Download Pilot "Aces High?"

View from Tent of Main Stage

View from Tent of 2nd Stage

 

The Tent

I am typing the whole thing on my phone. Reasons well my PC has gone bang that's why the phone but also I had a slight hiccup in my health in march and it has affected my memory so want to get this right. So Download Festival Pilot will be written on the fly then reorganised once I am home. Though still via the phone. Once I get my PC back I will get the photos uploaded.

This year it starts from work as it is a Pilot to try and get live music going again in these covid times it is a later gate and a shorter festival. So I'm in work at the moment waiting to leave. First band is 5pm. It's a 90 minute drive there and my average tom for getting my tent up in 20 minutes. No real issues bah getting a spot around 3/4pm though this is not a major issue as I'm flying solo.  So here's to day one of a way back to live music and festivals.

So all in and camped by 4:45pn. Camp sites are crammed full to burst, banning gazebos this year might have been a good idea but we're in and I think it's blue. It has reached the point where people have been told to camp on the paths in certain places. 

Two bands down so far and am close enough to the second stage I dont need to leave my tent.

Hot milk.
Are presently playing on main stage sound reasonable, but it is a fairly generic rock not really catching my full attention. Will probably look into them down the line though. Friday is a shorter day for bands and will just keep writing as I see them.

Annoyingly the signal is so weak that you can't keep a connection to anything. I should have realised this as I was trying to load my ticket at the gate. Such short notice the extra masts for phone signal probably weren't available, or they though 10% of the normal crowd wouldn't need them. I have got notes all over my phone though about bands I did see and as always this is about the whole experience not just the music (though generally the music is why we are here.)

Holding absence.
Bass set to high vocals too low. Musically fine but lack of being able to hear the singer was way of from the position I was in resulted in me needing to find YouTube stuff later. Appeared to be giving their all from my position on the crowd but the acoustics failed to help them. While most in would say that it was a reasonable performance, I don't know how they normally preform and the sound didn't help.

This became a common issue throughout the whole festival. We had moments in the camp site where the bass was so high on the second stage that people's speakers were blowing out on their own speakers, I could feel my skeleton shaking as if I was on the barrier at a Motorhead gig. Several others around me agreed as I was trying to make sure it wasn't just me so I did ask about.

Neck Deep.
I have photos of Neck Deep, I obviously watched Neck Deep, I don't remember watching them.
I know this seem's really odd. But this is my brain and for some reason I can't recall them, what is odder when I went to make notes in the evening after the bands had finished just to make sure I had got all my thoughts down I couldn't remember them either. 
I remember Frank Carter and other bits so why not them?

Frank Carter and the rattle snakes.
Not terrible, but not amazing. Don't know any of their songs and was planning to check them out in their original mid morning slot at the normal festival. Might not now. Terrible rendition of ace of spades. I'm probably biased.

Day two.
So another day where I know very few of the bands and after crawling I to my tent around 3am and then rising around 8am I'm feeling reasonably good. Pickup an £8.50 breakfast bap and am now awaiting the first band to play.
They are alternating between stage and tent. Which means no bands overlap.
Today is meant to be the better day.and walking to see bands is nothing. The distance to the tent is non existent I can actually see it from my own tent and if I stand up I can also see the screens for the stage.

Okay so the problem with having the camp site in the arena is you don't need to move to hear bands. As a result of not knowing anyone and feeling rather lathargic the first band I wandered in to see was A. Still playing strong can't grumble good set can't honestly name any of them. Okay not true they finished with nothing I can name that one.

Stone broken. Need more research. Could be interesting need to find some footage on youtube. From this bench point they don't sound half bad though the tent sound is still iffy at best. Are reminding me if Nickelback, not vocally but musically. I said this, when I walked past after going to the loo I thought they were actually playing Nickelback, it did sound like a track off Darkhorse. It wasn't but they did also have moments of coming across as Creed also. Not a terrible band will have to get some of their work.

