What I remember of the last few days.
Thursday: Woke up with that line Rik Mayalls character in More Bad News says another Heavy Metal day, no sleep til Castle Donington. Only managed three hours sleep. Heres me unshaven and pissed off.
Gave Mum her Birthday presents then Dad drove us all to Chatham, I signed on then dashed back to the car. Dad started going the long way to Chatham train station so I told him it would be quicker to go to Rochester. Got a single ticket to Victoria, had to wait twenty minutes for the train to come. Got to Victoria and went straight to the underground station and got harassed by a homeless guy while trying to by a ticket. Went to St. Pancreas and bought a 44 ticket to Derby. Got there in an hour and a half, spent 6 to get on the shuttle bus to Download but they did give me a token to get on for free next time. Got in a big queue to get in one of the seven smaller queues.
Thankfully they were doing any bag searches, looked around for anyone I knew from back home but gave up and went to a patch of field that had only just been opened. Got to inside of my tent up ok but had difficulty getting the outside cover on, eventually I just said fuck it, thats good enough
Started to walk into town top get barbeque provisions.
As I was walking back a guy with a beard going past in a car yelled FUCKING LONER! at me, Rock people taking the piss out of Rock people, theres a weak link there. When I got back to my camp site it had almost completely filled up.
Had Vegan burgers when I got back to my tent.
Tried to get some sleep but every other cunt camped around me was making noise.
Friday: These pricks kept yelling BUMBLE BEE TUNA! at everyone walking past and encouraging them to yell it back.
Had the rest of the Vegan burgers for breakfast, for a laugh I put the melted ice pack on the barbeque to see if it would put it out, it didnt completely.
Walked into the opened arena
Went to the Snickers tent to see Throwdown, heres the first of many bottle fights witnessed
Throwdown were kinda boring and made me wonder why I came to this festival in the first place, the only good parts of their set was when they cover A New Level by Pantera (well up to the chorus anyway, and getting to put my fist in the air when they got to the STRAIGHT FUCKING EDGE part of Forever.
An hour later I watch Bleeding Through, this is more fucking like it, they actually put some energy and enthusiasm in their performance, though my attention is divided between watching the singer run around stage and the fit keyboard player.
Theyve put up these long fences around most of the arena, so if you want to get to the main stage from the Snickers tent you have to walk all the way round to the top of the hill, until someone finally does what everyone was thinking
Come back to the Snickers stage to watch Fishbone, only really saw them on a whim and they turned out to be really good, like Red Hot Chilli Peppers meets Bad Brains and you can see where Reel Big Fish nicked it from.
Right after them is Clutch, they rocking rock harder than a piece of Granite, mostly playing stuff off Blast Tyrant but they chuck in a couple from the last one as well as Pure Rock Fury, Who Wants To Rock and a new song
Watch the Deftones on the main stage, God, Chino has gotten fat. They kind of suck but they get Max Cavalera to come out and do Headup with them and I get to remember my teenage years. Tool come on next, theyre cool, instead of having cameras film them so they can be projected on the big screens they show trippy animations and bits of their videos and Maynard kept calling everyone hippies.
Saturday: Manage five hours sleep, walking to the arena I see one of the dumbest tattoos ever
I remember some cartoon in the eighties/early nineties aimed at girls concerning the adventures of a princess and her friends and they had ponies or something gay like that, anyway, this girl had all the characters from it tattooed to her back. There were rumours flying around that Down were the secret band this year, and as it turns out they are. They open with Lysergik Funeral Procession followed by Lifer which is dedicated to Dimebag Darrel which leads me to believe that they are just going to play a scaled down version of the set they played at the Astoria, then Phil Anselmo makes my dreams come true buy saying this one goes out to all the dope smokers, its called Hail The Leaf. They play New Orleans Is A Dying Whore and then finish with Bury Me In Smoke which Phil stops right at the beginning because he doesnt like the way everyone is staring at him and tells everyone to headbang harder.
Walk to the Snickers stage to watch Johnny Truant but cant be arsed to stand after watching Down and they arent that good anyway. Walk to the main field to get something to eat, it seems the security have got the message that the fence going around the field is more than a bit cuntish so they have shortened it.
