Download Festival 2020 was supposed to take place this weekend.
However, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it’s been cancelled.
There is a virtual festival taking place in its stead though; Download Festival TV.
Dozens of the artists booked to play in 2020 will have some of their content or previous performances at Download Festival streamed on social media channels.
This is obviously a great thing that the festival is doing and I am very happy to have it.
But it doesn’t compare to the feeling actually being there.
That wonderful feeling of watching a band you kinda like, with the sun shining in your eyes, while you stand there somehow both sodden with rain and also sunburnt.
Basically I find myself missing festivals at the moment.
So in this blog post I’m just going to take a wander down memory lane and recount some great stories I’ve got from music festivals.
Why I love festivals
First off, let’s talk about why.
Music festivals are the thing I look forward to every year. In the car driving home from one, I am already counting down the days to the next.
The excitement really starts to build towards the end of the year as the headliners are announced, then other bands start to join the line-up.
In Spring I start to stockpile my supplies (beer and pot noodles, not toilet paper and handwash) and start planning the days and which bands I want to see.
In the past, before Download festival, we used to get a room at the nearby Travelodge. We would start predrinking in the hotel room while eating the snacks we brought with us for the week and watch whatever was on TV .
This became a tradition of watching Bob’s Burgers.
Even just the build-up to the festival made me super excited and happy, and all of this was even before the festival itself!
So let’s talk about the festival itself!
Here are a few random stories I have from festivals gone by.
Moshpit Backflip
The Cancer Bats are an American hardcore punk band.
Now I’m not a huge fan of them and don’t listen to their music in everyday life, to be honest.
They do, however, play Download Festival quite often, and their loud and heavy sound is perfect for a mid-afternoon slot at a festival.
At Download Festival 2013, I was wandering around the festival and caught a few minutes of the Cancer Bats’ set. The crowd wasn’t huge, so I could get pretty close, just behind the mosh pit.
The band was just about to start a song, so the pit had slowed.
Suddenly a large, bearded, topless man broke away from the edges of the pit, and stood in the middle.
I’m not going to downplay this: he looked majestic; like the mascot for heavy metal itself.
He jumped and performed a perfect backflip.
And just as he landed, the band shot into their next song and the pit started up again around the backflip man.
That’s when I knew it was going to be a good day.
General Knowledge
My very first time at Download festival was back in 2011.
I was a young (19), bright-eyed punk who was excited to experience this new world.
Standing in the queue on the Wednesday morning, I looked around and saw a sea of black t-shirts and coloured hair.
Everyone looked very cool and unique and, to an anxious kid who had never been here before, intimidating.
I was a bit anxious about the festival, especially since my last one, Reading 2010 had ended in huge fires that nearly destroyed our camp.
So in the queue, my friend told me how big a trek the walk to the campsite was going to be, and I made a joke about it being like when that guy went over the mountains with some elephants, but I couldn’t remember his name.
Suddenly, the huge bald-headed man covered in tattoos in front of us turned around, and with a big smile said “Think his name was Hannibal, mate.” and turned back.
It’s so silly now to think about being anxious at my favourite place I the world, but it was a new and scary experience for me, and that man did so much to put my mind at ease and feel relaxed around these wonderful metalheads.
Acid Friend
Music festivals are a place in which drugs are taken.
Not by everyone, and it’s very unlikely to even interrupt your festival experience, but it happens.
Twice in my festivals experiences have I come across people tripping on acid.
Once was a guy who wandered into our camp, sat down and wouldn’t leave. He was kind of fun, but mostly just monged out and didn’t leave.
It wasn’t awful, but it didn’t leave me with an especially fun story.
The other time though, I met a lovely man, laying on the grass outside the Doghouse at night.
He was having a lovely time, just chilling out hallucinating.
He was pretty lucid though and was chatting throughout it.
He thought a music festival was a great opportunity to take Acid, and then thought it was an even better to wander off from his mates and see what was going on.
The highlight of his story was him finding a food van selling Chinese food.
He became convinced this meant he was in China, so he panicked because he didn’t have his passport with him.
His solution was to wander towards the music and chill out.
He wasn’t sure how, but was convinced everything would be fine soon enough.
He was a very chill guy and definitely entertained me at 2AM.
Niceness
It’s often said that metalheads see each other as part of a big family, and (generally) treat each other nicely and with respect.
