Download 2006
HIYAZ!!!!!
So, it's been a while since i was at the Download Festival, so now it's time for a Behemoth of an update.
So I guess it was a couple of wednesdays ago i went and met katie at Hyndland station and then headed townwards to meet Jamie "Fear". Arsed around at buchanan bus station for a while before jumping on the bus to birmingham. managed to get separated from katie and jamie cause there were only like 3 seats left and strangely enough they weren't all together. so i had to sit at the back with some dudes who thought they were pure mental cause they were gonna start drinking their Red Square at 11am; the only problem was they couldn't open it. harhar.
The journey wasn't bad at all, had a couple of stops. me and jamie pitched in for a winnie the pooh kite! it was amazing.
arrived in Birmingham at some point and waited for about an hour before getting the next bus which took us to Donnington where we arrived at like 7ish i think. managed to find a decent spot to camp, and also managed to set up my tent without breaking anything or getting impaled or something which is always a bonus. also flew the kite which jamie smashed into about 5 tents. after that we went and bought overpriced booze (30 bucks for a crate of Carling..) and sat about drinking for ages. went on wee wanders just see what was what.
at like 1ish, katie's friends from helensburgh arrived out the blue i belieeve. went to sleep at some unknown time.
woke up on thursday morning in intense heat, and felt absolutely terrible. had to lie outside in the grass in fetal position until i felt slightly better. did very little that day, some welsh guys who were camping near us came and befriended us. they were hilarious, and apparently used to drink in the same pub as the guys from Dirty Sanchez!! amazing. went to "the udder bar" which sold bounty milkshakes and the like and were HEAVY nice.
Jamie's buddies from Belfast appeared. they were already absolutely hammered but this didn't stop them walking for like 40 minutes to the nearest Spar to buy 80 cans of stella. they pulled out a beer bong, and just about everyone whitied after doing one, apart from one guy called Spacer who did like 3 in about 15 minutes then cracked open a litre of whiskey and pretty much tanned the entire thing straight. At one point he was slumped in a chair and whitied all over himself, but in between vomit bursts, he'd just start swigging from the whiskey bottle again! I've honestly never seen any human beings ingest that amount of alcohol than those guys did that day. One guy, Abott, passed out in his tent by about 4 and jamie's friend, tom, set his goatee on fire. hilarity.
wasn't gonna drink that night, but obviously did. the irish boys were still going strong so i drank with them, but also ended up wandering around with randoms as well as checking out the aftershock tent with one of the helensburgh dudes, Gibby. we somehow befriended a couple of randoms from nottingham i think. the aftershock tent was quite good, there was a massive Pit on the go, but it didn't agree with my sunburn and i really needed a piss so i sacked it and headed back to the campsite, using the Cesspit like toilets on the way, URGH, nearly hurled, the smell was fucking foul.
felt fine on the friday morning. the Arena wasn't open until 1 so i just arsed around with another Helensburgh Dude, Neil for ages then re-met jamie and katie to go wandering. first band i remember were Wicked Wisdom who were truely terrible, but it was made all the better by the hilarious lyrics and the fact that their singer is Jada Smith AKA Will Smith's Wife!!!
I heard Willie was behind the scenes as well. KILLER.
sat about on the hill for a bit and watched Soil from afar which was a major Yawnfest, then went down to see Strapping Young Lad. They were excellent, Devin Townsend's banter is Top priceless and the band sounded awfy Braw as well like. Soulfly were on after them who were also top drawer, twas good to see them finally. Deftones were up next and they were amazing as always, Max Cavalera came onstage for Headup which was a Bonus and they also played When Girls Telephone Boys which is Lyke my favouritist song EVA. Did a whole loada wandering around until Tool came on that night.
