Seeing this, the Arctic Monkeys covering Nick Cave’s incredible “Red Right Hand”, live at Monday’s Big Day Out Music Festival played a very strong part of an absolute reawakening in my attitude to everything at the moment.

Catching the Monkeys, being right up the front, and experiencing their whole set in a normally uncomfortable setting of dust and blaring sun, made this particular gig of theirs one of my favourite rock concerts ever. Tighter than ever before, the boys played four incredible new songs which blew my mind. Yes, you CAN tell Josh Homme has had an involvement in the new tracks, but they are still very much proper Monkeys satisfiers, and lyrics like “And how you like to aggravate the ice-cream man on rainy afternoons” are incredibly Alex.

I’d love to tell you how incredible The Ting Tings were. Or how bonza-brilliant The Black Kids played, even minus a member. It’d be great to tell you how wonderful it was to see Sneaky Sound System’s stellar blend of pop totally owning the main-stage to a packed audience, or how the quality sets brought on by acts like My Morning Jacket, Holy Ghost! and Neil Young added a spring to my step. But, at the end of the day, there was only one experience at the festival this year which was truly worth writing about; one hour with the Arctic Monkeys.

The setting was all wrong. It was hot, there was dust, wind and sun blaring right in my eyes. I was already sunburnt, parched and reaching the end of my wares. I’d left my wallet in my car and, during a fit of laziness (these fits have, of late, become a little more regular than usual), couldn’t be bothered getting it during the scheduled Pass Out portion of the day. Yet, somehow, the normally unwelcomed chaos that enveloped the atmosphere only added to the beauty of the Arctic’s set. Turner delighted with his cheeky charisma, floppy hair and jokes about hose-pipes.  When it came to the classics, one particular moment stood out above the rest; the painfully beautiful “Do Me A Favour”, which made the hard-yakka and dusty landscape all that more bittersweet to endure.

At the end of it all, there were many spectacular artists playing at the Big Day Out, but none of them made me feel quite as alive as those barmy Monkeys did. Which is exactly the kind of experience I needed.

Grace Jones Concert review coming up…

PS: Thank you so much for all your kind words and emails about my previous post. You have no idea how much it meant to me.