26th January 2002 Big Day Out Festival, Sydney, Australia

Review by Dr. Worm:
After figuring out the new “D” barricade system and going through a big push for the entrance anyway, I sat through an alrightish New Order set (I still think orgy do Blue Monday better) and waited to finally see the Prodigy to take stage for the first time. Each time New Order finished a track the crowd started chanting “Prodigy”. They had a black curtain set up in front of the Keyboard cradle but it didn’t really look like anything worth hiding happened… New Order finished and from the blue stage came an old punk track which the crowd recognised as not being Prodigy and started booing.

“Girl, I want to be with youuuuuuuuuuuu” Then the Military intro hit – which I thought was awesome, it could easily be built into a pretty thumping track. Maxim and Keith take the stage and the crowd goes nuts – but Keith was already holding a Microphone. Every track besides Mindfields he had a Mic and was more MC #2 than a dancer… Poison was a duet? How long has that been going on?

Trigger was great, and I think despite it’s FOTL-esque sound will make a good track in the end, the dodgy MP3 floating around from the euro gigs doesn’t really capture it properly. Nuclear on the other hand… the crowd seemed into it but I thought it was really weak compared to the rest of the set. Baby’s Got a Temper… Keith dedicated it to “Louie Parker” (I’m not sure of the significance there?) and it was pretty good, but I had to scream “Get off the mic and dance you troll!” for a bit of amp-t representation :o) The more downtempo jam track was really good I wanna hear more in that direction, but the crowd didn’t seem as enthralled so…. who knows.

As expected, Breathe, SMBU, Poison and Firestarter (which I actually didn’t recognise when it started playing, I shouldn’t listen to jilted so much) were huge, the crowd went nuts. And to my surprise, Mindfields was probably the best track out of the set. I like it as a track, but it’s not exactly a stand out favourite of mine – so I didn’t expect I’d be so pumped when it played.

Great set, great day. I’ll have photos pretty soon too if anyone is interested.