Come back to the Snickers stage, Devil Driver are on, like everyone says they are better than Coal Chamber but then they were well shit so that isnt much to achieve, Devil Driver are only a bit shit, the only bit of their set I enjoy is when Phil Anselmo drunkenly ambles onstage uninvited to sing along to the first song. Saw this tattoo I thought was cool
was let down by the Linkin Park tattoo on his shoulder though. Henry Rollins comes on and does a thirty minute spoken word set, he talked about the thing that happened to him in Australia recently and one time when he was in Black Flag he got offered $50 by one of their roadies to help set up equipment at a Red Hot Chilli Peppers show, the opening band had holes in their clothes and smelt, he asked who these bitches were and was told they were some local band called Guns N Roses, he said they sounded like Aerosmith run into the Sex Pistols and someone had fed them tablets of talent and hate. He also said something really righteous and Im paraphrasing at best dont ever become one of those guys who when they hit thirty say I dont listen to music anymore because it sucks now you are a jaded fuck, there is good music out there its just a bit more harder to find because MTV want to push the more commercial and lamer stuff on you. Watched This Is Menace because I wondered if they could pull it off as they are the UKs equivalent to Probot. They were pretty good the singers I recognised were Colin from Hundred Reasons, Jeff Walker from Carcass (in his cowboy get up he wears in every interview he does these days), BHellmouth from Send More Paramedics (in full zombie make up just to do one song) and the cunts from Shith and Earthtone 9. Watch Mondo Generator (or Winnebago Generator I should say as Nick is joined by the two guys from Winnebago Deal) theyre really good and they even do some of the songs Nick sang on when he was in Queens Of The Stone Age (even the cover of Wake Up Screaming by Subhumans they did).
Watch Killing Joke who are ok but my attention is drifting to the arses of the fit Goth girls watching (well Industrial girls really, but Ive noticed the only thing that separates Industrial girls from Goth girls is that they have a higher penchant for luminous colours.
Sunday: Three hours sleep, walk into town to draw money out, theres long queue at to first cash machine so I take a walk down the street, find a Co-Op I didnt know was there before which is cool because they do everything cheaper than the shop I normally go to. Walk to the other two cash points I know of (the other Co-Op and the petrol station) but they are both out of use so I have to walk back to the first one and get in line to money out from there. Get back to the arena and watch Zico Chain on the Myspace stage as I like some of their songs, watch Bring Me The Horizon for a song and a half just to laugh at their fringes then go back to my tent for a bit. Come back to watch Hundred Reasons, have to sit down because Im so tired but get up when they play Silver. Later I watch Alexisonfire and get really surprised at how good they are, all the members except the drummer have grown big grizzly beards, I wish more popular Emo bands would do that
Later the singer see an inflatable pool being passed around the crowd and asks for it to be brought to the front of the stage, he gets in it and sings while being held above the crowd in it.
Walk to main stage to get something to eat Funeral For A Friend are on but I dont bother watching them as I doubt they could top Alexisonfire. Go to the Myspace stage and suffer through Lordi so I can get to the front, I do, this is why I came to this festival.
Behind me, the bottle fight to end all bottle fights erupts behind me, it was almost like a mosh pit of bottles the way it looked
Sick Of It All come on and play a different set to the one they always play (that was the thing that made the last time I saw them and drag, that I actually could guess what they would play next) They open with Take The Night Off and Goatless instead of Good Lookin Out and Call To Arms that they always open with (though those songs do come up later in the set) and they play Step Down right in the middle instead of the end which was great because this way I didnt know what was coming next and it was exciting. They get the crowd to do a three way wall of death (left, right, back) during Scratch The Surface and finish with Us Vs. Them. Ive seen them something like eleven or twelve times and I have to say that was the best Ive seen them play.
Walk back to my tent in the best fucking mood with Guns N Roses sounding more tired than ever on the main stage, they lost momentum, Sick Of It All kept gaining speed.
Monday: Really had a job getting to sleep as all I could hear was people yelling and somewhere in the distance something like drums and rockets, at five am I had slept two hours and decided to pack up and get the train home.
As I was walking through the camp site I found out what that drumming noise was.
There had actually been a riot a couple of fields away from mine, riot police were stoping people going up a path where an ambulance was.
I had to walk all around the last field to get to the exit, more carnage
This bin was actually still smouldering when I took this picture. Got the shuttle bus to Derby station. Bought a 57 train ticket to St. Pancreas, got there in two hours, then got the underground to Victoria, bought an 11 ticket to Rochester and a bowl of tofu and rice to eat before the train got there, called my Dad as soon as I got on the train and asked him to pick me up from Rochester. As the train came into Kent I swear my home county never looked so beautiful as it did in the sunshine at 10 am.
