Today is the Download Festival at Donington Park, not far from Nottingham. My buddy Dave Clayton is coming to the show today and bringing me some way cool CD's and DVD's he's made for me. Dave's a great friend I've known for some 12 years now – you'll remember he's the guy that came to hang out at the Brixton show in London.
I wish I had a day off here. I'd love to go hang out at Dave's house and veg out watching music videos. He's got the most awesome collection of stuff you could ever imagine. And the best fish & chips shop I've ever gotten food from is just around the corner from him.
Also, not far away in the Nottingham City Centre, is Nottingham Castle. Under the castle is the oldest continually operating pub in the world, "Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem." Been there a few times with Dave. Great pub. Check it out HERE.
Go there next time you're in Nottingham, if you can.
We had a helluva journey getting here. Left Scheessel around 3am last night, drove to Calais, France for the ferry to the UK. Had to go through UK customs on the French side. No problems. But as we approach the ferry lanes, we're flagged down by 4 French policepersons (3 dudes and a chick). It's like they just magically appeared to stop US. Produce passports (AGAIN!). Damn, now it's everyone OFF the bus. They want to search all the luggage bays, and then the interior of the bus as well. Guitar tech Za has some sort of heart pills with him, and their presence sends the Froggies into "bad cop" overdrive. The drug dog appears and spends 20 minutes in the bus. We consider running for it, but don't think any of us can swim the 22 miles across the English Channel.
Za's briefcase gets hauled off the bus by the ladycop. Once it's confirmed to be his, he's done for. Out come his other bags, and off he goes to a building across the street. Later, we find out they kept asking him about cannabis use, and were using all the usual intimidation tactics – "If you tell the truth now, things will go much easier for you"… blah, blah, blah.
The poor guy is put in a small room and told to strip. He's buck-naked in front of the 4 cops. Yep, including ladycop. He warned 'em that when he stripped, the smell could get funky. Remember, it's now Sunday and none of us has had a shower since Thursday morning. He told me that when he took off his boxer's HE nearly gagged. All 4 Froggies put on rubber gloves to search his clothing, but he got lucky and they didn't practice amateur proctology on him. Of course they found absolutely nothing, because he'd tossed his chunk of hash (living in his crotch) into the bushes by the bus when they weren't looking.
45 minutes after being stopped, he's back and we're on our way onto the ferry.
Arrive at Donington around 5:30. System's on at 8:45, so there's lots of work for the crew to do to get ready for our set. Bands have been playing all day, and I've got lots of band friends and crew friends here. Get quality hang time with the Slipknot boys and the Mudvayne gang. Used to work for both bands. Slipknot was the first band I ever did tour accounting for, so I owe 'em for giving me a shot.
Takes me 20 minutes to do my show settlement, so I’m done for the day.
Dave Clayton shows up and hangs out with me for a couple of hours, Like me, he doesn't give a crap to see the show. Says he only came to give me the CD's and DVD's anyway. We go to the VIP tent to watch a couple of songs on the video monitor. It's the best I can be motivated to do, as the stage is about a half-mile from my office. I wanted to get a couple of photos from the stage of the crowd - 45,000 strong - but it's just not to be.
Horrible storm blows in, just like when we were here in 2002. Rains like hell, then clears out. The temp drops bigtime.
It's decided that we're bussing to Manchester at 3am. I've got to stay up to wake up the bus drivers, finally getting to my bunk around 4:30am. Won't be sleeping long.
Follow the Bobzilla's Photos link at the right to see photos of my travels.
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