Dark Lörd of Barnet: 1/8/2009 Sonisphere

Subject	Sonisphere - Part 1
PostedDate	8/1/2009
	When the Sonisphere festival was first announced the lineup didn't look that great so I wasn't really interested - especially at nearly £200 a ticket! It seemed very poor value for money compared to the also very expensive Download. However, as more and more bands were added to the bill over the next few months it started to look really good - especially when Thin Lizzy were (originally) on the bill! However, with my current very uncertain financial position there was no way I could afford it. Probably because it's the first year of this new festival, there seemed to be a lot of tickets getting given away in competitions, etc. Unfortunately my efforts to win a ticket came to naught. I discovered that virtually everyone I knew who was going had got free tickets from one source or another. I was lucky enough to join their ranks when the lovely Helen offered me one of the spare tickets she had won. Luckily for me, Knebworth is only a few miles up the A1 so I got there in no time. However, on arrival at the site what was looking like a remarkably cheap festival weekend suddenly wasn't so cheap - I got stung for £20 just to park my car in a field! I thought this was fucking outrageous and a totally unjustified rip-off. I told the girl selling the parking passes that for that price I expected to have a security guard standing by my car 24 hours a day! To add insult to injury, where I had to leave my car was a bloody long way from the main festival area. I left all my camping gear, etc in the car and set off to hook up with Helen and the others and find out where everybody was camped - I didn't want to be carrying a ton of gear around with me while trying to see the first few bands. I met Helen at the gate with my ticket, got into the main site and had a general recce of the area. I met up with Jason & Trudi, Little Hell and Helen-T again before heading off to the campsite to find a suitable place to pitch my tent - and establishing what proved to be a repeating routine for the rest of the weekend of meeting up with my friends and then getting separated for long periods of time. By the time I had established a suitable spot to base myself for the weekend it was time to rush back to see Airbourne. This Aussie crew were one of the acts I had been particularly looking forward to seeing as their Astoria show last year was probably the best gig I went to in 2008. Airbourne certainly didn't disappoint at Sonisphere! They are quite simply one of the most exciting live bands I've ever seen. I never saw AC/DC in their early days, but I imagine the vibe must have been very similar to that generated by Airbourne. There are no fancy stage sets or anything with this lot - they don't need it. They just explode onto the stage and tear it up! I don't think I've ever seen a band with so much energy on stage - and it doesn't let up all the way through their set, with frontman Joel tearing around non stop and cracking open cans of beer on his head before hurling them into the crowd. The band haven't got far into the show before the heavens opened, but if anything this only made Airbourne crank up the intensity! Then Joel goes and does the craziest thing I've ever seen at a gig - he starts climbing up one of the rigs that is supporting a load of P.A. speakers - with his guitar still strapped on! It's still raining, and the painted tubular framework of the P.A. rig must have been really wet and slippery. Our hero climbs as high as he can get, and then lets rip with a guitar solo while below a roadie stands with arms outstretched ready to catch and an "Oh shit!" look on his face. If he had actually tried to catch Joel or the guitar falling from that height either would probably have killed him! Some rock stars talk about being 'dangerous' or putting their lives on the line, but this guy is doing it for real right in front of our eyes - really putting his life on the line for rock 'n' roll. At one point he is dangling from the top of the slippery wet metalwork of the P.A. rig by one hand! I've never seen anything like it, and the whole crowd seem to be hold their breath - one slip would almost certainly have cost him his life. Even without all this drama up in the air, this was easily the most exciting set of the weekend as far as I'm concerned - even the festivals biggest guns couldn't match it! Drying off a bit after the downpour during Airbourne's set, there is only a few minutes to head over to the other main stage to catch one of the other bands I'd been particularly looking forward to seeing. Heaven & Hell are effectively the Dio fronted lineup of Black Sabbath that recorded the 'Heaven & Hell' abum back in the day. Now Ozzy and Iommi (or their managers?) seem to have fallen out again and the Ozzy fronted reformed original Sabbath appears to be over this is the nearest you are likely to get to seeing 'Black Sabbath'. That said, it's a bloody good lineup and they have recently released a very good album in 'The Devil