Donnington Download Festival 2017 Highlights + VLOG

If you thought you were getting stories about my adventures this year in chronological order... you were wrong.

It's fine; I accept that this blog's purpose is to manage and curb your expectations before you start going out into the world thinking that life is logical and fair.

So, in case I haven't mentioned this already, I was incredibly lucky for all of June (I knew my dad's Irish heritage would come in handy one day) and managed to go on three back-to-back holidays. Admittedly, this wasn't planned - the people that I went to Lisbon with offered me a free ticket to the Download festival while we were in Lisbon and it just happened to be a few days before our pre-booked holiday to Milan that I kind of forgot completely about.

Heh.

If you aren't sure what Download is, basically it's a massive rock-themed annual music festival that takes place at Donnington Park. The lineup is usually absolutely amazing - think people like Korn, Linkin Park etc. - but this years was a lot more... eh, in my opinion. I was considering buying a ticket for it back in December (ah, Christmas money is a beautiful thing) because of the out-of-the-world-amazingness that is the usual line-up, but the lineup for 2017 put me off.

That being said, though, there were enough good acts for me to jump on a free ticket with nothing but utmost glee.

This year's lineup

If you want to watch a little VLOG about the festival and witness some of the awesomeness that I did (like Steel Panther bringing 200 girls on stage to the horror of security guards everywhere) then you feel free.

So... I could write a play-by-play, but that would probably be unnecessarily long and boring. What I am going to share with you is the Download Festival 2017 highlights!

Steel Panther

I didn't even know who Steel Panther were before Download - I know; it's a tragedy! In case you don't know who they are, they're a parody-metal group. While being really, really good performers, they're also constantly taking the mick out of the stereotypical "metal" lifestyle - hence lyrics like "I fucked 17 girls in a row last night" and "my heart belongs to you, but my dong is community property".

They put on an absolutely hilarious show; there was a lot of dialogue and jokes between the songs, which was a great touch. At one point, they also brought like 200 girls on stage and withstood all the selfies, flashing and awkward grinding that commenced. Total highlight.

They also had condoms released into the air during the show.

Silent disco

I may be late to the party, but before Download I'd never been to a silent disco - and boy was I missing out. For some reason, "silent disco" and "awkward and boring" were synonyms in my mind. Well, I'm glad to report that I couldn't have been more wrong! We ended up making a few "friends" and dancing with them for a majority of the night - so there was like a circle of us air-guitaring and belting out classics from Spice Girls to old school Linkin Park and Nirvana.

Just... a lot of ***king fun

It was just... a really fun environment. People were walking around in crazy costumes, some guy at a stall let me draw a glitter dick on his face, people were having loads of fun. Considering the music finished at 10, but the "village" closed at 3am, I don't even feel like the lack of a mind-blowing lineup was that big of a deal.

Although the fact that I couldn't find a Pikachu onesie to wear... now, that was a big deal.

System of a Down was a let-down, but the guy that was constantly hitting on my aunt's boyfriend was a highlight

Now, admittedly, this is a case of my expectations needing to kept in check. I've seen SOAD live via Youtube and their performances are always really static. So I should've expected it... but I didn't and it was kind of disappointing because some of their songs that you could easily jump-around and have a good time to. Except you couldn't because everyone was standing there morosely.

That being said, my aunt and I had an absolute hell of a time and ended up making a friend because some guy decided to just persistently hit on her boyfriend all night. Like... I mean, seriously hit on him. Head on neck, grinding, hand on ass, full on flirting. It was so overt that we actually moved backwards to give the guy privacy to try harder...

And to get a better view for our cameras. Anyways, the guy's friend was completely mortified by his friend's behaviour and didn't even like System Of A Down, so we all ended up chatting and swapping war stories. It was bloody funny.

That time we almost got shot by armed police and bomb squad were almost called on my aunt's car

Yeah, I mean, there's a story here - but it's such a juicy one that I might save it for a post on it's own. Also pretty sure my aunt is now on a watch-list.

Rob Zombie

Rob Zombie is another person I had no clue existed who completely blew my mind. Definitely one of the most energetic performances of the festival - and even as someone who had no idea who he was I was having the time of my life.

Cool security guards

Okay, so I guess this one isn't going to be something everyone gets to experience, but one of the things that we got were pretty cool security guards. So I got my free ticket because I was working on a stall; next to us was the ATM stall, so they obviously had round-the-clock security guards and they were all really nice.

So that was my experience and Download 2017! It was a really great festival and - if you're into that kind of music - I would strongly recommend you go next year. Also, I think this was a time-appropriate post as guess where I'm off to Spain for Fib festival tomorrow morning!

Peace,

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