppets, and latest offering, Fromage Du Pouvoir. DHDFDS. What does it even mean? Denim-jumpsuited glam rock shenanagins are guaranteed from these kids, who are fresh off the plane from a tour of Japan at the invitation of the King Brothers. We say it takes a crazy band to know one, and the King Bros are reputedly the most dangerous musical nutters in Nippon so the DHDFD’s might just be the oddball pick of the whole BIG DAY OUT.

This fresh Auckland cerebro-pop four piece’s songs bubble with the energy and excitement of an attention-seeking four year-old armed with a pot and a wooden spoon. BRAND NEW MATH’s sound has been described as “the Magnetic Fields with balls” and “glorious messed-up pop”. Multiply the fact that first single “Weapon of Parnell” and “Idiot Savant” from their debut EP The Moustache Party have already scored highly on the alternative airwaves, add on the number of Auckland house parties these youthful veterans have played, subtract a couple of fashion week shows, and you’ve got something for that weird brainiac played in that movie by Russell Crowe to work out on a big blackboard… and it might just be the formula for the length of a circle! No, not Gladiator, you morons.

Quiet is the new loud. Royalty is the new bohemia. Auckland is the new Dunedin. And prolific young people have taken over from the wasteronauts who once in while plied music on these fair shores. Case in point for all the above, GEORGE & QUEEN, an indie band from Sky City city who have recorded two albums and done lots more like touring heaps and collecting great reviews and probably drinking lots of cups of tea and flagons of cheap wine and who sound a bit like the love children of Look Blue Go Purple and Robyn Hitchcock. And whose songs charm the pants off us because they’re packed with classy boy-girl daydream moments and honest to goodness…. sweetness. They’ve evolved from a good-old fashioned matrimonial duo to a fully fledged live-in four-piece… not the sort of thing that Peter Dunne might necessarily approve of but who gives a sh*t what that tosser thinks?

SIDEKICKNICK is a character who has been moonlighting on the edge of music town for too long and his appropriately titled Miscellaneous Adventures album has been nine years in the making. But now that it is here, the thing is a goddamn revelation with its nods to the likes of the 3Ds, Flaming Lips, Brian Wilson and Beck. Critical chaps have been falling all over it. Here’s a joyous cartwheel by the usually acerbic Gary Steel – “his debut album is so full of personality and vigour and idiosyncrasy and sheer creativity that I almost don’t believe my own hyperbole” – and while Grant Smithies will regularly cream himself over just about any musical pie with enough weed mixed in its dough, when the man says that “In places, you feel as though you’ve woken up to find yourself living inside a cartoon” we actually imagined ourselves a podgy little Smithies shaped cartoon figure that freaked the crap out of us. F**k you Sidekicknick, don’t freak us all out like that! Did we say after all that that Sidekicknick and his fun-filled, heartfelt album is one of our favourite musical discoveries of the year? Cos it damn well is, kids. We can’t wait to have him at the BIG ol’ DAY OUT 2009.

While it is true that metal is a genre that has been around for thousands of years, invented by cavemen in the years before Adam and Eve, SUBTRACT have only been around for about the last quarter of metal’s existence, or about 16million metal-years (which can be measured by multiplying the number of shredding solos played by the fact that only a dog can hear them… check out that old skool fkn arithmetic, brand new math!) and it is also true that, all jokes aside, Subtract do DOMINATE righteously in the field of post-millennial Newzildmetal. Punishing, passionate and as heavy as a good bloody hangover, Subtract are as intense a prospect as one will witness in any metal band. They soldier on into 2009 with a new album (scheduled for release on New Years day) as both a true leader in New Zealand heavy metal and an uncompromising carbon footprint on your face.

New additions to Big Day Out 09: SERJ TANKIAN, BLACK KIDS, THE MINT CHICKS, LUPE FIASCO, HOT CHIP, DROPKICK MURPHYS, HOLY GHOST!, ZANE LOWE, Z*TRIP, P-MONEY, CORNERSTONE ROOTS, HORSEMEN FAMILY, PEE WEE FERRIS, ETHICAL, THE DHDFD’S, BRAND NEW MATH, GEORGE & QUEEN, THE SIDEKICKNICK, SUBTRACT

These acts join the already announced: NEIL YOUNG, THE PRODIGY, ARCTIC MONKEYS, THE TING TINGS, TV ON THE RADIO, TIKI LIVE, MY MORNING JACKET, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE, HEADLESS CHICKENS, THE BLACK SEEDS, THE DATSUNS, SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO, ELEMENO P, NESIAN MYSTIK, PENDULUM, THE LIVING END, SNEAKY SOUND SYSTEM, LUGER BOA, COBRA KHAN, LADI 6, THE NAKED AND FAMOUS

Stay tuned for more local additions in your city!

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

FRIDAY JANUARY 16th AUCKLAND MT SMART STADIUM
Maurice Rd Penrose. Gates open 11am
Tickets $125 +bf*. Strict limit of 4 tickets per customer. Available from Real Groovy, all Ticketmaster Outlets, phone and credit card bookings 0800 111 999 or www.ticketmaster.co.nz, and from our website www.bigdayout.com

You will be asked to read and agree to our Conditions of Sale and Admission before you can purchase tickets. Conditions of Sale and Admission can be viewed at www.bigdayout.com
For full show information and internet ticket bookings check out the website
www.bigdayout.com
*booking fees may vary pending on outlet & mode of purchase

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