Thursday: Woke up with that line Rik Mayalls character in More Bad News says another Heavy Metal day, no sleep til Castle Donington. Only managed three hours sleep. Heres me unshaven and pissed off.
Gave Mum her Birthday presents then Dad drove us all to Chatham, I signed on then dashed back to the car. Dad started going the long way to Chatham train station so I told him it would be quicker to go to Rochester. Got a single ticket to Victoria, had to wait twenty minutes for the train to come. Got to Victoria and went straight to the underground station and got harassed by a homeless guy while trying to by a ticket. Went to St. Pancreas and bought a 44 ticket to Derby. Got there in an hour and a half, spent 6 to get on the shuttle bus to Download but they did give me a token to get on for free next time. Got in a big queue to get in one of the seven smaller queues.
Thankfully they were doing any bag searches, looked around for anyone I knew from back home but gave up and went to a patch of field that had only just been opened. Got to inside of my tent up ok but had difficulty getting the outside cover on, eventually I just said fuck it, thats good enough
Started to walk into town top get barbeque provisions.
As I was walking back a guy with a beard going past in a car yelled FUCKING LONER! at me, Rock people taking the piss out of Rock people, theres a weak link there. When I got back to my camp site it had almost completely filled up.
Had Vegan burgers when I got back to my tent.
Tried to get some sleep but every other cunt camped around me was making noise.
Friday: These pricks kept yelling BUMBLE BEE TUNA! at everyone walking past and encouraging them to yell it back.
Had the rest of the Vegan burgers for breakfast, for a laugh I put the melted ice pack on the barbeque to see if it would put it out, it didnt completely.
Walked into the opened arena
Went to the Snickers tent to see Throwdown, heres the first of many bottle fights witnessed
Throwdown were kinda boring and made me wonder why I came to this festival in the first place, the only good parts of their set was when they cover A New Level by Pantera (well up to the chorus anyway, and getting to put my fist in the air when they got to the STRAIGHT FUCKING EDGE part of Forever.
An hour later I watch Bleeding Through, this is more fucking like it, they actually put some energy and enthusiasm in their performance, though my attention is divided between watching the singer run around stage and the fit keyboard player.
Theyve put up these long fences around most of the arena, so if you want to get to the main stage from the Snickers tent you have to walk all the way round to the top of the hill, until someone finally does what everyone was thinking
Come back to the Snickers stage to watch Fishbone, only really saw them on a whim and they turned out to be really good, like Red Hot Chilli Peppers meets Bad Brains and you can see where Reel Big Fish nicked it from.
Right after them is Clutch, they rocking rock harder than a piece of Granite, mostly playing stuff off Blast Tyrant but they chuck in a couple from the last one as well as Pure Rock Fury, Who Wants To Rock and a new song
Watch the Deftones on the main stage, God, Chino has gotten fat. They kind of suck but they get Max Cavalera to come out and do Headup with them and I get to remember my teenage years. Tool come on next, theyre cool, instead of having cameras film them so they can be projected on the big screens they show trippy animations and bits of their videos and Maynard kept calling everyone hippies.
Saturday: Manage five hours sleep, walking to the arena I see one of the dumbest tattoos ever
I remember some cartoon in the eighties/early nineties aimed at girls concerning the adventures of a princess and her friends and they had ponies or something gay like that, anyway, this girl had all the characters from it tattooed to her back. There were rumours flying around that Down were the secret band this year, and as it turns out they are. They open with Lysergik Funeral Procession followed by Lifer which is dedicated to Dimebag Darrel which leads me to believe that they are just going to play a scaled down version of the set they played at the Astoria, then Phil Anselmo makes my dreams come true buy saying this one goes out to all the dope smokers, its called Hail The Leaf. They play New Orleans Is A Dying Whore and then finish with Bury Me In Smoke which Phil stops right at the beginning because he doesnt like the way everyone is staring at him and tells everyone to headbang harder.
Walk to the Snickers stage to watch Johnny Truant but cant be arsed to stand after watching Down and they arent that good anyway. Walk to the main field to get something to eat, it seems the security have got the message that the fence going around the field is more than a bit cuntish so they have shortened it.
