Queen Nothing

Apologies for the delay, but I dedicated a fair bit of time to responding to a critique of my Bullet For My Valentine article from March last year by someone who missed the point and wanted us to all hold hands and drift off into the coma of mediocrity…
It took two comments to contain my response.

Anyway, The Queen is dead, long live Metallica.

That is essentially the message sent out by the British rock festival going set this summer. Queen, the Saturday night headline act announced on it's website that, with regret, Sonisphere UK 2012 had been cancelled.
The fact that the announcement has since disappeared means nothing, the damage one feels, has been done - especially as it was blasted all over Radio One the next morning.
Last month the internet whispers that had been rumbling suddenly exploded into force, suggesting there would be an announcement to the fact.

Whilst I thought that this years Sonisphere was largely awful and have spent the month in relative poverty having forked out an arm, a leg and promised first born children to the expensive hiking weekend that is Download, it is still a blow for the UK festival scene to lose what has genuinely been welcome competition to Live Nation's annual band ransom.

Download started in 2003, rebooting the old Monsters Of Rock festival into a slick 3 day summer jaunt that allowed interactivity, multiple stages and a chance to grab some of that Reading festival type camping experience for fans of harder edged music.
Sure Monsters Of Rock used to have camping, but it was all the type of thing with Pig's heads, compulsory beer drinking, park anywhere, please yourself, no health and safety officials in sight... you know, fun.
This at least would yank Neanderthal metal fans into a slicker, more savvy, technologically inclined era. And there would be showers too so you wouldn't be a filthy greebo all weekend. Unless you wanted to.
All good (clean) santised fun.

To be honest it wasn't bad actually, weekend ticket, plus camping and car park came to around £100, Maiden headlined the Saturday, Metallica played a secret show on the Sunday and Audioslave closed out the weekend having had Limp Wristed pull out in the weeks running up to it.
Having made such a success of it Download announced it had a five year plan to become the biggest rock festival in Europe and set about expanding and adding twists.
Like all things the beauty of that first year was lost a little along the way. The charm of being on the old MoR stomping ground, nestled within the track of the hallowed Donington race track eventually had to be moved due to size restrictions, the cash bars disappeared to be replaced by a godawful voucher system and then of course there was the price.
This year my Download ticket (plus early bird entry, plus car parking, plus booking fee, plus random shirt from back fee and postage) came to a wopping £218.95. That's more than doubled in ten festivals.
Given that wages haven't and we are currently in the middle of a global recession, Live Nation are still not afraid to bend you over without any lube.



Conversely the guy who pioneered Download was sacked after 2005 as the festival started to turn the screws on the fans, get bigger, moving the site and for some reason decide that every element of the place needed to be a fourty-five minute walk from everything.
Car park to campsite - 45 mins.
Campsite to village - 45 mins.
Village to arena - 45 mins
(based on drunk 2010 figures)
Last time out it was quicker to exit the arena via the carp park to get back to the campsite.

Anyway so having been unceremoniously removed from Live Nation's payroll the guy, let's call him Stuart cos that's his name, who pioneered the resurgent Download along side Andy Copping thought he would start his own venture and sure enough Kilimanjaro was born.
2009 saw the sleek Sonisphere festival announced featuring the incredible line up of Metallica, Linkin Park, Machine Head, Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction, Lamb Of God, Heaven & Hell, Alice In Chains, Anthrax (with John Bush) and a whole load of other bands...
To be honest if it wasn't for Faith No More and a few others Download couldn't hold a candle to it.

The next year I went to both (a tres expensive summer...) and the comparison was huge.
Not only were the tickets affordable, but the site and numbers were smaller, there were cash bars (so you don't get stuck with £13.75 worth of unusable card at the end of the festival like my good self...) and you could leave the campsite and be at the main stage in less than a year.
And Maiden headlined.
Also it was staggered so you could see all the bands on the main two stages - a novelty compared to Download with it's millions of line up clashes.
In short Sonisphere 2010 was probably the best festival experience (for bands and facilities) since I used to go to Reading or the very first Downloads, not to mention that the staff didn't treat you like a cunt despite the hefty price you paid to be there.
I was actually moved enough to write a letter of thanks.
I shit you not.

Last year I opted out of the whole thing due to investing in bricks and mortar, but another strong line up between both - Download had 30 bands I wanted to see, Sonisphere 23... something like that. The Voice of Doom, my companion from 2010 went and said it was exactly the same. Same, friendly, reasonably priced, quality weekend and was pining his hopes that Machine Head would headline so we could all go back this year.

