Download Festival
I was really saddened to find out about the riots at Download festival. We didn't know anything about them while we were there - when we were sitting in our campsite on the Sunday night we saw a big glow on the horizon and a load of smoke, but we just thought 'Someone's got a good campfire going'. We didn't realise it was tents burning down. There were quite a few loud bangs, but we assumed that people were just exploding tins of beans on fires and letting off fireworks. I think the bangs must have been all the metal poles supporting the campsight lights being pushed over.
I think there were a lot of people at Download who were not neccessarily into the music - I think some people had come just for the sake of being at a festival because there's no Glastonbury and the Reading tickets had sold out so quickly. Festivals don't seem as friendly and unified as they used to be.
I was shocked to hear that the riot started with people physically torturing 'emo' kids. Surely the whole point of alternative festivals is to celebrate freedom of expression through music and personal style, and to deride and degrade people for liking a particular genre of rock music is disgusting. I reckon everyone who has made alternative culture or rock music a part of their life has experienced discrimination and forms of bullying as a result, and to then start bullying others for liking a different type of rock music is inexcusable.
(I reckon the metallers were just jealous because the emo boys were much prettier then them).
Anyway, here is a very long and very rambling account of my Download experience,
Thursday
Got up and had a shower, savouring the last moments of civilisation and cleanliness. Hoovered out my car so my friend Rachel didn't discover the truth (that I usually drive round in something resembling the inside of a wheelie bin), and picked her up.
The journey up was pretty quick. I ended up bombing along at 90 to try to catch up with Rachel's boyfriend and friends who'd said they were nearly there, only for us to discover once we were inside that they were actually sitting in a cafe at the side of the M1 and we had to wait two hours for them.
Putting up the tent was nice and easy. I had a very cool three man tent that my brother bought me for my birthday.
Once we were done with the tents we went for a wander around and a look at the stalls. There were so many cool belt buckles, t-shirts, shoes and jewellery, I really had to restrain myself.
The first night I couldn't sleep until the sun came up because I was so cold. Unbelievable, I know, because it was so hot in the daytime, but it was quite breezy at night and we were up on a hill. I had on tights, trousers, a top and a fleece top, and I was still too cold inside my sleeping bag.
Friday
The first band I saw were Enter Shikari, a band from Herts that I'd played at the Horn and Club 85 with. Was great to see them on a big stage, and they seemed to have a lot of fans there, which was good to see. They really held their own.
Then I headed to the main stage. Saw a bit of Soil (good but not really my taste), and a band called 'Wicked Wisdom' who are fronted by some dude from Iron Maiden's daughter. She had good stage presence, but the songs were shite - female rapping and death metal combination was not pleasing to the ears.
Strapping Young Lad, one of my fave bands, were next. Devin Townsend is my hero, and he didn't let me down. He gave the most amusing perfomance of the entire festival with his hilarious retorts, and he rocked like a hairy metal bastard. I was slightly disappointed he didn't play Detox, but it was a great set.
Headed off to see Bullets and Octane with Rachel and then came back for the Deftones and Tool. I was quite disappointed that Deftones and Tool didn't take the opportunity play their collaborative song, 'Passenger'. Deftones were good, surprisingly playing 'My Own Summer' second in the set. Chino's voice was pretty strong - I'd been warned the standard of his performances were unpredictable, but I was impressed.
Tool came on last. I've seen them three times before, and each time Maynard has been quiet, static and moody-looking, with one of the gigs played entirely with his back to the audience. But this time he was pretty lively, dressed in a white cowboy hat and jiggling his leg around. He even spoke to the crowd a few times. They played an extremely accomplished set as always, with all my favourites, but it was a bit of a shame that they came on 20 mins late and finished 20 mins early - I would have liked to hear more.
Friday night I bought a thick army shirt to wear in bed over my fleece, but I was still too cold to sleep until well after sunrise.
Saturday
Caught a bit of Arch Enemy - wow, that woman can really grunt - and settled back to watch Alice In Chains. They were awesome - their new singer is great and his voice is absolutely ideal for the songs. He and the band sounded beautiful as I lay on my back in the sun with my eyes closed.
I'm not really a fan of Stone Sour, but they played a strong set and I enjoyed it. Corey is so popular - seems to be a bit of a hero in a lot of people's eyes.
I was a bit gutted that I missed Opeth, the Secret Machines and Opeth. I had to go back to the campsite because one of my eyes was really painful. In my enthusiasm to avoid sunburn, stupid old me had put sunscreen on my eyelid. D'oh. It had of course run into my eye, and was stinging like a bugger. My eye was watering all day, and just got sorer and sorer, so I had to go back to the campsite to lie on my back and pour water into it. This made it better, but it had closed up a lot by then so I spent the rest of the day looking decidedly odd.
