Download Festival '06



(James Hetfield (Metallica frontman), took this picture from 4th row from front..)


(Lordi, this picture i also took from close to the front, about 4th row also i suppose, i had to wait for people to put their hands down though which took several attemts..)

At last the download festival has finally been, but now sadly gone.. and to hopefully return next year..
'Twas my first festival, and it was one hell of an experience. To see Metallica live was amazing, along with the award winning Lordi (which were surprisingly very good!), Lacuna Coil, Killing Joke, Avenged Sevenfold, Korn, Cradle Of Filth, Prodigy and many more. However, instead of just pointing out the good things about this festival i feel there were alot of screw ups this year and i think anyone who went to this festival would have to agree with me.
There are 3 stages at download, one main stage for the bands that will obviously be in strong demand with alot of fans, and 2 smaller stages in tents. Why oh why Prodigy was stuck on one of these smaller stages is beyond me! Because of this me and thousands more fans were stopped from going to see them as the tent could only hold 15,000 people and within 5 minutes it was already full up, so after an few arguments and growls from me to the security men we settled to go and see Lordi.
Cradle of Filth got a bottling from more then half of the crowd on the main stage, i watched them from a distance after moving away from the front (it was a bloody hot day and we were wanting to get out for water then we would have probably got squashed). If Cradle of Filth had been on a smaller stage (maybe swapped with Prodigy!) then this would have solved a few problems indeed!.. then again Daniel Filth (frontman of cradle) most probably would have refused to play if he was put on a smaller stage, it doesn't help him having a bigger ego then Axel Rose..
Speaking of Axel Rose!.. Guns and Roses were of course a disappointment as it obviously was not the original lineup and onlyAxel being the original member.. then again the musicians Axel has teamed up with are actually pretty impressive and it's such a shame they have to be painted with the same brush as Axel Rose. Together they are ripping the name Guns n Roses apart and i know many GnR fans will agree with me as those who i spoke to at the festival did too. The majority of the musicians who make up that band should get away from Axel and start their own group, but maybe they are getting used to this easy money too much..? who knows, im sure that's one assumtion that's been said more then once anyway.. It wasn't just the image and impression of the band that made it bad, but the performance was very much ruined by Axel Rose running off stage after every 2 songs because of either the techies screwing up the sound or the microphone not working properly, or the fact he wasn't happy about something and it all had to be pretty much perfect, everyone was getting very irritated by this i even heard someone shout out "aw someone get is teddybear!". The crowd were once again throwing bottles and the bass player even grabbed the microphone and demanded it stopped or he would no longer play after appoligising for hitting somebody down front which i unfortunatly didn't see.. this was also apparently followed by the guitarist throwing his guitar at the security guys down front and storming off stage in a strop.. which i didn't see as i had had enough by then and left the name to be ripped apart more without me.
Apart from all these cock-ups the festival was a great experience. Metallica were awesome to see and i got a great picture of James Hetfield and Lordi which you can see at the top of the page.. and yes i did take those pictures we were that close to them! Lacuna Coil were also great along with Blood Simple and Avenged Sevenfold. After the music ended at about 10.30pm the fun didn't stop there! Nightlife carried on until 4am, there was great heavy nightclub entertainment going on, one were performances on one of the smaller stages with mostly girls dancing in underwear with everybody dancing and moshing, or you could go in what they call 'aftershock' which was in a tent, but a big tent! It was a heavy nightclub scene with a stage of freakshows and dominatrix acts which are very entertaining while you're dancing, moshing, raving with a bottle of smirnoff in your hand.. which i didn't have as i had run out of money at that point.. It was so hot that pouring my bottle of water over my head seemed to be more of an appealing idea.
I can't remember what the time it was when we decided to do the long walk back to our campsite, but as we did we saw people going crazy, people were setting fire to bins and tents, and on one campsite we saw a big bonfire had been started, and a tent had been burnt down too. There is a long track going through all the different campsites and ours was at the very top luckily, but all the way up through every single one of them are lampposts and each one had been bent and knocked over.. i can't imagine how they managed it, but they had, every one of them were over. All security who were usually at every gate to each campsite as you enter them on the track were no where to be seen.. except the odd occasion when they passed you on the track.. i expect they ran off from the gangs of drunks. We got back to our tent expecting to go to bed but we ended up drinking a whole lot more with some random people we didn't know by there tent. We stayed here all night and before we knew it it was light and morning.. and it got to about 7am and we were like oh we better start packing up.. so we packed up our tent still half drunk concentrating to start making our way home. The whole weekend was boiling, the heat was amazingly hot i have never caught sunburn from the english sun before.. but can you believe this.. the ONE moment it decided to absolutely PISS it down was when we had got our tents down and were packing up! The ultimate typical act of sods law! Unbelievable! It was one crazy night.. crazy weekend for that matter and i have only just recovered from lack of sleep! Early hours of the morning we heard there had been riots and armed police had been called out and already made 30 arrests! I have the stats for the ammount of crime that is known so far for the weekend but i will add it at the bottom of this article later when i find them again. The police say they have never had so much trouble from Download before, so me and my mates were quite lucky to manage to keep out of it really, this year it was 24 hour available drinking so that might have had something to do with it.. who knows!- but hey that's appreciation for ya!
It was a great atmosphere despite all the cock-ups though, everybody was excited to see their favourite bands and everybody was friendly and easy to talk to too. I was expecting everybody to be dressed widly but there were a lot of adverage normal looking people there, even chavvy football fans who were just there to watch the football.. which was kind of sad to see when Metallica were playing. Even though there were normally dressed people there, i think the extreme made up for it to remind everyone what festival you were at..


It was my first festival and im glad it was download, i hope there is still one next year, im thinking of going to it, but there are also a lot of other festivals going on that im quite interested in. The Arrow festival in Holland i have always liked the look of which is full of classic rock, and the Reading festival looks good this year which is in August- i would go if i could afford to.
I wonder if the showers and toilets are the same at every festival..? I should have got a picture of the toilets, they are hard to explain.. but lets just say a flush is not needed.. you go up steps, hold your nose before taking your pick, do your business, and it all goes into one big department through each hole from every toilet.. you can imagine how badly this started to smell after the scorching heat all weekend. Oh and what about the showers.. do most festivals have mixed showers?? The line went on for about 150+ yards.. but surprisingly went down quickly.. when you eventually got to the end you see everybody just goes in together.. if i had known then maybe i would realise why all the girls had brought their bikinis with them.. but oh well.. next time!- i chose not to go in but my friend told me all about it, she also reassured me i didn't miss much, all the men were pretty much shameless..

WISHES FOR '07
• ACDC to headline
• Prodigy on main stage
• Less Heat, but no rain!
• Must have more money
• Must buy cordless hair straightener
• Must meet up with more people
• Must bring something stronger then Fosters


| | Posted: Thu - June 15, 2006 at 11:48 PM          

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