Big Day Out 2009: The Line Up [citation found]

So the Big Day Out lineup is out of the bag, and it'll come as little surprise to anyone who has been following the speculation and rumours over the past few months (including our own detective work, which has been found to be pretty accurate). So here's the first announcement, with a few thoughts.

Neil Young: Undoubtedly a musical legend, and has been hugely popular and influential over the last 40 odd years. But as a Big Day Out headliner, he's an enormous departure from this year's headliner, Rage Against The Machine, and it'll be intresting to see how well he goes down with 'the kids'. Surely only a full-on greatest hits set will please the crowd.

Arctic Monkeys: At the moment, it's looking like BDO will be the band's first dates in a while (since Alex Turner's Last Shadow Puppets project) so the BDO crowd will see a reinvigorated band, and be amongst the first in the world to hear material from the 3rd Monkeys LP. Should go down a storm.

The Living End: Well loved, and their comeback album was well received, so they're a very logical choice for the Australian headliner slot.

The Prodigy: Produced some of the best dance music of the 90's, and their shows back then were legendary. This decade, however, both their shows and their music has been 'patchy' to say the least. Still, the boiler room is likely to go mental when they're on, if that's where they're playing.

Sneaky Sound System Another Aussie no-brainer on the lineup. They'll be a big crowd pleaser.

My Morning Jacket: One of the most thrilling live acts I've seen and they make a big noise which sounds great outdoors.

Pendulum: They will be well used to playing in the open air now after their stint doing the European festivals.

Bullet For My Valentine: Because it's important to have something to keep the emos miserable.

TV On The Radio: Performing on the back of their hugely acclaimed (not least by us) new LP, but not yet widely known in Australia, TVOTR are sure to pick up a lot of new fans at BDO.

Simian Mobile Disco: They've remixed or produced pretty much everybody, and they're pretty entertaining on their own, too.

The Ting Tings: Likely to split the BDO crowd between the lovers and the haters, much like Operator Please did this year.

And the rest: Tiki Taane, Cut Copy, Cog, Youth Group, The Grates, Birds Of Tokyo, Eddy Current Supression Ring all play the Aus shows, and a bunch of other bands play in New Zealand.

So beyond the risky headliner choice, it's all pretty safe and uninspiring, lots of crowd pleasers, something for just about everyone, but little in the way of 'absolute must see'. I guess that's what BDO's all about really. Bring on the ATP announcement (due midnight tonight), I say.

Update

Something else has just occured to me about the lineup: one of the great things about festivals is getting the chance to see new bands who haven't neccessarily got enough material yet to justify going to see a full headline set. But there's an almost total absence of new bands on this lineup. It's only really the Ting Tings that have emerged in the last twelve months.

Also, by my reckoning, there's not a single band on the lineup who have never played Australia before. BDO ought to be a great excuse to coax over some bands who are a bit shy of the Southern Hemisphere, like they did with the likes of Arcade Fire last year. Not so this year.

And No Radiohead. No alarms and no surprises there.

Thoughts? post them below...