AROUND 50,000 highly-charged fans will hear Shihad, one of three Wellington bands playing the Big Day Out on January 21. Also there will be happy rapper Tommy Ill and Flying Nun darling Grayson Gilmour.
Front-man Jon Toogood welcomed himself home to NZ with some cheap Korean in Auckland’s Queen Street on Monday night.
“You can’t beat KC Cafe down on Courtenay Place though,” he says laughing. “It saved my ass many times.”
Toogood is used to travelling. The comforts of home keep him going. “I always ring my friends when I get home and say ‘who’s up for Satay Kampong’ – the curry laksa is so good,” he says. Shihad travel a lot. Although sick of constantly taking his lap-top in and out of his case while passing through customs, Toogood admits that travelling the world and performing music is not so bad in the larger scheme of things.
“Making videos are not much fun for me but the hour when you’re on stage is the ultimate. That and writing music.”
His inspiration comes from “keeping his ear to the ground”. “I’m so out of the loop dude,” he says laughing. “But I keep my ear out for new music or old music I have never heard before. New music is better for me. I have started digging into jazz but I could keep out of that for a bit,” he says laughing. Toogood enjoyed his recent NZ tour with Cairo Knife Fight and The Naked and Famous immensely. “I was watching Cairo Knife Fight and thought ‘woah I want to be in that band’.” First performing at the BDO in 2008 Shihad will perform their album The General Electric in full on Friday and “grab people by the balls”.
Also playing Big Day Out are Californian math rockers Tool, Germany’s Rammstein, British songwriter and Producer M.I.A. Nick Cave’s Grinderman, Australian rock band Wolfmother, James Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem and alt-metal old schoolers Deftones. Tickets are still available from Real Groovy in Auckland, although flights will cost you about $170 one-way.