The band were very good, was amazing to see them, but i reckon the show would have worked a lot better indoors, and you could totally tell Maynard wasn't enjoying being there. crowd didn't seem too bothered either. twas still good though and all that.
back at the campsite Abott was wasted and we all sang Ride the Lightning by Metallica about 467 times cause the CD got put on repeat. Loads of Randoms appeared including, bizarrely enough a girl from my archaeology class, Kim, who'd i'd never actually spoken to until that night. weird innit. i think jamie sprayed some of katies aftersun in my mouth at some point. it wasn't without it's charm. i think that was the night Neil got absolutely trolleyed and destroyed his own tent and slept in the wreckage. he did a beer bong but some random irish guy poured whiskey in it as well as beer so he was obviously wankered. funny shit though.
by about 4am, a bunch of Danish people had arrived and they started playing all this bizzare Folk music stuff. decided to hit the sack and i amazingly managed to sleep.
On the Saturday i surfaced then wandered to the main stage to go see the "mystery band" who everyone knew was gonna be Down. they were real good i thought, even though Phil Anselmo was already pretty wasted. met Jamie and katie and went to see Sikth in the Snickers Tent. I'd never seen them before but was impressed and stuff. did yet more wandering talking loads of shite, before heading back to the main stage to watch Arch Enemy who were Braw. Jamie and Katie done the off back to the campsite but i hung around to watch Alice in Chains. Obviously it wasn't "really" alice in chains etc, but their new singer's voice was excellent and replicated Layne Staley really well. so that was good see and all that. ZEBRAS>
Didn't want to see anyone for a while after that so i headed back to the campsite and sat about. had a couple of brewskies then went back to the main stage to watch bands from afar. watched Avenged Sevenfold who were pretty terrible. Trivium were on afterwards, they tried desperately to sound exactly like Metallica for 50 minutes, Matt Heafy even changed his vocal style to try and sound more like James Hetfield. unimpressed.
bumped into rory afterwards so i went down the front with him to watch Korn. turned out Jonathon Davies had been hospitalised a couple days previously so they were gonna do the show with some guest vocalists. No one had any idea who the hell the first guy was, but he just kinda mumbled the words as they appeared on the screen which he was reading off. The ass clown singer from Avenged Sevenfold appeared next who rory abused relentlessly and hilariously. The dude from Skindred did a better job for A.D.I.D.A.S and then Dez Farfara from DevilDriver appeared on the scene. he did pretty well too. THEN Corey Taylor appeared who was the best by far in my opinion. Like 5 years ago it would have been every Nu-metal kids wet dream (myself included) to see the singers from Slipknot AND Coal Chamber perform with Korn and stuff.
Matt Heafy did the vocals for Blind at the end and actually did an ok job. It was all a bit makeshift but was decent enough given the circumstances even if it was basically just Korn Kareoke.
After Korn i re-met the others and managed to find a reasonably good spot to watch Metallica from. had to endure an hour long bottle fight though which got quite annoying.
Metallica appeared onstage and opened with Creeping Death. was fucking excellent maximus. they played a couple of others including a new song before playing Master of Puppets in it's entirety! creaming of pants material. they played a bunch of other excellent stuff and ended in Seek and Destroy. despite the fact their best days are clearly behind them they were still the best band of the weekend by a mile.
Went back to the campsite for more boozing after that. realised i'd run out of money due to it being at least £3 for a burger and pretty much everything else, so me and katie went to the ATM at like 1am and still had to wait an hour and half and at that the bastard machine would only let me take out £30. got pretty pissed and KO'd. im sure something funny happened but i forget what.
Sunday- there weren't a helluva lot of bands i wanted to see that day, so it was a kinda arse around day. was gonna go see God Forbid with katie and the Helensburgh chaps, but that went pear shaped. ended up missing them, but did watch Hatebreed from afar. they were ok, all their songs began sounding the same after a while. after them it was Dragonforce. They're not my thing tbh, but they were pretty damn entertaining live. 36 crazyfists were on next and were decent. In Flames were up after them and they kicked ass, Big Anders Friden looked a bit like Dennis the Menace. but the band were good too.
