"I could be a goth! I'm fat!"

I spent this Saturday just gone at the Download Festival; I don't really know why they called it that because it was just the old Donnington Festival resurrected under a different name, but this was jolly good fun nevertheless.

What I learned this weekend:
1) The higher up the playbill a band are, the better they can actually hold a tune when playing live
2) The people who take their shirts off on a hot summers day are usually the ones who least ought to.
3) puddingcat has a remarkable talent. She can wind me right up until I'm on the brink of either biffing her on the phiz, pushing her in front of an oncoming tram, or stomping off in a huff, before she suddenly stops and becomes good company again. I'm sure she must practise with a stopwatch at home. It's the only explaination for how she times it so well.

The days lineup from when i got there (and my comments thereupon) was as follows.

Murderdolls: Boy, did they ever suck. heavens knows what they were singing about, or ever what instruments they claim to play, but their set just sounded like someone having a nasty argument whilst dropping piles of crockery. Not atonal in an interesting, Philip Glass sort of way, but just badly played crap. A band to avoid in future.

In/Me: Not bad. A band with potential. All their songs started out well and then degerated into displays of "Gosh Whizz! We've got reverb and feedback and fader pedals galore! And we're rock so we're not afraid to use them!" Whilst this live playing style might have been fun when The Clash or The Who were doing it thrity years ago, it's worn a bit thin these days. However, when these kids figure out that playing their tune is enough, they may well be one to watch.

The Ministry: The highlight of my day. I've a long-held and abiding love of The Ministry and I found it repayed well with a live set including Psalm 69 and an updated version of "New World Order" (The original was a song about the first Gulf War, so there's a lot of scope to bring it up to date a bit). puddingcat just didn't get them, but then she's got no taste anyway.

The Deftones: Never been a fan, and I'm not a convert now. I mean, they're okay and all, but they sound like every single other post-Ministry, post-Soundgarden, Post-Rage Against the machine, post-Faith no more band out there. The wench liked them more than The Ministry, and I think that if I'd discovered them before I'd heard of and opf the above I'd like them a lot more. Sadly, everything they do just sounds so derivative.

Marylyn Manson: unlike most people, I thought Mechanical Animals was far his best work, far exceding Antichrist Superstar. Sadly he didn't play much from that era (but the nifty reprise of "Tainted Love" was welcome).
Like all great bands, MM make their way with the aid of a true showman at the helm. You might not like the music, but they're worth watching as a spectacle. Despite his penchant for grotesquery and wearing Bongo-the-clown trousers on stage, Manson is a consumate performer who has found a schtick and is milking it for all it is worth whilst retaining a realistic eye on his own absurdity. The little legion of smeary makeup-bedecked mansonites might take him seriously, but the fact that the uniform he wears on mOBSCENE is clearly modelled on that sported by Charlie Chaplin in 'The Great Dictator' speaks volumes.
However, I feel this is a cultural reference that will go straight over most of his fans heads.
Unlike most bands, manson will still be about in twenty years time, our generation's own Alice Cooper, still headlining tours to sellout audiences, and we'll be wondering what all the mid-90's fuss was about. And he'll still be the entertainer he is today.

Iron Maiden: I'm not a huge fan of the Irons, they're okay, and good for alisten at times, but not by any means my favourite band. However, as a live spectacle, they're almost unbeatable- perhaps only AC/DC are the only band I've seen to outdo them.
Once again, they're led byu a showman - Bruce Dickinson (who shagged my brothers friend Claire on her 16th birthday, but that's another story) and have not only complete technical mastery of their craft but also a real understanding of the utter absurdity of what they're doing.
The great difference between them and almost any other band on the day (although MM were close) was the fact that they played a fully note-perfect set without resorting to the usual lazy rock clithe of chugging gituar + distortion to cover up duff notes. Any group that can play a 2-hour set that is nigh-indistinguishable from their recorded work, all tunes and notes individually recognisable, deserve the success Iron Maiden have had.
Plus having an astonishingly limber front man (I couldn't do some of the stunts Bruve did when I was 19 (back when I could do midair somersaults and full splits and so on), and he's 45!) who doesn't appear to have aged in the last 20 years (Playing the Rock circuit seems to keep you young, cf: Kiss, AC/DC et al) doens't hurt either. A fanstastic piece of showmanship.

puddingcat says she's love to see Iron Maiden, Manson and Rammstein on the same bill because they're all such showmen (and almost certainly competitive with it) that they'd alllift their gameto produce the best performance. I'm not sure she isn't right, but I'd rather Ac/Dc to Iron Maiden myself. I'd certainly be willing to travel internationally to see something like that.

Possibly more on all of this later, but a good day all in.