Soundtrack to Your Studies - 2004

The student organisations throughout the country worked together to bring over a US act to play orientation this year - Alien Ant Farm headlined at the St James, supported by 48-May. Perhaps Alien Ant Farm are hard to recall now, but they were made famous by their pop-punk cover of the Michael Jackson song ‘Smooth Criminal.’

The other orientation events provided a good coverage of the scene at the time. In the quad, the Disruptiv crew did a graf wall while DJs and Emcee Lucia performed, then later in the week the DJ Timmy Schumaker brought up his breaks set, which packed Beat Freaks nights at Fu. Indie rock was represented by a double-header at Shadows with Goodshirt supported by Stereogram. The music video ‘Sophie’ by Goodshirt was directed by Joe Lonie (Supergroove) and it was such a good idea that US group The Eels later did a very similar one with John Hamm in the lead role. It was not an intentional rip-off, but The Eels were kind enough to offer their “sincere apologies” to Goodshirt via a Facebook post.

This year’s Big Day Out was headlined by Metallica, but the most memorable sets were the drunken performance of The Strokes (it was Julian Casablancas’s birthday) and the Flaming Lips having a dozen audience members onstage in costumes, then having their lead singer roll out over the crowd in a Zorb.

Meanwhile the mainstream charts were dominated by two big local hits - New Zealand Idol winner Ben Lummis had the best-selling single of the year with ‘They Can’t Take That Away’ and Brooke Fraser had the top album with What To Do With Daylight. 

What was on your turntable while you were on campus? Suggest songs to add to our 2000s playlist, and you could win $100 Flying Out voucher.