Thursday 17 June 2010

Rocking My Socks Off


Well Well Well, time is certainly flying by at the moment, its already mid June!! I am currently enjoying a nice week off work following a very long weekend at Download Festival, that is what this blog is pretty much going to focus on as so much happened. Here goes, hopefully I wont miss much.

Thursday
Sean and his dad stayed over on Wednesday night so we could head out early for the weekend at Download Festival 2010. This was the 3rd time I had been in 4 years with the only missed year being 2008 while I was in Australia, fair excuse I think. We arrived and managed to get one hell of a camping spot, 2 minutes walk from the main village without being in a place people walk right past, brilliant. There is no music on Thursday so we met Mark from my Contiki tour of Oz and his mate Phil who were also camping with us and just had a day of drinking going on rides, my highlights were the house of fun and the bumper cars! I have a YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/grizm where you can check out a load of videos from the weekend. I would recommend the Spin Wheel ones from the funhouse as they are quite funny. Late in the day we met up with my mate Will and his group from my old job at Siemens which was cool. Other than that it was just a drinking day. Video Diary - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmwbpSCgrxw

Friday
The first day of music and what a day it was going to be. AC/DC were headlining and had their own stage set up directly next to the main stage in the arena, I couldnt wait. Before that we watched a couple of other bands, Killswitch Engage were brilliant and stepped it up from last year when we saw them. We saw Them Crooked Vultures, made up of Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and John Paul Jones from Led Zepplin who were ok but it was just like watching a chilled jamming session rather than a show but not bad. Then AC/DC came on and they were amazing. Loads of hits, 110,000 people only watching them as all the other stages had closed and basically cannons, fireworks, flames, inflatables and rocking. Very very impressed with them. Back to camp for more drinking! Video Diary - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ommznxFXBYc&feature=related

Saturday
After watching AC/DC we were hoping that it hadn't peaked too soon, one thing that Saturday had going for it was that music started at 11am rather than at 3pm like Friday so there was more to see. We watched a few bands, the stand out ones were Atreyu, Flyleaf and Five Finger Death Punch, the latter being one of my favourites of the weekend and actually got stopped as there were too many people crowd surfing, haha. The Deftones were playing but I didnt really like them that much, I dont know why they just werent my thing. Later in the day 30 Seconds to Mars headlined the second stage and were a really great show before Rage Against the Machine headlined the main stage. They were really good and finished with a bang! Good times. Video Diary - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWPlead7UA4&feature=related

Sunday
Already the last day and we were not flagging at all. The sleeping in a tent on the ground wasnt too bad and the music was really great. Nothing could go wrong, well so we thought. The day started off really well with us chilling out with a Guinness watching a couple of great shows. Slash was really good to watch and performed a couple of old Guns N Roses tunes which was a nice surprise. Then Billy Idol came on which took me back to my younger days of being in my dads car, good memories listening to his songs. BUT....then the rain came, all weekend it had been boiling but all of a sudden the heavens opened and we were soaked through, and I mean soaked. We had all had enough after about an hour of getting wet so trudged back to the tents to have a relax in the dry. I got changed and headed back to the arena as the headline act was Aerosmith and there was no way I was missing them. Luckily the rain stopped just as I started to walk back. It was well worth the walk as they were fantastic. Steve Tyler is one hell of a frontman and had the crowd doing whatever he wanted. The highlight was him singing 'I don't want to miss a thing'. What a way to end the weekend!! Video Diary - Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-1dUAShAsI&feature=related Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVJ8zXNyyEs&feature=related

So that was my weekend. The highlights were definitely AC/DC and Aerosmith with a nod to Killswitch Engage, Five Finger Death Punch and 30 Seconds to Mars.

I will go back to proper writing next time, lol. Check out the videos and if you are my friend on Facebook you can see a load of photos too.

Take it easy, Rock on....

G

No comments:

Post a Comment