You Know'. The weather is deteriorating noticeably and things are starting to get dark and stormy - which is kind of appropriate for this band. This is a big production, featuring easily the biggest and most expensive looking stage set I see all weekend - Metallica's looks very plain in comparison. However, it's highly dramatic and certainly enhances the dark and moody vibe the band's music creates. The band emerge onto the stage to a thundrous cheer and launch into a set featuring a mixture of material from the current album and Dio era Sabbath. They don't even attempt to match the energy of the band much of the crowd was watching previously, but then Airbourne are less than half their age so you can hardly expect them to. However, Heaven & Hell are very good! I saw the original Black Sabbath lineup play at Download four years ago but was disappointed by what I thought was a dull and plodding run through their classics - this is a far better performance from a band who still seem to have a lot to give. To me the Sabbath lineup I saw at Download seemed like they were just just 'going through the motions', but Heaven & Hell seem far more vital and look like they are genuinely enjoying themselves. Their set is certainly one of the highlights of the weekend for me in spite of another heavy downpour during their set. By the time Heaven & Hell finish there isn't much daylight left. I've found what looks like a suitable spot to throw my tent down. There's one problem - the tent and all my camping gear is still in my car. My car is a mile and a half away. So after a three mile round trip - half of which has me weighed down by tent, other camping gear, and my food and drink supplies for the weekend I find myself putting my tent up as it gets dark. This is not particularly helped by the fact that I haven't actually seen my tent for four years and can't even remember what it looks like or how to set it up. However, I manage to erect it surprisingly quickly. It's only when I've thrown all my kit inside that I realise my sleeping bag is still in the car! Another three mile round trip later (this time across the mostly unlit fields in pitch darkness while Linkin Park provide the distant soundtrack) and I finally get to relax in my tent for a while and crack open a well earned can or two of K before heading into a rather larger tent to catch the last couple of bands of the day. Over in the 'Bohemia' tent there is a little bit of history being made - Thunder playing their last ever(?) show. The tent is absolutely rammed for the occasion. The band turn in what is effectively a 'Greatest Hits' set - it had to be really. They do throw in some more recent tunes as well. The band play excellently as ever and Danny Bowes is on good form, but somehow it all seems a bit of an anti-climax to me. Maybe a lot of other people in the tent are thinking the same as me? - give it five or ten years and when they are all skint and some promoter makes them a good enough offer they'll be back like nearly every other band... The last act of the night is a band who have come back after splitting up, and had various lineup changes since reforming. However, the Wildhearts seem to be building in strength and have a new found optimism - and a forthcoming new album. This being the Wildhearts, things don't run smoothly of course - but these days it tends to be due to technical problems rather than the band themselves. Ginger and CJ are trying out a new brand of amplifiers - the problem being that the crew have difficulty getting the bloody things to actually work! Probably not the best time to try out new gear? One of the reasons a lot of bands stick to Marshall amps instead of fancy new makes is that they tend to actually work! The problems with the shiny new stacks are eventually resolved and McGinger and the lads launch into a storming set. It consists mostly of the old classics - like Thunder before them playing a 'Greatest Hits' style set so even the audience members who don't know the band will hopefully recognise a few tunes. We are only treated to one taster from the forthcoming album 'Chutzpah!' - a song called 'The Jackson Whites'. It sounds rather good - especially considering we are hearing it for the first time. In spite of the technical problems the band really are on fire - and Ginger in particular looks like he's enjoying himself more on stage than he has in years! With a hint of strong new material on the forthcoming album and great live performances like this the future is looking unusually bright for the Wildhearts. After spending most of the day on my feet, plus a total of seven and a half miles walking to and from my car across the fields on top of all the general walking around the site I am quite glad to retire and crack open another couple of cans of K before crashing. On the morrow I am hoping to catch Buckcherry, Killing Joke, Paradise Lost, Saxon, Feeder, Alice In Chains, Lauren Harris, The Crave, Hundred Reasons, Heavens Basement, and Metallica - but will I actually manage to see all of them.......?