Managed to get back to the main stage in time for Korn. Jonathan Davies had been taken ill and was in hospital, so various guest vocalists stood in for him. There was Benji from Skindred, Corey Taylor and a few others - it was pretty cool. It was a shame I didn't get to see Jonathan, but it a really good set in the end. Korn's live sound is immense, especially the bass.
They'd been a lot of bottle fights over the course of the afternoon, and at one point a carboard pint cup landed behind me and I felt something warm slosh all the way up the back of my legs, soaking my canvas boots and socks. It was urine. Yum. I think we all got varying amounts of urine on us at some point or another. People are lovely.
The mighty Metallica came on last. To celebrate the 20 year anniversary of 'Master Of Puppets', they played the entire album from start to finish, which I thought was quite brave, and turned out to be bit of an unpopular decision with some members of the audience. The pace of those songs is riduculous - I used to try and play along on the guitar when I was younger and I couldn't keep up - don't know how they did it. Once they got to 'Orion' we all wandered off as none of us were particular fans. Metallica kept going for hours after, we didn't have the stamina or the enthusiasm to stay and watch.
We went to check to out the promised 24 hour entertainment. One of the tents had one of the most random and unbelievably awful performances I've ever seen - a woman who was supposed to be an alien (even thought she wasn't dressed as one) who was supposedly dead and being electrocuted to revive her by some guys dressed as professors. Then some storm troopers came on and ran around along with some people dressed as Giger's alien, then some scantily clad women came out and did a dance. Then it turns out they were supposed to be chavs (???) and there was a lot of random chav-bashing comments and claims of 'I hate midgets'. Truly bizarre and awful - worse than a primary school drama society could produce.
We left in disgusted amazement to see what else was on offer. There was one more tent to check out, which supposedly had burlesque dancers. However, when we got close we found it was not proper burlesque at all - just horrible skanky women in corsets standing at the front of the stage flopping their cleavage in mens' faces.
I went and bought a blue camo-print fleece blanket to put over my sleeping bag and was able to go to sleep properly for the first time.
Sunday
Chilled out at the campsite on my own reading a magazine for a few hours and then headed to the main stage for In Flames. They were pretty good. The lead singer did not look at all how I was expecting - a little guy in a white shirt and tie with dreads. I thought they would be a lot more serious, but they were quite good fun.
Next up were Lacuna Coil - Christina has a very powerful and beautiful voice, I was really impressed. They beat the shit out of bloody Evanesence. They covered Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence, which was quite interesting.
Cradle of Filth were..pretty silly, really. Danni kept ranting that the crowd were 'too quiet' and 'hard work', which was a bit irritating.
Then the line-up got a bit schizo - after all the doom/metal/black metal etc, the final three bands were Bullet For My Valentine, Funeral For A Friend and Guns'n'Roses. Bullet were good. Saw the first couple of Funeral songs - I've seen them three times (including one small gig when they were relatively unknown, seems like a long time ago now) so I went to watch the Prodigy. I wish I hadn't bothered. The Prodigy were in a ridiculously small tent - no-one could get near, and there was a massive crowd all around the tent. People were getting very disgruntled - I saw a fight break out as I was trying to get away. I couldn't be bothered to watch more than two songs - the sound was crap, and the Prodigy didn't seem to have put together any new mixes of the songs specially for the set. It was like listening to one of their CDs quietly on a naff stereo with some bloke shouting over the top.
I made it back to the main stage in good time for Guns'n'Roses. It was so cool to see Axl in the flesh, even if he does have a plastic surgery-ravaged face that could scare children and Snoop Dog's corn rows. He still had the voice and the attitude, but not the white cycling shorts. Multiple costume changes and outrageously tight outfits were sadly missing, but rock star habits die hard and Axl got in a couple of strops and stormed offstage twice. The first time was because the sound was apparently bad - the 'worst sound I've ever had in my life'. The second time was because someone threw a bottle of piss - he threatened to go home if it happened again. But once he got going, he was a legend, and it was amazing to hear the songs live after being a fan for all these years. My favourite song of the set was November Rain - I was smoking a spliff and a few drops of rain came down. I felt quite emotional.
Monday
Got woken up at 7am by a huge crack of thunder, and the heavens opened, which meant packing away a soggy tent. The walk back to the car park was quite excrutiating. I really need to learn to travel light. Next time I need to take a backpack for clothes and a travel suitcase on wheels for food and drink. Lugging food and posessions around in dozens of plastic carrier bags is not the way to do it.
We all looked quite brown at the end, but it was a 'dirt tan' - dust that had stuck to the sticky layers of sweat and sun screen. I am still as pale as ever, despite spending four days in constant intense sunshine - I'm living proof that sunscreen works.
