Music Festivals

[ThetaOrionis01]

Has anyone been to the Leeds/Reading rock festivals - or any other music festival this summer?

 

 

I went to Leeds yesterday, just for the first day of a 3-day-festival. I went for sole purpose of seeing one band, which unfortunately may not be named on these forums but which happens to be one of my favourites (a fact which may incidentally have contributed to their unmentionability :lol: )

 

Getting there involved a 450 mile roundtrip (by car, thanks to our atrocious public transport system) and a 2 hour traffic jam to get into the site.

 

I saw a few other good bands (Serafin & Hell Is For Heroes in particular), and it wasn't raining, so the afternoon passed nicely. Two incredible coincidences happened - if there are any mathematicians here they could perhaps work out the probabilities for me: A flying bottle hit me on the side of the head and knocked my contact lens out of my eye. And a few minutes later I found the contact lens clinging to my bag. Now how unlikely is that? :lol:

 

The band which may not be named were awesome. Amazing. Totally fantastic. I have never seen a crowd erupt as it did when they started their set.

 

Unfortunately, there was a problem with the crush barrier - it gave way, and people got hurt. Latest I heard was that 22 people were hurt, and some of them needed hospital treatment for broken ankles. I don't think there would have been injuries like that if the barrier had held. :(

 

The band stopped their set immediately and asked everyone to get back to allow the people trapped under the barrier to get help - and everyone moved back immediately.

Then everyone had to wait while security staff reinforced the barriers - some people might say, of course, that adequate barriers should have been in place before the concert started :angry:

 

When everything was sorted, the set re-commenced. It was the biggest moshpit I have ever seen. During one particular song - which I'd probably better not name either :P - people were jumping up and down, moshing, dancing as far as I could see...maybe 10000 or 20000 people.

And yeah, I was dancing, jumping up and down and singing along too :lol:

 

I didn't bother waiting around to see the headliners Metallica

 

 

I was not at all impressed with the organisation of the festival though. The inadequate barriers (I heard later that the organisers said that the barrier hadn't collapsed, while other sources said that 'the integrity of the barrier was breached' and others that the barrier had moved half a metre....) were the worst, and I hope that the people who got hurt are ok.

The site was not well laid out - it was a new site which seemed much smaller than last year's (you constantly had to pick your way around and over people sitting on the ground everywhere) - , traffic management wasn't great, and camping seemed very unorganised - people were camped across the end of the access path form the car park to the site (I managed to make my way through the tents back onto the path sober and in the last of the daylight - I imagine anyone trying that drunk and in the dark would have problems :D ), signposting on the site wasn't good, and there weren't enough toilet blocks.

 

 

I wouldn't go back to Leeds - unless it was my only chance to see my favourite bands. Which seems to have been the case this year and last year....

 

 

Tomorrow I'm off to the Big Day Out On The Green in Glasgow to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers....finally a festival that isn't several hundred miles away!!

 

 

Anyone else want to talk about the festivals they've been to - or is everyone else here philosophically opposed to going outside to enjoy live music? :lol:

[Switch]

the only thing im philosophically opposed to is my ear drums bursting :P

 

which is funnily enuf one of the numerous reasons ive never gone 2 one of these things :P but im glad u had fun ^_^

[The_Reaper]

Well... the closest to a festival i´ve been is the same country!

 

 

 

 

 

 

ps:Yeah i´m pityfull :P