Back to the campsite after that and while we were sitting talking lots of nonsense these guys came over and asked if we wanted their beer cause they were leaving. this was awesome BUT it was made all the more amazing because the guys were wearing home made t-shirts that said "I HATE SPAR" on them in pure huge writing! funny as fuck, got my photo taken with them, will post asap ok? decided to go for a wander, watched cradle of filth for a while. not a huge fan, but they were pretty entertaining and all the rest.
my phone had run out of battery, as had katies so we went and put into some van where they charged your battery for you. after that i went and watched Axl Rose and his hired Minions for about 10 minutes. axl walked off stage after every song and let one of his guitar players play a 45 minute guitar solo. entertaining stuff.
decided to go back to the site and get pished. probably ate more suncream or something. there was a minor riot going on in our site, the lamposts got bent over and there were quite a lot of bonfires and shit. People in other sites were chucking gas cannisters in the fires and quite often you could hear an explosion in the distance accompanied by shouts and cries of "fuck Emo!" and stuff. Jamie got properly wasted that night and passed out in a chair. we put fags in his nose and ears and apparently i licked his nose. PISHING!! he didn't even wake up either. when he eventually did wake up he took a slash all over his own CD player and it then took 4 of us to maneuver him into his tent.
Woke up the next morning to a small scale thunderstorm which was a welcome relief from the intense heat but a pain in the ass for packing up tents etc. got packed up quite easily, mainly cause katie abandonded her tent due to Spacer's projectile vomiting and various people pissing on it throughout the weekend. i think jamie destroyed his CD player as well. hahaha.
said our goodbyes then got the Bus to Birmingham then switched for the journey back to Glasgow. the ride was quite painless, talked loads of crap for a lot of it which is always nice, and then just read magazines cover to cover. NICE.
Arrived back in glasgow at 8ish, said bye to jamie then Katie's maw give us a lift home. MERCI.
felt weird as fuck being in a house and actually having a shower for the first time in 5 days.
did little last week, had a case of festival blues on the wednesday which, oddly enough, went away when i had to go to work. wassup with that? was a pretty piss easy shift as usual.
went to see X-Men 3 on thursday i think. it was so bad it was good. Ian informed us that if you get Mentos mints and put them into a bottle of Diet Coke, then it can explode up to 5 metres in the air. obviously we had to try it, and on our hunt for mentos mints we bumped into roryfromuni who we kidnapped and took with us. it actually worked pretty well, not quite 5 metres but pretty high. dead exciting aye?
last friday i went out for din dins to some italian restaurant which was braw.
that night egg in a tree had a 6 hour recording session from 12 until 6am. everyone arrived round here at 10.30ish and we got a taxi to the place in the south side. spent the first 3 hours actually trying to get stuff to work properly. recorded 3 songs, they don't sound amazing or anything but are alright. at the end of "shotgun" connor decided to play some random trumpet notes and stuff which sounds rediculously stupid but good for shits and giggles.
Saturday- slept then worked, then went to Amy's flatwarming near the Transport Museum. nice to see everyone, although the night was a bit weird.
Sunday- worked 1-10. not fun.
yesterday- slept until 1 and did little else until going up to katie's for some pre-black dahlia murder drinking/pasta eating. twas good, watched some weird japanese ultra violence film where dudes were suspended from meathooks and had scalding oil thrown on them and stuff. nice.
went to meet Neil at central then went to cathouse to see support bands. they were pretty much all generic metalcore bands, nothing to write home about, although watching more hardcore dancing was worth the admission price alone. Black Dahlia Murder were awesome, way better that when i saw them at the Barfly. all good.
Got the train home with "hardcore katie" and also bumped into gregory, one of the helensburgh dudes from download which was nice.
So yeah, it's been a fun couple weeks, met loads of cool folk and generally had an awesome time. to the extremeus. and stuff.
That took a long, long time.