I had a really great time - good company, amazing bands, beautiful weather. Sitting at my desk looking out at the grey skies, it feels like it never happened.
I think there were a lot of people at Download who were not neccessarily into the music - I think some people had come just for the sake of being at a festival because there's no Glastonbury and the Reading tickets had sold out so quickly. Festivals don't seem as friendly and unified as they used to be.
I was shocked to hear that the riot started with people physically torturing 'emo' kids. Surely the whole point of alternative festivals is to celebrate freedom of expression through music and personal style, and to deride and degrade people for liking a particular genre of rock music is disgusting. I reckon everyone who has made alternative culture or rock music a part of their life has experienced discrimination and forms of bullying as a result, and to then start bullying others for liking a different type of rock music is inexcusable.
(I reckon the metallers were just jealous because the emo boys were much prettier then them).
Anyway, here is a very long and very rambling account of my Download experience,
Thursday
Got up and had a shower, savouring the last moments of civilisation and cleanliness. Hoovered out my car so my friend Rachel didn't discover the truth (that I usually drive round in something resembling the inside of a wheelie bin), and picked her up.
The journey up was pretty quick. I ended up bombing along at 90 to try to catch up with Rachel's boyfriend and friends who'd said they were nearly there, only for us to discover once we were inside that they were actually sitting in a cafe at the side of the M1 and we had to wait two hours for them.
Putting up the tent was nice and easy. I had a very cool three man tent that my brother bought me for my birthday.
Once we were done with the tents we went for a wander around and a look at the stalls. There were so many cool belt buckles, t-shirts, shoes and jewellery, I really had to restrain myself.
The first night I couldn't sleep until the sun came up because I was so cold. Unbelievable, I know, because it was so hot in the daytime, but it was quite breezy at night and we were up on a hill. I had on tights, trousers, a top and a fleece top, and I was still too cold inside my sleeping bag.
Friday
The first band I saw were Enter Shikari, a band from Herts that I'd played at the Horn and Club 85 with. Was great to see them on a big stage, and they seemed to have a lot of fans there, which was good to see. They really held their own.
Then I headed to the main stage. Saw a bit of Soil (good but not really my taste), and a band called 'Wicked Wisdom' who are fronted by some dude from Iron Maiden's daughter. She had good stage presence, but the songs were shite - female rapping and death metal combination was not pleasing to the ears.
Strapping Young Lad, one of my fave bands, were next. Devin Townsend is my hero, and he didn't let me down. He gave the most amusing perfomance of the entire festival with his hilarious retorts, and he rocked like a hairy metal bastard. I was slightly disappointed he didn't play Detox, but it was a great set.
Headed off to see Bullets and Octane with Rachel and then came back for the Deftones and Tool. I was quite disappointed that Deftones and Tool didn't take the opportunity play their collaborative song, 'Passenger'. Deftones were good, surprisingly playing 'My Own Summer' second in the set. Chino's voice was pretty strong - I'd been warned the standard of his performances were unpredictable, but I was impressed.
Tool came on last. I've seen them three times before, and each time Maynard has been quiet, static and moody-looking, with one of the gigs played entirely with his back to the audience. But this time he was pretty lively, dressed in a white cowboy hat and jiggling his leg around. He even spoke to the crowd a few times. They played an extremely accomplished set as always, with all my favourites, but it was a bit of a shame that they came on 20 mins late and finished 20 mins early - I would have liked to hear more.
Friday night I bought a thick army shirt to wear in bed over my fleece, but I was still too cold to sleep until well after sunrise.
Saturday
Caught a bit of Arch Enemy - wow, that woman can really grunt - and settled back to watch Alice In Chains. They were awesome - their new singer is great and his voice is absolutely ideal for the songs. He and the band sounded beautiful as I lay on my back in the sun with my eyes closed.
I'm not really a fan of Stone Sour, but they played a strong set and I enjoyed it. Corey is so popular - seems to be a bit of a hero in a lot of people's eyes.
I was a bit gutted that I missed Opeth, the Secret Machines and Opeth. I had to go back to the campsite because one of my eyes was really painful. In my enthusiasm to avoid sunburn, stupid old me had put sunscreen on my eyelid. D'oh. It had of course run into my eye, and was stinging like a bugger. My eye was watering all day, and just got sorer and sorer, so I had to go back to the campsite to lie on my back and pour water into it. This made it better, but it had closed up a lot by then so I spent the rest of the day looking decidedly odd.
