The best day of 2001! (Ozzfest 2001)

Member Name: strange_child

Product:	Ozzfest 2001
Date:	01/05/02 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: amazing bands!, it didn't rain!, the village of the damned

Disadvantages: price of food, i didn't know all the bands

Ozzfest 2001. Milton Keynes bowl. Just 10 minutes from my home, who would have thought that the most perfect lineup would come to the most perfect place for me? But it did!

This was my first Ozzfest, and even though I wasn’t a fan of most of the bands that were performing, I was determined to enjoy myself and get the most out of the day. The place isn’t too big that you can lose your way – it’s just a little bowl, but judging from my experience from Big Day Out in 1999, keep tabs on your friends or you’ll probably lose them! As soon as we got there we went to sit on the hill overlooking the stage and wait for our friends before the first band came on.

The Union Underground
The first band on, and as I’d only heard one song that I didn’t really like by them, I wasn’t too interested. However I’m kicking myself now because I have a copy of their album which I absolutely love…oh I’m useless!

Raging Speedhorn
They were the first band to appear on the main stage, and amazingly ferocious and furious. I had a good time jumping around to their set – I’m not a fan, but the crowd was just small enough that you wouldn’t get trampled on, and if you wanted to, you could push to the front! Good performance!

Apartment 26
I didn’t watch this one, I was spending my time trying to cool down in the rising temperatures! But from what I remember, the singer is the son of one of Black Sabbath and is no doubt the reason that they got the gig!

(Hed)pe
Unfortunately, this was the point at which all my friends seemed to disappear, so we spent about half an hour just trying to find another person to accompany my and my mate Duncan. We were listening to them all the time, and I didn’t immediately like them. I have their latest album now, and it’s really good, sort of hip hop mixed to just the right degree with metal!

Pure Rubb
ish
All my friends were just sitting there in during this band going ‘yeah they really are pure rubbish’, and ‘sooo crap!’ all the time, but I actually thought that they were quite good. They seemed to be a kind of garagy punky rock maybe a bit like the Backyard Babies, but anyway, they were good watched from afar.

Soulfly
Soulfly, well especially Max Cavalera look absolutely amazing. He wears totally scruffy clothes, and has the maddest dreads, but he can get away with it! Again I hadn’t heard much of Soulfly before I saw them, but they were amazing, sort of metal mixed with tribal rhythms but not too experimental to be boring. And also Corey Taylor (Slipknot vocalist) came and joined it with a rendition of Jump da fuck up.

Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society
I can’t remember this, I don’t know what I was doing, but I certainly wasn’t watching them. I have heard a few songs since, and I liked what I heard, but they just didn’t catch my imagination that day.

Papa Roach
Ah, I know what I was doing, I was getting as good position for Papa Roach, in between the kiddies on their daddies back. The crowd was almost exclusively young – or young children accompanied by parents, and as the band started up with their angsty nu-metal I realised that I was probably the only person in the crowd who didn’t know the words! This was the first big name band to come on, and they did put in a good performance, but after half an hour or so they just got too much and my attention wandered…

Mudvayne
Now, I really cannot stand Mudvayne’s music. They’re like Slipknot, but worse, I should know, I have their latest album at home and I just can’t listen to it. However, they did put in a very good performance, and their funny painted faces was a welcome break after the serious Papa Roach, and I got some really good photos. My friend Jenny managed
to meet them in the autograph tent, and one of them (can’t remember who, they have stupid names hehe) signed her Hare Krishna bible! Result!

Tool
I love A Perfect Circle, and now due to this performance I also love Tool! They were mesmerising, from the moment Maynard James Keenan stripped to his combat boots and boxers right the way to the end. They had an amazing video which reflected the intensity of their music and just did it for me! I’m now a really big fan. Then came the bottle fight, which was really funny, I have some kewl pictures from it, just people throwing their bottles around in between sets!

Amen
This was the first band that I had really really wanted to see. The front man, Casey Chaos is really charismatic, and it was so exciting just seeing him walk out onto the stage. Oh and my brother somehow got a souvenir from him, I can’t remember what, a drink or something. They went through a lot of the songs that I have spent ages listening to on ‘We have come for your parents’ and others that I didn’t know. Very well worth seeing them.

Slipknot
Again, I don’t really like Slipknot, I find them a bit boring, but I do love ‘Wait and bleed’ (it’s so catchy!!). Like Mudvayne, It was mainly image, but it was kind of exciting watching them emerge. The highlight was defiantly seeing the drummer (or one of them, I can’t remember) crowd diving from the ‘crowd surfers will be ejected’ signs! Definatly an interesting experience.

Disturbed
Because I hardly new anything about them, I took this opportunity to go shopping. Surprisingly, the prices of the clothes were quite god, and I bought a t-shirt saying ‘Yes I’m weird because only I can hear the little voices’ and a turquoise net top. I did hear some of their music in the background, which then was passable, but I really like them now.

Black Sabbath
And now ju
st what everyone had been waiting for! I knew a few Sabbath songs but not enough to be able to sing along to! They were just as good as everyone expected – it was almost as though we were back in the 70s, watching them in their era, it was so exciting to think that one of the biggest bands in the world were only a few feet away from us! Crowd pleasers that I noted were Paranoid, and of course, Iron Man, with almost everyone singing or humming along to, creating the most amazing atmosphere!

So that’s my experience on the Ozzfest. Even though I hadn’t heard most of the bands that played, a year on, and I own an album, or at least some music, of almost all of them, so it was a great thing to expose me to more music! However, bad things there were the price to the food. It’s too much effort, and weighs too much to bring your own packed lunch, so you have to buy something most of the time. But on a hot summer day, 2 quid for a bottle of water is not funny. I thought that it was quite good about the crowd surfers being banned, because much as I love surfing in smaller venues, it would create too many problems at a big festival.

My advice to new festival goers this year would be – take all of your mates phone numbers, just in case you get split up, it’s easier than you think to get lost. Also, take lots of liquid, and several layers of clothes because we all know how changeable the English summer time is! Another thing – pack light – my first festival, my mum was loading all this food onto me, and I could hardly move once I had my bag on my shoulder!

Well and now here we are – under a month until the next Ozzfest! This time I have prepared musically to get the most out of it – I have albums of all of the main acts, and I’m making sure that I know a few songs of the other bands. This year promises to be even better than the last, with System of a Down, Tool, Cradle of Filth, Lostpro
hets and others! It’s a pity that it’s just Ozzy rather than the Sabbath this year though.

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