Photos soon YES?
x
So, it's been a while since i was at the Download Festival, so now it's time for a Behemoth of an update.
So I guess it was a couple of wednesdays ago i went and met katie at Hyndland station and then headed townwards to meet Jamie "Fear". Arsed around at buchanan bus station for a while before jumping on the bus to birmingham. managed to get separated from katie and jamie cause there were only like 3 seats left and strangely enough they weren't all together. so i had to sit at the back with some dudes who thought they were pure mental cause they were gonna start drinking their Red Square at 11am; the only problem was they couldn't open it. harhar.
The journey wasn't bad at all, had a couple of stops. me and jamie pitched in for a winnie the pooh kite! it was amazing.
arrived in Birmingham at some point and waited for about an hour before getting the next bus which took us to Donnington where we arrived at like 7ish i think. managed to find a decent spot to camp, and also managed to set up my tent without breaking anything or getting impaled or something which is always a bonus. also flew the kite which jamie smashed into about 5 tents. after that we went and bought overpriced booze (30 bucks for a crate of Carling..) and sat about drinking for ages. went on wee wanders just see what was what.
at like 1ish, katie's friends from helensburgh arrived out the blue i belieeve. went to sleep at some unknown time.
woke up on thursday morning in intense heat, and felt absolutely terrible. had to lie outside in the grass in fetal position until i felt slightly better. did very little that day, some welsh guys who were camping near us came and befriended us. they were hilarious, and apparently used to drink in the same pub as the guys from Dirty Sanchez!! amazing. went to "the udder bar" which sold bounty milkshakes and the like and were HEAVY nice.
Jamie's buddies from Belfast appeared. they were already absolutely hammered but this didn't stop them walking for like 40 minutes to the nearest Spar to buy 80 cans of stella. they pulled out a beer bong, and just about everyone whitied after doing one, apart from one guy called Spacer who did like 3 in about 15 minutes then cracked open a litre of whiskey and pretty much tanned the entire thing straight. At one point he was slumped in a chair and whitied all over himself, but in between vomit bursts, he'd just start swigging from the whiskey bottle again! I've honestly never seen any human beings ingest that amount of alcohol than those guys did that day. One guy, Abott, passed out in his tent by about 4 and jamie's friend, tom, set his goatee on fire. hilarity.
wasn't gonna drink that night, but obviously did. the irish boys were still going strong so i drank with them, but also ended up wandering around with randoms as well as checking out the aftershock tent with one of the helensburgh dudes, Gibby. we somehow befriended a couple of randoms from nottingham i think. the aftershock tent was quite good, there was a massive Pit on the go, but it didn't agree with my sunburn and i really needed a piss so i sacked it and headed back to the campsite, using the Cesspit like toilets on the way, URGH, nearly hurled, the smell was fucking foul.
felt fine on the friday morning. the Arena wasn't open until 1 so i just arsed around with another Helensburgh Dude, Neil for ages then re-met jamie and katie to go wandering. first band i remember were Wicked Wisdom who were truely terrible, but it was made all the better by the hilarious lyrics and the fact that their singer is Jada Smith AKA Will Smith's Wife!!!
I heard Willie was behind the scenes as well. KILLER.
sat about on the hill for a bit and watched Soil from afar which was a major Yawnfest, then went down to see Strapping Young Lad. They were excellent, Devin Townsend's banter is Top priceless and the band sounded awfy Braw as well like. Soulfly were on after them who were also top drawer, twas good to see them finally. Deftones were up next and they were amazing as always, Max Cavalera came onstage for Headup which was a Bonus and they also played When Girls Telephone Boys which is Lyke my favouritist song EVA. Did a whole loada wandering around until Tool came on that night.