Creeper.
They are playing but they just don't grab my attention. Which is a shame. I can't fault them musically but they just aren't grabbing me..

Day 3.
So today my days not exactly starting early. I am going to wander a bit and see what's going on and have to try and recall the band's I see, but I am definitely going to see wildhearts, skindred, bullet for my valentine. As two of them are the reason I'm here really. I keep saying for the science but you know what it's also for the love of live music, which if yesterday's activities are to go by lacks. I did watch a few bands yesterday and while they are fine they didn't catch me. It might be because of the circumstances but I don't know. While we all should be clear of covid and a lot of is are jabbed at least once it does still haunt the back of your mind. Sorry back to your regular scheduled download review.

While writing this bullet are doing there sound test. 

Saint Agnes. Musically okay. But lyrics are lacking. Attempt to make everyone sit down…. She isn't Corey and this isn't a slipknot gig, what's even better is when she jumped up it took the crowd slightly longer to realise. From what I've seen they don't lack musically but Lyrically they need to work on their song writing. They will get there and I'd like to see what else they have to offer.

Elvana.
This is what happens when you merge an Elvis impersonator with a band that likes to play Nirvana covers. Comedy gold.

Wildhearts.
Monitor issues affecting for the whole set, sound issues have generally plagued the festival over the weekend but not of us care as we all have missed this. Ah well, from Diagnosis into Vanilla radio followed by Everlone and with sick of drugs that's it. Ginger can't Handel the monitor issues and apologises walking off. It's hard to play if you can't heat yourself. Was a shame as this was the band I was most looking forward too enjoyed all I saw though. 

Skindred.
 I like skindred, downside I missed the tent from wildhearts onwards mainly due to the walk off sent me into a bit of a meh moment. So went for food. Anyway skindred.

I have no notes on skindred or bullet. The reason being I was enjoying the set. I can't recall every song, but there was a lot of singing along by myself and those around me. An when we got to warning and the Newport helicopter..... Well the crowd had gone early as in for the whole song shirts were spinning. 

Bullet for my Valentine.
It's bullet, been watching them for so long now that you always know what to expect, good performance, good tunes, still the sound issue but all the same not as bad as it has been with some bands. Plus playing run to the hills with Benji from Skindred on vocals who had the words to the song on a sheet of paper on his hand. Now I know he has his own songs to remember and there are a lot of them with skindred and dubwar plus the tracks he guests on but not knowing Run to the hills is questionable.

Okay so that's bands, music and so on. Let's talk layout, weather, food, drink, sound issues.

Firstly the whole thing was planned built and set up in 3 weeks. Then you have the fact that it is built in the usual arena that for everything else is a car park. The super bikes happened so they had 4 days to set everything up on site in reality.

Yes it does mean that the sound wasn't prepared for the smaller scale. The camp site may have been a little undersized for the capacity, the weather on day one was horrible, an vendors were limited. 

But they did it and alot of this can be forgiven because they didn't all in 21 days.

There is a reason that they arrive on site two weeks before the normal Download Festival it is to iron out all these little issues and problems, we all know some still happen but the larger things like the bass being able to blend a human at 100 yards isn't one we get commonly. The food vendors while being very few were a good level of varied, so there was something for everyone. The bar now I the bar was interesting. They were not that busy, we were restricted too how much alcohol we could take into the camp site, an that was 24 cans (see the historical site for full list) this was because we could take our own drinks into the arena. Which resulted in no ques for the bar. Can't see them letting us do that ever again.

Mud.... Normally download can become a bog with all the feet trampling through rain sodden grass, but with only 10,000 people it wasn't that bad. First year I've not had to hose my DMs down once I've got home.

I'll clean this up once I get near a PC. An of course get the photos attached.

Until next year, stay safe. An we will all be together once more at Donington Park for Download Festival and 3 days of music and mayhem.

See you at Download Festival 2022