The Real Sydney Summer Festival {PART ONE} - M.I.A (and a special mention to Nina Las Vegas)

So last night @ Sydney's iconic live music venue the Enmore Theatre it was on for young + old.  On the Eve of Sydney Festival's launch the real Sydney Festivals hit the town, Big Day Out, Future Music, Soundwave and all the really ace sideshows like this one...

So I didn't love M.I.A @ the Metro either last summer or the previous one, but tonight she made me get on the floor J-Lo style!

So I was devo to miss Nina Las Vegas @ 7:30pm but then to my surprise as I arrived Sam & the Womp were finishing (who sounded a little scary) and then the sexy lady Nina Las Vegas (picture unavailable due to my BLOG being unfriendly, GOOGLE!) made her way back to her funky old decks!

Then girl put it down!

I always have this internal discussion with myself re; Triple J and where it's headed, last year was bleak, they featured the worst feature album (Parkway Drive), the Doctor continued to host Drive, Tom & Alex have completely lost my interest and Lewi went from being a fun from time to time weekend guy to a weird middle of the day, don't put me off my lunch.  On the bright side though Nina Las Vegas and her House Party show continued to shine and with that came a great compilation release and her weekly show continued to impress.

Nina was their shining star along with the ever bright Sarah Howells and BTW can Veronica & Lewis always do Drive they are amazing!  What great summer programming, sad it's all over :(

Anyway this is a gig review not my personal opinion of still Australia's and possibly the world's best radio station JJJ.

So Nina did put it down, her hits were big and there were many, from Frank Ocean to some well weekend dubstep lady cover of "Pony" so fab!  Highlights were the crowd loving sick "Thrift Shop" (this blog's number 1 song of 2012) and also a huge highlight was of course "212" being dropped in the mix, AMAZING! Love you Nina!

Then the stage literally looked like Christmas, two tents on stage, light installations everywhere and a podium, oh boy this was going to be big for the UK born M.I.A.

She came on stage with two back up dancers and a killer back up vocalists, all in red and some hot dope outfits!

So she opened up with some killer dance gems and the night just went off instantly, after a very Bollywood intro, the music just kept going and going with tribal beats and killer jams.

M.I.A did own it tonight with big hits "Galang", "Bucky Done Gun", "Paper Planes", "Sunshowers", "Boyz" (complete with around 50 randoms from the crowd on stage) & the big finale "Bad Girls".

The lack of tunes from the "Maya" album was interesting, no "XXXO", oh the sad face, but hey she killed it when she was on that stage!

I can't flaw the show even with technical difficulties, Nina Las Vegas started the party, M.I.A kept it up till close to midders, the room was full of greedy gays, young cool kids, older people following her interesting and varied career since 2005 (she performed with Madonna WTF???) and the usual summer gig suspects.  Some great costumes too in the crowd.

Well here is hoping I get me some Hot Chips next Tuesday.  The live music calendar is really full at the moment, head over HERE or HERE for the best live music this great city has to offer.

See you around for another awesome gig review (hopefully soon....)

M.I.A rates a UK top rating and hard to beat for 2013, 4 stars, you go girl, can't wait for the new disc in March 2013 (fingers crossed)!





Laters....