The band were very good, was amazing to see them, but i reckon the show would have worked a lot better indoors, and you could totally tell Maynard wasn't enjoying being there. crowd didn't seem too bothered either. twas still good though and all that.
back at the campsite Abott was wasted and we all sang Ride the Lightning by Metallica about 467 times cause the CD got put on repeat. Loads of Randoms appeared including, bizarrely enough a girl from my archaeology class, Kim, who'd i'd never actually spoken to until that night. weird innit. i think jamie sprayed some of katies aftersun in my mouth at some point. it wasn't without it's charm. i think that was the night Neil got absolutely trolleyed and destroyed his own tent and slept in the wreckage. he did a beer bong but some random irish guy poured whiskey in it as well as beer so he was obviously wankered. funny shit though.
by about 4am, a bunch of Danish people had arrived and they started playing all this bizzare Folk music stuff. decided to hit the sack and i amazingly managed to sleep.
On the Saturday i surfaced then wandered to the main stage to go see the "mystery band" who everyone knew was gonna be Down. they were real good i thought, even though Phil Anselmo was already pretty wasted. met Jamie and katie and went to see Sikth in the Snickers Tent. I'd never seen them before but was impressed and stuff. did yet more wandering talking loads of shite, before heading back to the main stage to watch Arch Enemy who were Braw. Jamie and Katie done the off back to the campsite but i hung around to watch Alice in Chains. Obviously it wasn't "really" alice in chains etc, but their new singer's voice was excellent and replicated Layne Staley really well. so that was good see and all that. ZEBRAS>
Didn't want to see anyone for a while after that so i headed back to the campsite and sat about. had a couple of brewskies then went back to the main stage to watch bands from afar. watched Avenged Sevenfold who were pretty terrible. Trivium were on afterwards, they tried desperately to sound exactly like Metallica for 50 minutes, Matt Heafy even changed his vocal style to try and sound more like James Hetfield. unimpressed.
bumped into rory afterwards so i went down the front with him to watch Korn. turned out Jonathon Davies had been hospitalised a couple days previously so they were gonna do the show with some guest vocalists. No one had any idea who the hell the first guy was, but he just kinda mumbled the words as they appeared on the screen which he was reading off. The ass clown singer from Avenged Sevenfold appeared next who rory abused relentlessly and hilariously. The dude from Skindred did a better job for A.D.I.D.A.S and then Dez Farfara from DevilDriver appeared on the scene. he did pretty well too. THEN Corey Taylor appeared who was the best by far in my opinion. Like 5 years ago it would have been every Nu-metal kids wet dream (myself included) to see the singers from Slipknot AND Coal Chamber perform with Korn and stuff.
Matt Heafy did the vocals for Blind at the end and actually did an ok job. It was all a bit makeshift but was decent enough given the circumstances even if it was basically just Korn Kareoke.
After Korn i re-met the others and managed to find a reasonably good spot to watch Metallica from. had to endure an hour long bottle fight though which got quite annoying.
Metallica appeared onstage and opened with Creeping Death. was fucking excellent maximus. they played a couple of others including a new song before playing Master of Puppets in it's entirety! creaming of pants material. they played a bunch of other excellent stuff and ended in Seek and Destroy. despite the fact their best days are clearly behind them they were still the best band of the weekend by a mile.
Went back to the campsite for more boozing after that. realised i'd run out of money due to it being at least £3 for a burger and pretty much everything else, so me and katie went to the ATM at like 1am and still had to wait an hour and half and at that the bastard machine would only let me take out £30. got pretty pissed and KO'd. im sure something funny happened but i forget what.
Sunday- there weren't a helluva lot of bands i wanted to see that day, so it was a kinda arse around day. was gonna go see God Forbid with katie and the Helensburgh chaps, but that went pear shaped. ended up missing them, but did watch Hatebreed from afar. they were ok, all their songs began sounding the same after a while. after them it was Dragonforce. They're not my thing tbh, but they were pretty damn entertaining live. 36 crazyfists were on next and were decent. In Flames were up after them and they kicked ass, Big Anders Friden looked a bit like Dennis the Menace. but the band were good too.
