Wow. What a day. Where shall I start? From the beginning I suppose...As noted in the earlier post, the weather was beautiful. Clear and sunny which was a welcome change. I arrived at Melbourne Park with Melissa at around 12noon but they didn't open the gates until around 12:30. This was unusual cos according to the schedule the first bands start performing at 12 noon. There must have been some screw up cos those guys actually had to start playing at their designated time, and it must have been the shitz playing to an empty hall/arena! Anyway, based on Melissa's prior experience at Livid, we went hunting for all the merchandise stalls to get any stuff before they run out by late afternoon. I bought 2 Linkin Park t-shirts which I just mailed out to my brothers. We split up and saw whatever we wanted to see around the 6 stages throughout the sports park. Not being much of a rocker I wasn't able to appreciate some of the bands and their music, some bordering on what I'd consider noise. Pacifier and Swedish band The Hellacopters come to mind. There were some that I enjoyed too, though, like local outfit Offcutts that play a hybrid of rock and electronica, which was really cool. Jesse Malin was great too. Gelbison, from Sydney, did a good cover of Tears for Fears' "Shout". The headliner bands started performing later in the day. I watched BOYSETSFIRE with Melissa and her friends Mark and Beth. Boy, they are a band with a lot of criticism of the politics in their home country, the US. Nathan Gray, the lead singer was like giving speeches between songs on how screwed up his government is and how the younger generation have to take responsibility for change. Lamb was pretty good, though they were playing more songs from their newer albums including some from one which will only be out later this month, so it wasn't so enjoyable for me due to the lack of familiarity. I still like their music and performance though. I was actually planning to check out the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club after the Lamb gig, but I went to get some food and walked back to the wrong arena. My feet were already aching and needed to sit down badly, and the place where those 2 bands were to be playing, one after the other, was quite a distance away. So I was at the Main Stage and caught Jurassic 5 instead. They were not as bad as I thought all hip-hop sh*t was like. In fact, their turntableism was pretty good too. The other reason I stuck around for J5 was also cos Linkin Park is on next, and I wanted to be around when the crowds move so I could get a good seat. Well, once they started letting people in to the mosh pit, I decided that this wasn't something to be missed so I went down there instead. I managed to get a pretty good spot about 10 bodies away from the stage, at the side. Had to wait a good half hour waiting for them and I was getting tired again, being on my feet for almost the whole day. Once they got on the stage it was a totally different story though. The energy was phenomenal, from the band and the crowds. I can't even nearly describe how it felt. People around me were screaming their heads off, and when LP started singing, all I could hear was the audience singing, they literally drowned out the giant speakers in front of us. It was amazing that everyone was singing along to ALL the songs. We were all singing and screaming and jumping and waving our hands in the air. Looking back at the stands I saw even people on the seats stood up and were dancing and enjoying themselves. Chester and Mike sure know how to get the crowd going. Chester even commented that of all the concerts they've had, this one tops the lot (I'm sure he says that to every one of them), but in addition to that, he said we, the crowd, did the best rendition of Crawling, cos not only were we loud and clear, we were on-key! What a joker! I wasn't keeping track of the songs they played but they were alternating between tracks from Meteora and Hybrid Theory and even the Reanimation version of Points of Authority. After their set ended, the crowd just wouldn't let them go, screaming for more and they did come back on-stage for an encore of another 3 more tracks. Fantastic. It started at 9:30pm and ended 10:45pm. It was _the_ most energetic concert I've been and it was just fantastic. Linkin Park Rules! Oh yes, and I've uploaded the photos, and here's the direct link to the Linkin Park photo gallery (please respect my copyrights).

My First Livid (and Linkin Park, Live) Experience