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Leeds Festival: Day 1

Story location: Home / Blog / music /
26/Aug/2005

In the arena, the Nokia Tent was giving away free prints from phones. All you needed to do was have a bluetooth enabled phone and send a photo to one of the printers in their tent. We went along and got a few photos of our hamsters printed.

The first band we saw was NOFX. I don't know many of their songs but Emma has been a fan of theirs for many years. They seemed quite good live but the highlight had to be the middle aged bloke in front of us, who kept dancing. He had a mowhawk haircut but a bald patch in the middle ruined the effect but added to the comedy. It was while watching NOFX that we met up with Alan and Gill (friends of mine from Aberystwyth).

We stayed to watch Iggy Pop, then went back to our tent for some food before returning to the arena for Marylin Manson, who was surprisingly good. Next, there were two headline acts on at the same time: Iron Maiden on the main stage and Echo and the Bunnymen on the Carling Stage. With hindsight, it was a fairly obvious decision. I had to watch Iron Maiden. I'd been a fan for many years and seemed more likely to put on an extravagant show.

They did not disappoint. All the songs were from their first 4 albums. I'd forgotten quite how many good songs they had recorded so early in their career. Too numerous to list them all but there were the 'obvious' ones such as Number of the Beast (complete with beast with flashing red eyes rising up from the stage) and The Phantom of the Opera (I'd forgotten how good the guitar intro was to that song). Part way through the act, someone came through the crowd and released a load of inflatable 'Aftershock' goodies - huge beach balls and inflatable sheep! Emma managed to grab one of the sheep and kept it safe til we got back to our tent.

We ended the evening with a pint of the hot spiced cider from the Cider Tent. This is like a mulled cider drink and is really tasty.