It has been quite a number of years since we've been to any major music festival type event thing, and when there was the announcement last year that Pearl Jam were headlining for the Big Day Out - well I just had to spend the money and get tickets for us to go. It's so weird, I only became interested in Pearl Jam because Jef and I started listening to Eddie Vedder the year before, so I'm not even a die hard fan of the 90's. It's always been like that with me and music - I "discover" a band/song/artist/sound that is new to my ears, and find out it/they have been around like, forever (not literally, obviously, but I was getting tired of forward slashes in my sentence, and I couldn't think of any other adverbs).
Yes, BDO 2014. Except for the queues and the lack of cellular service it was awesome. I had a great time. I had my schedule all marked out, but once we were there I realised it was too difficult to be going back and forth between stages every hour, so we chilled out and took it easy.
Jef and I lost each other for a little bit when he wandered off to see The Hives and Beady Eye. But we found each other again for Pearl Jam.
I got to see The Naked and Famous, Arcade Fire, and of course these guys:
Or first spot wasn't close enough, so we made our way around to the side. Great view of the stage.
Afterwards I wanted to go and meet up with our friends again to see another band and bounce, but Jef was beat and wanted to get home to relieve Rod and Grandma Gun of their babysitting duties. It was a slow walk home, but so good that they had closed the part of Great North Road leading all the way into Grey Lynn from the stadium.
I love live gigs so much. I've been trying to convince Jef to go to Splore this year. It's a 3 day music festival that is family friendly, and it includes camping!
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This morning I dropped Jef off at a crate party. It was intended to be a whole heap of guys from work getting together for a pow wow with crates of beer. I told him to stay safe and keep in contact so I can come and get him if he needed it. I then took Kien to the playground and my dad's for a late lunch (this was after Kien and I baked cupcakes). While at my dad's I got a call from Jef telling us to come over and bring our swimming gear - it was family friendly! So that was what we did.
We had a lovely swim in amidst watching people jumping off fences into the pool. Kien enjoyed seeing that, especially his daddy doing backflips off the fence! We also had a relaxing spa session.
Kien enjoyed watching the older kids playing games.
They sparked up the BBQ for dinner.
It was a brilliant way to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon the day after the BDO. This is definitely what summer is all about!
