Julio Santos

12 hours of a mix of hot sun, chilly wind, expensive beer, flying seat cushions, screaming teens and crappy performances. Sounds like hell right? Well, in fact it was fun. I don’t know if I would do it again tomorrow or even next month, but I would do it again…sometime. Spending the day outdoors with family and friends, is so good even crappy performances can’t ruin it.

But to the actual festival: I had never heard of the Download Festival and was pretty excited to see Modest Mouse live. Morgane was going for Modest Mouse and The Killers, Fabienne had no agenda.

We know how cold Shoreline can get when the sun sets, and how much of a rip-off the food is, so we were ready: blankets, lawn chairs, baguettes, cheese, water even magazines. After all it’s going to be a 12-hour marathon!

There were 2 stages, one going from noon to 5-ish, the other going from 4-ish to midnight. We got there a little bit late, around 1, and Bobby and his family were already there. They had just watched Every Move a Picture and the verdict was “pretty good”. I had never heard of them (in fact, from the whole thing, I only knew Modest Mouse and The Killers) so it’s good to know that the opening bands are good, that’s usually a good sign. As it turned out, this sign was the exception to confirm the rule.

I missed the next two bands, The Lovemakers and Ambulance Ltd and don’t think any of us saw them. No idea if they are any good, what they sound like, what type of music they play, nothing. I did see the next one however, Mindless Self Indulgence and it was pretty damn good. In fact, I’m sad to say that it was the best performance of the whole show. MSI is a cross between Marilyn Manson, Faith No More and Prodigy (at least that’s what they sounded like, to me), with a pretty good energy on stage. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear more about them in the near future.

I missed the last band on the “other” stage, HIM. I decided to skip them, mostly because Morgane knew the band and she said “they’re crap”, that’s good enough for me. Bobby went and his verdict was…”crap”. Ha-ha-ha.

While Bobby and his gang were watching HIM on the other stage, I was busy watching British Sea Power on the main one. “Boring” describes it well. Maybe because we had just watched MSI. Nah, they really were booooring, performance and music, boring.

Then it’s up to Arcade Fire. Again, never heard of them, but at this point I’m having a bad feeling. Most bands are dull and I’m afraid this is going to be another one. Sure enough, they are. The surprising thing though, is that they had a huge audience cheering and screaming! Not only I had never heard of them but apparently I was the only one, and even more strange, people, especially young people, liked them!! What the effe!? Since when are kids supposed to like boring music!? Anyway, the band has 9 or 10 people on stage, and they like to play all the instruments you can think of.

Luckily they were followed by the very funny and energetic The Extra Action Marching Band. So now I’m up to two good performances.

Then, between the marching band and what I was there for, Modest Mouse, there was some DJ stuff going on. It was really just a super long live ad for the organizers. Their DJ’ing sucked, they just played a couple of tunes while the giant screens show you what to buy next. Fortunately they were booed off the stage…good.

Ah, Modest Mouse, finally. Well, sad to say that THEY SUCKED!! WTF!? Sound was bad. The singer seemed bored out of his mind. No solos. No talking to the audience. Nothing. Just show up, play a few songs, get out. Meh.

There was no encore…thank goodness.

And finally the main attraction, The Killers. They were more interacting, more motivated, but frankly, they have one album out, what are they going to play for 90 minutes or so? Yeah, that’s right, the entire album. We left while people were calling for an encore but not before participating in the “throwing of the cushions” action. There were dozens and dozens of cushions flying at one point. That was in fact a lot of fun. Third good performance of the day!! Too bad it wasn’t a scheduled event.

Then we left (we didn’t like their performance that much, and we were getting tired, of them and also physically). While walking back to the car, we heard the band playing some David Bowie song. Good for them.

So, that was our Saturday. Lessons learned:

• Don’t go for a 12-hour festival when you only know 20% of the bands.
• Shoreline is cold in the evening and hot during the day, with no shade…bring a hat and lots of blankets.
• In fact, it doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to go back to Shoreline. It’s my 4th or 5th concert there, and it’s always bad. Even Pearl Jam and Metallica were so-so.
• Avoid festivals. 12 hours, even of good stuff, can be painful. Hate it to have my last festival a sucky one though.

Oh yeah, if you read this far, you deserve to see pictures and even a short movie.

Edit: Brad Kava from the local newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, wrote his review here.

Mindless Self Indulgence’s singer, named Urine, turned out to be a charmer, who could really sing.

…

And rock historians will want to note an important moment: two deejays doing mashups were booed off the stage, marking the day the music form which mixes two songs together jumped the shark … at least with a rock crowd.