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home » festivals » Download » Download Festival 2003
Download Festival 2003OVERVIEWWednesday 4th June 2003 Let me take you back to last year's Ozzfest. If you that weren't there last year, I'll try to explain what it was like. It was an event with outstanding groups - all were worthy of playing. Sadly, Ozzfest was plagued by numerous problems - now we at eFestivals are not trying to be disrespectful to any of the bands that played last year, the problems were to do with the organisation of the whole event - which was admitted by Ozzie afterwards. Firstly, some bright spark decided to create a barrier to segregate the front audience from the rest of the crowd. We support good crowd safety, however, the barrier (which was supposed to prevent crowd crushing) at last year's Ozzfest created a huge void of emptiness in the audience which killed the atmosphere. Secondly, the main stage and second stage had been positioned miles away from each other, which caused huge crushes in the crowd when people were trying to move from stage to stage. This wasn`t helped by the fact that the stage times were set in such away that there would be crowd crushing throughout the entire day! Thirdly, the second stage could only have a small capacity and once that capacity was reached the security just kept everyone away... which was a real pain when the heavens opened up. So a year later, promoters Clear Channel decide they will hold a festival at Donington called Download. They claimed this time it would eradicate all the problems that plagued the Ozzfest. So the question is: Did they succeed? - Hell yes!!!  The first thing that was impossible to ignore was the blazing sun, you could feel your skin melting whilst queuing for the campsite, which I have to say was one hell of a walk, most people put campsites near to the car park. Which maybe the promoters could work on for next year, because apart from that this event is certainly the best Donington event that has took place in years. The weather was great, so what about the line-up? Definitely a strong one! With artists such as:- Audioslave, Marilyn Manson, InMe, Zwan, and of course the mighty Iron Maiden, it was easy to see that the promoters were definitely trying to keep their promise of creating a festival which eradicated all problems of the previous year.  The stages were situated just enough distance away from each other, so that people did not become exhausted whilst walking from the main stage to the Scuzz stage. The stage times were set so that you could catch most bands if you so desired, although the times were all thrown off schedule because of a surprise appearance by a certain band on Sunday afternoon. There were barriers at the front of the audience but these had been set out not to separate the front part of the crowd from the rest of the field but rather divide the people on the left side from the people on the right side.  This event had everything you could possibly wish for: fair rides, wrestling, plenty of toilets and stalls, easy access to every where on the field, nice big screens so that the people right at the back could still catch the action. And there was even a surprise set by Metallica (who are no strangers to Donington), even their lead singer made fun of the situation by saying "we don't want to be presumptuous, I'm James, that's Lars, Kirk and Rob Trujillo, and we are Metallica". James also mentioned that they were the "UK's best kept secret".  For the fortunate few that got to see Metallica play the Scuzz stage, it will be something that will never be forgotten. This event was amazing, and I sincerely hope they hold it again next year, it would be nice if they can sort out the campsite parking out, as it quite literally killed us walking from our car to the campsite. Apart from that, this was one hell of an event!!!!! Bring on Download 2004!!!! review by Luke Seagrave photos by Luke Seagrave / Phil Bull 
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