Well, that was an excellent weekend. A quick recap
Thursday/Friday:
Thursday night after a second excellent Pixies gig, I realised I had no sleeping bag. I must have left it behind when I moved flat. So Friday morning was a quick trip to Argos to pick one up and then off out of work at 13.00 Met up with Andy at the train station and got to Darby no problem. The 3 people we were meeting were right outside the station waiting. So we went for a drink and some food. About 3 hours later we stumble out of the pub having started off on Stella’s.
Got to the campsite, again no problems. Then we found the queue to get in. It must have taken about 3 hours to get to the gates to get the wristband and get in. So we drank ourselves pretty silly as there wasn’t really much else to do.
So its dark now, we are all pissed and we have to get 4 tents up. I’m amazed at the great job we did. It took a while but they all got up and stayed up. Met our neighbours, good bunch of lads who we sat around with for the rest of the night drinking and smoking.
Saturday:
Morning…painful. Very very painful. Off to queue again to get into the actual festival. Not too bad here, less than an hour and we went off to see Powder. They were fucking great. A fantastic opening band. Good music and a great stage show. Enjoyed them lots, bought their album on Monday.
The rest of the morning/afternoon was pretty much a non event. Monster Magnet who are highly thought of around the V, were ok nothing special. Ditto with The Distillers. The Hives I enjoyed a good bit and will get their album at some stage. The evening was much much better.
Next up on the main stage was Iggy and the Stooges. Highlight of the weekend. Great set, belting out some top choons. Shortly into the gig, he told the crowd to ignore security and get up onto the stage with him…and so they did. Poor security were completely overwhelmed and a good 100 people made it up onto the stage. We were close for this one but not close enough to get up there. Security got real antsy at this point (unsurprisingly) but seemed to completely miss the point that 100 people got up on the stage when Iggy asked them to…and 100 people got back down off the stage when the song was over.
The Jackass boys were on the second stage and my dear sweet god that looked painful. Steve-o doing a full butterfly on stage was NOT something I ever wanted to see. Electric Six followed them with a stonking set. Much better than I ever expected and far more rock than I thought they were. Finished off with a cover of Radio GaGa which had all the crowd going. Then we dashed over to the Barfly stage and caught Peaches who was again, excellent. Really impressed, just ordered the album.
Stayed around drinking for a while and then got to bed around 3.00
Sunday:
Not so painful, had taken it mainly easy the night before. Off to the main stage to see Ill Nino and TurboNegor both of whom were ok, the openers Breed 77 weren’t half bad at all, good set and got the crowd going no problem. Onto Soulfly who were pretty good but then we got some Damage Plan bumped to the main stage to let Slayer who were late have their second stage late slot. They were excellent, really really excellent. Got their album on order this morning too. Closing with Pantera’s Walk really got the crowd up and going strong. Machine Head followed in after them and they were again excellent (I may be overusing this word a little)…got their album on order this morning too. Slipknot were surprisingly good live, really good set, very crowd pleasing and I was impressed. Not going to spend money on them anytime soon but good stuff. Didn’t get to see Slayer as they were bumped to the second stage due to being late and they clashed with Korn…and more importantly we didn’t want the hassle of getting into an overpacked second stage. It looked just impossible so we stayed put. Great great stuff from Korn, excellent set with a whole load of the crowd right behind them throughout it. I have some of their stuff, I need more after this weekend.
Well, that was quickish. So onto Metallica. We moved a good way up the front for them. Got right in the middle of the bottle fight and we took a few knocks, one of us even getting cut up. Not too bad luckily. Anyway about 90 minutes late, the crowd was very unhappy and were actively booing. James, Rob and walked onto stage to announce there was problems. Lar’s had been hospitalised for a mystery illness and they were going to play with the help of some friends. Dave Lombardo from Slayer was the first up to the plate and the opener was Battery. Suffice it to say the booing ended very quickly. It was a short set, there was curfew and they ain’t got no drummers. Joey Jordison from Slipknot was the hero of the day, stepped up and did 8 songs perfectly. Fucking great drummer. Shorter than I would have liked, and it was all obvious they were missing something but they really did give it their best and do a good job on it. Decent write up of it from behind the scenes here.
Monday:
Relaxed. Got up late, took the tents down slowly and joined the fast moving queue for the bus back to the train. Finished as we had started, in the same pub for some food and cold drinks (with ice!). Train home was all good and it was so nice to get home and get into my shower.
That’s about that for the quick report. There is more to come, later.