Big Day Out

Russell Brown went to Big Day Out (I didn't - I went to a very good gig by Carl Cox at the Met the night before, and will hopefully see Trinity Roots at Raglan in two weeks). The Streets turned out to be Not Very Good - I didn't think the whole Brummie geezer angst thing would work well live.

Russell used the fact that "there were two ambulance cases as a result of party pill overdoses" to suggest that "our binge culture is still with us". Two out of 38,000 doesn't sound that bad to me - I don't think you'd get many less in more sensible nations. (if you look at the overall NZ death rate, you would expect someone to peg out at BDO every couple of years - the crowd must be particularly young and healthy!)