So here’s a few micro-stores about niceness I’ve experienced at Download.
Toilet Wallet
The past few years I have gone to Download Festival with my girlfriend, Esther. One of the many ways she’s better than me is that she is far more observant.
One year, in the toilet section she found someones wallet. Being the not-horrible person she is, found a steward outside the toilets and handed it in.
A few hours later, a guy came running up to us and gave Esther a big hug!
He was the guy who lost the wallet; the steward who gave it back then described Esther, and this guy came and found her just to say thanks!
Free beer!
On the Sunday afternoon of Download Festival 2019, me and Esther were hanging out at the campsite, working our way through the last of our alcohol supplies.
The people camped next to us were packing up so they could leave Sunday night.
They came over and offered us their full keg of Kopparberg Mixed Fruit, because they didn’t want to lug it back to their car, which was awesome of them!
Soon, we became the go-to camp for people to donate all the stuff they didn’t want to drag back to their cars.
We got beer, cider and even some cooked food from nearby camps who wanted to lighten the load before they headed back to the car park!
Truck Breakdown
2019 was wet. It rained solidly from a week after the festival to the Monday morning after.
Getting from the queue to the campsite was like an SAS obstacle course.
It began with a steep hill, slick with mud, more rain and (somehow) a blazing sun.
Pushing a truck loaded up with a weeks camping and beer supplies was not easy thing in the world. I had multiple mental breakdowns doing that.
Then, the path turned to jagged rocks as we walked alongside the racetrack circuit.
Halfway down this track, the tyre of my truck blew up. I had no choice but to keep pushing on and assume my pain was atoning for some horrible sins in a previous life.
Our plan to stay in Blue camp was not happening, as it meant another 30 miles of walking, so we stayed in Yellow instead.
The issue was that this meant another huge hill.
Halfway up the hill, I was ready to just drop dead and ease the pain, when a nearby camp saw me.
They offered use of their huge 4×4 truck, helped me lift my broken truck into it, AND helped me drag it to the top of the hill!
Those guys were my saviours that day and they definitely cheered up my abysmal mood.
Wasting the day away
Download Festival is known for extreme weather. Either it’s as hot and dry as the Sahara, or as wet as an ocean.
It is not a festival that does weather by halves.
One year (2013) had particularly bad weather, and socialising outside of our small camp was just not happening.
Each of us spent most of the days huddled in our tents avoiding the rain, maybe with a quick dash to the food van and back.
Eventually me and a friend took our camping chairs inside his huge tent. Then we grabbed our sleeping bags and got inside them as well.
We then proceeded to drink, chain-smoke and chat for about 8 hours. We missed most of the bands that day, only just managing to rush into the arena to catch Slipknot!
Yes, I missed dozens of great bands to hang out in a tent all day.
But back then, thats all I wanted to do, and I had a blast!
Suicidal Tendencies (or not)
Download Festival 2015 was one of the worst experiences of my life.
(Here’s the full story of this experience)
I was in total denial of my severe depression, and was determined to make the festival my absolute best thing ever.
All of my friends were busy, so instead I decided to try going to Camp Loner. The idea is that everyone going to the festival by themselves going alone, but together.
However, despite my best efforts, in the end I had a miserable time:
I didn’t make any friends, I got sunstroke, I generally felt like shit and blamed myself for it.
On the Sunday night of the festival, Kiss were headlining.
Not being a particularly big fan of Kiss, I opted to see the thrash punk band Suicidal Tendencies, because I liked the song ‘Institutionalised’ from the game Matt Hoffman Pro BMX 2.
They played on the 4th stage tent (Jake’s stage), which was muddy and wet as well.
I was so ready to have a miserable time and slump back to my tent.
Then they played.
The loud, heavy, fast music kind of woke me up and put me in the festival spirit that I had hoped I would be in all week.
I needed the vibrant energy of that gig (and the incredibly large mosh pit) to help bring me out of myself, and I ended up having the best time.
It’s a bittersweet memory in the end though.
Instead of leaving the festival depressed because of Depression, I left depressed because only on the last night did I actually start to have some fun!
Wrap Up
There was no real purpose to this post; just talking about some of the best memories I have from music festivals past.
The tickets may be expensive, the days go fast and none of your favourite bands has a long enough set.
But what that ticket price really buys you are the memories you make there and can enjoy forever.
And for that, the ticket price is really pretty cheap.