Last year whilst performing a post-mortem on a car crash I expressed how underwhelmed I was by Download
As time has worn on the Midlands festival has strengthened sufficiently that I have bought my ticket and Machine Head are on the bill.
The fact they are under The Prodigy and contractually positioned Chase & Status is an issue that I won't start ranting about here.
Sonisphere didn't make an announcement until February and finally proclaimed Kiss, Faith No More and Queen featuring Adam Lambert as headliners.
If I thought Download was uninspiring then this was completely disinteresting.



Faith No More I love, but they have been working the nostalgia circuit since reforming, with no intention of doing anything new and deep down you know they hate each other, besides much as the first return from absence was welcome, now this slick cash grab on the lucrative festival scene is a kin to watching the Star Wars re-edits with your young cousin... you feel you should keep quiet so they can enjoy the unique experience, but the grinding erosion and sullying of the things you loved as a youngster makes the thought of them liking this... facsimile of a band that you realise you have bitten half through your tongue so now you are bloodied, angry and in pain.

Kiss have never been embraced here by us cynical Brits, unlike our cousins from over the pond who go giddy for four dudes in make up playing average rock and roll. Having sort of seen them in 2008 I thought they'd died in an explosion, but it turns out that was just the climatic pyro.

And as for Queen being fronted by the runner up of a karaoke competition... well, in the words of Bunk from The Wire, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
Now I don't like Queen particularly due to being force fed them as a child, but even I have to feel for fans of the band, for fans of music.
Who the fuck is Adam Lambert to be fronting Queen?
I'd have stayed away on principle.
Having logged on this morning and seen Queen announce four dates across the UK including one in July in London to make it up to the five people who bought Sonisphere tickets to see the Mercury-less May and Rogers flog the legacy in the way that they claimed alllllll the way in the early nineties they would never do.
My betting is that these shows will sell out, proving that this was a horrendous decision by Kilamanjaro to book them as clearly they are a band for people who are happy for a bit of souless entertainment rather than your average festival going rock fan.
I mean the Queen musical written by Ben Elton probably (like Ben Elton himself) sells out on a fairly regular basis... but that doesn't mean your die hard festival going metal/rock fan is going to accept bands of this nature clogging up the bill.

What it does highlight is the same drum I have been banging for a while.
Headliners.
With Maiden restricting their appearances to more strategic opportunities to maximise their appeal I genuinely think Sonisphere struggled to get a big name draw this year.
With Download popping out of the blocks with a sackful of cash and a setlist Metallica committed to Donington and fair enough - they haven't played their since 2006 when they did all of Master Of Puppets *grinds teeth at absence due to being on the honeymoon of a short lived marriage*.
But they have been back to the UK approximately a million times since then doing their own festival show at Wembly, at least two legs of the Death Cliptatsic tour Sonisphere, Reading, Sonisphere again and now back to Download.
Even my bosses daughter who is a child said to me the other day it would be nice to go to a festival and NOT have Metallica headline.
So who else is there?
I could use this opportunity to bemoan Machine Head's lack of opportunity, but instead point out that the downturn in the nineties and subsequent splits of bands like FNM, Soundgarden, Rage, Stone Temple Pilots, the death of Layne Stayley even the suicide of Cobain seems to have derailed an entire generation of bands.
Sure they are back now and capable of headlining, but it feels a little forced.
Couple that with Korn's pitiful output, the demise of Pantera, the directionless joke that Linkin Park have become, Sepultura and Max splitting and the crumbling of the recording industry as a money making business and there is a huge hole where bands making the stratospheric leap to global headliner should be.
That and as I pointed out to my critical friend some of them just aren't that good.

As we know, metal will survive but the question is will Sonisphere?
As the mad scramble for paying gigs begins from bands who have already booked flights and itineraries over here (Skindred confirmed for Download last week) you have to wonder how many will look to booking a festival that has struggled quite so soon after it's inception and possibly left many out of pocket and a hole in their plans.

It would personally be a sad day to lose Sonisphere as it is infinitely the better festival, with the right ethos, not mention it's existence will force Live Nation to stay competitive, but for fucks sake Kilimanjaro remember who your fucking audience are and book better bands.

On a side note I have actually been to two great gigs on the relative doorstep of Bristol.
Over the Bank Holiday weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Slabdragger, Dopefight, Grifter, Church Of Misery and Orange Goblin in my old stompin ground of the Fleece and last week took in the Jagermiester Tour at the O2 Arena featuring Turbowolf, Black Spiders, Therapy? and Skindred which was fucking excellent and at £5 the bargain of the year.