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This Review is thanks to Coedy
The Big Day Out went for around 12 hours all up. Along with Marilyn Manson, Hole, Korn, Soulfly, Sean Lennon and Manic Street Preachers-just to name a few-played the BDO. Sean Lennon was great, Korn were boring (I like Korn, but, I'm sorry, they suck live!) and Courtney got biten by a bug and left after 20 mins. Marilyn Manson stole the whole fucking show.
I missed seeing Korn (but heard them-so they were boring to hear!) and waitied up the front for MM. All the bands had no sets or lighting and as soon as the band before left (there were 2 stages, while Korn were playing on one, they set up for MM on the other) people starting dragging stuff on stage and setting the lights up. They wheeled the drim kit out and it took a minute to realize that Ginger was sitting at them! The small group that had gathered cheered and waved at him, and he smiled and waved back. Then the silver sheet went up, blocking us from watching anything else for the time being.
By the time the Korn finished, the small crowd had turned into a huge crowd. When the music started the crowd went apeshit. Quite a few people almost got killed. When Manson started singing the "This isn't me" part of Inauguration Of The Mechanical Christ, and Twiggy and John5 came out from behind the curtian, everyone went crazy. Manson was silhouetted against the sheet, which looked incredible. The sheet dropped, and Manson walked, alien-like, to the mic and sang "Your world is an ashtray", starting The Reflecting God, in his black body suit, complete with wings, which looked awesome. Since it was not yet dark (and the BDO was an outdoor festival), the lighting, unfortunately, wasn't as effective.
Great Big White World was next, followed by Cake And Sodomy, during which Manson lovingly rubbed his crouch on the mic stand. By this time, the darkness had decended, and the lighting at the end of Sweet Dreams was incredible.
After the Long Hard Road Out Of Hell Outro had finished, everything went dark, while a voice boomed, "Ladies and Gentlemen, from the drug capitol of the world, Hollywood, California-Omega and the Mechanical Animals" and Rock Is Dead started. Manson had changed out of his black body suit and was now wearing a red sequin number, including G-String and feathers. Next up was The Dope Show. In the middle of it, a 40-year old woman pushed past me, and started singing and dancing in the tiny space in front of me. Luckily her husband (or whoever he was) pulled her away, and I was saved :}. The crowd became exetremley loud when Manson sang "The drugs, they say, are made right here in Adelaide."
Lunchbox followed. In the middle, Manson tried to get the crowd to sing, as he does at every show, but no one did anything, and he seemed to get pissed. He wandered from side to side and glared at the crowd. At one point, after hearing nothing, I screamed "I wanna grow up, wanna be, so no one fucks with me" at the top of my voice. About 50 people turned around and looked at me as if I was an idiot, but I didn't care. Everyone should have been doing it!
The speech before I Don't Like The Drugs, was the usual one for the time, with "Jesus Christ invented LSD", etc, except he didn't say "I talked to God last night" as he usually did, instead he said that he was with Fred Nile. For those of you who don't know, Fred Nile is the reverend who tried to ban Marilyn Manson from entering Australia, and Manson didn't hesitate to give him shit the whole time he was in Australia. Halfway through, I Don't Like The Drugs, Manson put his hand up at the band and the music stopped. Pointing at a guy in the front row, he yelled "Come up here right now!". The guy had thrown a bottle at him and he was pissed. He gestured at the guy, as Twiggy ran over and yelled at him too. Manson grabbed his mike stand and gestured the guy on stage. Finally, he threw his mic stand on the ground and jumped off stage. The guy had been pulled out of the crowd and was walking away, when he stuck his finger up at Mr. Manson, promting his leap off stage. With Manson on his heels, the guy ran for his life. The swarm of security guards that seemed to appear from nowhere pulled Manson back onto the stage and he screamed "Does anybody else wanna come up here right now?" and that was that.
An awesome version of Rock N Roll Nigger came before Antichrist Superstar on the podium. I didn't expect them to do it at an outdoor show on the Mechanical Animals tour, but they did it, and it rocked. All 40,000 people at the BDO throwing their arms in the air and shouting was quite an experiance. Manson tore up a Bible and tore his shirt off, and it was awesome to see it so close (as opposed to watching it on the Dead To The World video!).
Manson came out and yelled "Let me ask you one last question, Australia! How does it feel to be one of the Beatiful People?!". Behind me, was the biggest crowd that any band at the Big Day Out had, all moshing to The Beautiful People. It was actually quite scary to be sorrounded by 40,000 people all jumping around like idiots. The show ended with Manson pulling the drum kit over with the stand and Twiigy throwing his bass into the mess.
It was a good show. I was glad to finally see MM live, but the set only ran for 50 mins and the crowd was filled with 15 year old, homophobic Korn fans. But, hey-I'm not complaining!