Back to the campsite after that and while we were sitting talking lots of nonsense these guys came over and asked if we wanted their beer cause they were leaving. this was awesome BUT it was made all the more amazing because the guys were wearing home made t-shirts that said "I HATE SPAR" on them in pure huge writing! funny as fuck, got my photo taken with them, will post asap ok? decided to go for a wander, watched cradle of filth for a while. not a huge fan, but they were pretty entertaining and all the rest.
my phone had run out of battery, as had katies so we went and put into some van where they charged your battery for you. after that i went and watched Axl Rose and his hired Minions for about 10 minutes. axl walked off stage after every song and let one of his guitar players play a 45 minute guitar solo. entertaining stuff.
decided to go back to the site and get pished. probably ate more suncream or something. there was a minor riot going on in our site, the lamposts got bent over and there were quite a lot of bonfires and shit. People in other sites were chucking gas cannisters in the fires and quite often you could hear an explosion in the distance accompanied by shouts and cries of "fuck Emo!" and stuff. Jamie got properly wasted that night and passed out in a chair. we put fags in his nose and ears and apparently i licked his nose. PISHING!! he didn't even wake up either. when he eventually did wake up he took a slash all over his own CD player and it then took 4 of us to maneuver him into his tent.
Woke up the next morning to a small scale thunderstorm which was a welcome relief from the intense heat but a pain in the ass for packing up tents etc. got packed up quite easily, mainly cause katie abandonded her tent due to Spacer's projectile vomiting and various people pissing on it throughout the weekend. i think jamie destroyed his CD player as well. hahaha.
said our goodbyes then got the Bus to Birmingham then switched for the journey back to Glasgow. the ride was quite painless, talked loads of crap for a lot of it which is always nice, and then just read magazines cover to cover. NICE.
Arrived back in glasgow at 8ish, said bye to jamie then Katie's maw give us a lift home. MERCI.
felt weird as fuck being in a house and actually having a shower for the first time in 5 days.
did little last week, had a case of festival blues on the wednesday which, oddly enough, went away when i had to go to work. wassup with that? was a pretty piss easy shift as usual.
went to see X-Men 3 on thursday i think. it was so bad it was good. Ian informed us that if you get Mentos mints and put them into a bottle of Diet Coke, then it can explode up to 5 metres in the air. obviously we had to try it, and on our hunt for mentos mints we bumped into roryfromuni who we kidnapped and took with us. it actually worked pretty well, not quite 5 metres but pretty high. dead exciting aye?
last friday i went out for din dins to some italian restaurant which was braw.
that night egg in a tree had a 6 hour recording session from 12 until 6am. everyone arrived round here at 10.30ish and we got a taxi to the place in the south side. spent the first 3 hours actually trying to get stuff to work properly. recorded 3 songs, they don't sound amazing or anything but are alright. at the end of "shotgun" connor decided to play some random trumpet notes and stuff which sounds rediculously stupid but good for shits and giggles.
Saturday- slept then worked, then went to Amy's flatwarming near the Transport Museum. nice to see everyone, although the night was a bit weird.
Sunday- worked 1-10. not fun.
yesterday- slept until 1 and did little else until going up to katie's for some pre-black dahlia murder drinking/pasta eating. twas good, watched some weird japanese ultra violence film where dudes were suspended from meathooks and had scalding oil thrown on them and stuff. nice.
went to meet Neil at central then went to cathouse to see support bands. they were pretty much all generic metalcore bands, nothing to write home about, although watching more hardcore dancing was worth the admission price alone. Black Dahlia Murder were awesome, way better that when i saw them at the Barfly. all good.
Got the train home with "hardcore katie" and also bumped into gregory, one of the helensburgh dudes from download which was nice.
So yeah, it's been a fun couple weeks, met loads of cool folk and generally had an awesome time. to the extremeus. and stuff.
That took a long, long time.
Photos soon YES?
x