Managed to get back to the main stage in time for Korn. Jonathan Davies had been taken ill and was in hospital, so various guest vocalists stood in for him. There was Benji from Skindred, Corey Taylor and a few others - it was pretty cool. It was a shame I didn't get to see Jonathan, but it a really good set in the end. Korn's live sound is immense, especially the bass.
They'd been a lot of bottle fights over the course of the afternoon, and at one point a carboard pint cup landed behind me and I felt something warm slosh all the way up the back of my legs, soaking my canvas boots and socks. It was urine. Yum. I think we all got varying amounts of urine on us at some point or another. People are lovely.
The mighty Metallica came on last. To celebrate the 20 year anniversary of 'Master Of Puppets', they played the entire album from start to finish, which I thought was quite brave, and turned out to be bit of an unpopular decision with some members of the audience. The pace of those songs is riduculous - I used to try and play along on the guitar when I was younger and I couldn't keep up - don't know how they did it. Once they got to 'Orion' we all wandered off as none of us were particular fans. Metallica kept going for hours after, we didn't have the stamina or the enthusiasm to stay and watch.
We went to check to out the promised 24 hour entertainment. One of the tents had one of the most random and unbelievably awful performances I've ever seen - a woman who was supposed to be an alien (even thought she wasn't dressed as one) who was supposedly dead and being electrocuted to revive her by some guys dressed as professors. Then some storm troopers came on and ran around along with some people dressed as Giger's alien, then some scantily clad women came out and did a dance. Then it turns out they were supposed to be chavs (???) and there was a lot of random chav-bashing comments and claims of 'I hate midgets'. Truly bizarre and awful - worse than a primary school drama society could produce.
We left in disgusted amazement to see what else was on offer. There was one more tent to check out, which supposedly had burlesque dancers. However, when we got close we found it was not proper burlesque at all - just horrible skanky women in corsets standing at the front of the stage flopping their cleavage in mens' faces.
I went and bought a blue camo-print fleece blanket to put over my sleeping bag and was able to go to sleep properly for the first time.
Sunday
Chilled out at the campsite on my own reading a magazine for a few hours and then headed to the main stage for In Flames. They were pretty good. The lead singer did not look at all how I was expecting - a little guy in a white shirt and tie with dreads. I thought they would be a lot more serious, but they were quite good fun.
Next up were Lacuna Coil - Christina has a very powerful and beautiful voice, I was really impressed. They beat the shit out of bloody Evanesence. They covered Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence, which was quite interesting.
Cradle of Filth were..pretty silly, really. Danni kept ranting that the crowd were 'too quiet' and 'hard work', which was a bit irritating.
Then the line-up got a bit schizo - after all the doom/metal/black metal etc, the final three bands were Bullet For My Valentine, Funeral For A Friend and Guns'n'Roses. Bullet were good. Saw the first couple of Funeral songs - I've seen them three times (including one small gig when they were relatively unknown, seems like a long time ago now) so I went to watch the Prodigy. I wish I hadn't bothered. The Prodigy were in a ridiculously small tent - no-one could get near, and there was a massive crowd all around the tent. People were getting very disgruntled - I saw a fight break out as I was trying to get away. I couldn't be bothered to watch more than two songs - the sound was crap, and the Prodigy didn't seem to have put together any new mixes of the songs specially for the set. It was like listening to one of their CDs quietly on a naff stereo with some bloke shouting over the top.
I made it back to the main stage in good time for Guns'n'Roses. It was so cool to see Axl in the flesh, even if he does have a plastic surgery-ravaged face that could scare children and Snoop Dog's corn rows. He still had the voice and the attitude, but not the white cycling shorts. Multiple costume changes and outrageously tight outfits were sadly missing, but rock star habits die hard and Axl got in a couple of strops and stormed offstage twice. The first time was because the sound was apparently bad - the 'worst sound I've ever had in my life'. The second time was because someone threw a bottle of piss - he threatened to go home if it happened again. But once he got going, he was a legend, and it was amazing to hear the songs live after being a fan for all these years. My favourite song of the set was November Rain - I was smoking a spliff and a few drops of rain came down. I felt quite emotional.
Monday
Got woken up at 7am by a huge crack of thunder, and the heavens opened, which meant packing away a soggy tent. The walk back to the car park was quite excrutiating. I really need to learn to travel light. Next time I need to take a backpack for clothes and a travel suitcase on wheels for food and drink. Lugging food and posessions around in dozens of plastic carrier bags is not the way to do it.
We all looked quite brown at the end, but it was a 'dirt tan' - dust that had stuck to the sticky layers of sweat and sun screen. I am still as pale as ever, despite spending four days in constant intense sunshine - I'm living proof that sunscreen works.
I had a really great time - good company, amazing bands, beautiful weather. Sitting at my desk looking out at the grey skies, it feels like it never happened.