Not only have we given you our Stewart's thoroughly subjective view of the weekend (iron maiden fans for £20 you can happily have his home address), we can now give you a bonus additional sunday retrospective. You see our Alex was there too and this is what he thought:
Read MoreIt's Saturday morning, the sun is shining and the shuttle buses are shuttling. In fact, I have got very little to moan about, so let's go straight into the bands. Our day starts with Californian natives Dirty Honey who are playing their first show on the shores. Their retro-fuelled sound brings to mind The Black Crowes’ electrifying opening set on these very grounds thirty-one years ago. They share the ability to feel simultaneously authentic but also thoroughly modern. They have taken a much-trodden route and made it very much their own.
Read MoreIt's been three long years (whilst it was awesome Diddy Download doesn't count) but here we are reunited on the hollow grounds of Donington Park. The first point to make is how normal it feels. There is something weird about entering those gates and automatically you know where everything is. Dogtooth is over there, second stage is over there and the bars are there, there and there. The layout of the Download festival is so ingrained in our psyche that it actually didn't feel that I left in 2019. My soul's been here all the time hanging round that space where the dog should be just waiting for my body to return.
Read MoreIt is sometimes hard to actually discern why we all hold Download in such high regard. Its infrastructure has on numerous occasions left a lot to be desired (putting the second stage in a car park in 2008, those bloody one way systems, last year’s bar queues from hell, I could go on…). It has made a number of questionable headliner decisions (Lost Prophets in ’08, Biffy Clyro in both ’12 and ’17)
Read MoreThe big story of 2010 was of course meant to be the fact that AC/DC were headlining. A band that had seemed to have become far too big for mere festivals, was lowering themselves to join the rank and file of Aerosmith and Rage Against the Machine. The actual story turned out to be the disruption that the Aussie juggernaut appearance brought to the festival. They refused to be listed …
Read MoreBy Sarah Cummings – Download veteran and well-known idiot.
If you are looking for in depth critiques of musical brilliance, this list isn’t for you. This piece flows from a place of emotion and memory, and I would struggle to define my love of Download any other way. Download has always been about the experience as a whole for me and I wanted to take the time to reflect on that with my Top 10 Download sets.
Read MoreSundays at festivals are usually greeted with mixed emotions; sadness that it is almost over and adulation that within twenty four hours you can have a hot bath and use a real toilet. I had planned on starting my Sabbath with much feted Glaswegian pop-rockers Lost in Stereo, however less than two tracks in, I decide that they are far too light and frothy for 11.00 am on a Sunday. Their syrupy Weezer like melodies are a bit like nursing a hangover with camomile tea as opposed to nuclear strength coffee, so I abandon them to seek more abrasive stimulation. Sorry Guys.
Read MoreMost reviews you will read of this year’s Download Festival will be from journalists who stayed in off-site hotels and who spent a predominate amount of their time on site in the distinctly less muddy press aware. ROCKFLESH is a site of the people, by the fans for the fans, so therefore no such luxury for us. We humped our gear from the sodden swamps of West car park with the rest of you, we spent hours trying to fit three sizable tents into a piece of grass no bigger than a postage site as you all did, we cursed the fact that we seemed to be camped directly at the end of the runaway as everyone else did and we yomped through the mudapocoalaypse brown quokemire that the Village had become with the everyone else.
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