Come back to the Snickers stage, Devil Driver are on, like everyone says they are better than Coal Chamber but then they were well shit so that isnt much to achieve, Devil Driver are only a bit shit, the only bit of their set I enjoy is when Phil Anselmo drunkenly ambles onstage uninvited to sing along to the first song. Saw this tattoo I thought was cool
was let down by the Linkin Park tattoo on his shoulder though. Henry Rollins comes on and does a thirty minute spoken word set, he talked about the thing that happened to him in Australia recently and one time when he was in Black Flag he got offered $50 by one of their roadies to help set up equipment at a Red Hot Chilli Peppers show, the opening band had holes in their clothes and smelt, he asked who these bitches were and was told they were some local band called Guns N Roses, he said they sounded like Aerosmith run into the Sex Pistols and someone had fed them tablets of talent and hate. He also said something really righteous and Im paraphrasing at best dont ever become one of those guys who when they hit thirty say I dont listen to music anymore because it sucks now you are a jaded fuck, there is good music out there its just a bit more harder to find because MTV want to push the more commercial and lamer stuff on you. Watched This Is Menace because I wondered if they could pull it off as they are the UKs equivalent to Probot. They were pretty good the singers I recognised were Colin from Hundred Reasons, Jeff Walker from Carcass (in his cowboy get up he wears in every interview he does these days), BHellmouth from Send More Paramedics (in full zombie make up just to do one song) and the cunts from Shith and Earthtone 9. Watch Mondo Generator (or Winnebago Generator I should say as Nick is joined by the two guys from Winnebago Deal) theyre really good and they even do some of the songs Nick sang on when he was in Queens Of The Stone Age (even the cover of Wake Up Screaming by Subhumans they did).
Watch Killing Joke who are ok but my attention is drifting to the arses of the fit Goth girls watching (well Industrial girls really, but Ive noticed the only thing that separates Industrial girls from Goth girls is that they have a higher penchant for luminous colours.
Sunday: Three hours sleep, walk into town to draw money out, theres long queue at to first cash machine so I take a walk down the street, find a Co-Op I didnt know was there before which is cool because they do everything cheaper than the shop I normally go to. Walk to the other two cash points I know of (the other Co-Op and the petrol station) but they are both out of use so I have to walk back to the first one and get in line to money out from there. Get back to the arena and watch Zico Chain on the Myspace stage as I like some of their songs, watch Bring Me The Horizon for a song and a half just to laugh at their fringes then go back to my tent for a bit. Come back to watch Hundred Reasons, have to sit down because Im so tired but get up when they play Silver. Later I watch Alexisonfire and get really surprised at how good they are, all the members except the drummer have grown big grizzly beards, I wish more popular Emo bands would do that
Later the singer see an inflatable pool being passed around the crowd and asks for it to be brought to the front of the stage, he gets in it and sings while being held above the crowd in it.
Walk to main stage to get something to eat Funeral For A Friend are on but I dont bother watching them as I doubt they could top Alexisonfire. Go to the Myspace stage and suffer through Lordi so I can get to the front, I do, this is why I came to this festival.
Behind me, the bottle fight to end all bottle fights erupts behind me, it was almost like a mosh pit of bottles the way it looked
Sick Of It All come on and play a different set to the one they always play (that was the thing that made the last time I saw them and drag, that I actually could guess what they would play next) They open with Take The Night Off and Goatless instead of Good Lookin Out and Call To Arms that they always open with (though those songs do come up later in the set) and they play Step Down right in the middle instead of the end which was great because this way I didnt know what was coming next and it was exciting. They get the crowd to do a three way wall of death (left, right, back) during Scratch The Surface and finish with Us Vs. Them. Ive seen them something like eleven or twelve times and I have to say that was the best Ive seen them play.
Walk back to my tent in the best fucking mood with Guns N Roses sounding more tired than ever on the main stage, they lost momentum, Sick Of It All kept gaining speed.
Monday: Really had a job getting to sleep as all I could hear was people yelling and somewhere in the distance something like drums and rockets, at five am I had slept two hours and decided to pack up and get the train home.
As I was walking through the camp site I found out what that drumming noise was.
There had actually been a riot a couple of fields away from mine, riot police were stoping people going up a path where an ambulance was.
I had to walk all around the last field to get to the exit, more carnage
This bin was actually still smouldering when I took this picture. Got the shuttle bus to Derby station. Bought a 57 train ticket to St. Pancreas, got there in two hours, then got the underground to Victoria, bought an 11 ticket to Rochester and a bowl of tofu and rice to eat before the train got there, called my Dad as soon as I got on the train and asked him to pick me up from Rochester. As the train came into Kent I swear my home county never looked so beautiful as it did in the sunshine at 10 am.