Several times in the early 2000s we loaded up my 1996 Honda Civic and left behind the flat landscape of Christchurch for the open road heading to The Big Day Out, 1News presenter Melissa Stokes remembers.
Getting there was half the fun, stops at Nin’s Bin roadside cafe in Kaikoura, racing (within the speed limit) to make the ferry. A night in Wellington, collecting more people and a convoy to Auckland for one very big day.
The Big Day Out started in Auckland in 1994 after running successfully in Australia for several years.
A sweaty, heaving mix of people. The heat, that’s one of my overwhelming memories - the heat, Auckland in its glorious muggyness, sitting in the stand as the sun set, watching the people move as one before me.
I was - as the kids say in 2024 - locking in “core mems”.
Now this confession will make my friend John Campbell, shake his head sadly, but it was never about the music for me. Hanging with friends, dancing in the sun, spending the whole day at Mt Smart Stadium - for one day its own little universe of like-minded people, bouncing and smiling, so good.
And that - Shihad frontman Jon Toogood said - is what the day was all about.
"You'll never get that feeling of what The Big Day Out did, which was smash all the metalheads with the indie kids with the ravers and everyone just had to hang out you know, it was just a really good vibe," Toogood said.
It probably helped that in over its more than decade long run in Auckland, the biggest names in music were there. Marilyn Manson, Hole, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Franz Ferndinand, Fat Boy Slim, Basement Jaxx, the list could truly go on and on.
Toogood remembered being like a kid on a summer camp, “everyone was there, it was like whoa you know you just walking around and there's that dude from that band or you know there's that famous person."
He lived out some pretty rock 'n' roll moments behind the scenes.
“I'll describe as an unusual - but not unusual scene backstage. I come backstage Dave Grohl's playing ping pong with Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, the guitar player from Deftones has taken over the DJ Booth and it's just like, just that was what it was like."
For Toogood’s band Shihad, playing in front of the 30 - 40,000 strong crowd helped put them on the map.
“We're like this is dope you know and it was just good timing for our band. You know like we were just coming up. We just made our first album and here comes this festival. That's just I mean I shouldn't say the shit, but it was the shit."
The crowds thought Shihad were pretty good too.
Their energetic set saw them signed up almost year after year, and in a sought after timeslot on the main stage just as the sun was setting.
“It’s the best place because that's when the magic is just starting to take off, and don't get me wrong, I saw some great bands at 1pm in the afternoon as well - but that calling of the evening and the light starting to come on - yeah that's the primo spot. I loved it."
Watching some of the world's biggest rock bands perform taught them something too, helping them hone their live performances.
"It made us think about how we write rock 'n' roll because it’s like OK, if we get to do this more we're going to need to make sure that the pace and the temp of our grooves are made to bounce crowds."
Shihad have performed at large shows all over the world, selling more than 200,000 albums.
Toogood said the band gave everything to The Big Day Out.
“We took it so seriously every Big Day Out - it was like it's a Big Day Out man we got to nail this - you know we'll make sure we were on fire."
A right of passage for so many of us and Toogood thinks there is still space for The Big Day Out, crediting its success to the curation of the acts on stage.
For now though, look out for the first solo album from Toogood later this year - all based around the acoustic guitar.
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