• The Who
• The Zutons
• Newton Faulkner
• The Attika State
• Imperial Leisure
• Pepper
• Less Than Jake
• Random Hand x2
• Suburban Legends
• Reel Big Fish
• The Computers
• Mariachi El Bronx
• Polar Bear Club
• Enter Shikari x3
• Mad Caddies
• The Prodigy
• Rise Against
• Lethal Bizzle
• Frank Turner x2
• Bloc Party
• Lostprophets
• The Ghost of a Thousand
• Four Year Strong
• Anti Flag
• Alexisonfire
• Rolo Tomassi x2
• Cancer Bats
• Rock Sugar
• Deftones
• Rage Against the Machine
• The Skints
• Gogol Bordello
• Streetlight Manifesto
• Beardyman
• Queens of The Stone Age
• Frank Turner
• Serj Tankian
• Dizzee Rascal
• Arcade Fire
• Los Campesinos!
• Limp Bizkit
• Weezer
• Blink 182

holy shit fuck.

I was blind to the twist (I always am.)

and mind blown.

fuck shit holy.

wow.

   I’ll preface this with the fact that Rage Against the Machine are unquestionably my favourite band so this gig was always going to be momentous for me, and having watched masses of live videos on YouTube combined with the fact that I spent about £90 just for this hour and a half, I had built up huge expectations.

   My expectations were blown away.

   It began with an air raid siren that echoed across the festival grounds, a black flag with a red star slowly rose behind the stage and Rage Against the Machine took to the stage to tumultuous applause originating from a crowd who had been waiting for an hour for this moment. As soon as I heard the air raid siren blare out, the reality finally hit me that I was about to witness my musical heroes dish out a master class of live performance. They kicked things off with ‘Testify’, the opening track of ‘The Battle of Los Angeles’ and frankly, they couldn’t have done it any other way, the quivering intro of that song is perfect for getting people pumped for the storming riff that follows.

   Testify was followed by ‘Bombtrack’, the opening track from the band’s self titled debut and the intensity that the band provided was easily matched by the movement of the audience. At the front of the main stage, it was almost impossible to keep your feet on the ground for more than five seconds, as even if you didn’t want to jump, it was so jam packed that you were lifted off the ground by those crammed in next to you. While this provided to be an absolute tonne of fun for the first two songs, it lead to some problems during ‘People of the Sun’, when the band had to stop and ask the crowd to take ‘three steps back’ and ‘look after each other’ as people had been crushed against the front barrier and had to be stretchered away. Once this problem had been dealt with, the band joyfully leapt right back into their set list with a ferocious roar of ‘rewind’ from De la Rocha and an equally fierce cheer from the crowd.

   Since the band reformed in 2008, their tours have had no album related agenda, meaning that their set lists have, essentially been greatest hit collections, and the two years of touring have meant that they know what people want to hear, and they delivered a sublime collection of crowd pleasing tracks.

   The band’s stage presence was as strong as ever, with Zack de la Rocha taking to the stage like a musical dragon, spitting lyrics like fire and attacking the Israeli blockade with a ferocity that could only be matched by a mythical beast. Tom Morello’s genius was also clearly on display, with his trademark innovative solos producing immense responses from the crowd. It was clear to the 80,000 people present that this man is one of the world’s greatest guitarists. Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford always have been the unsung heroes of the band, forming a magnificent rhythm section that provided secure foundations for Morello and de la Rocha to build upon, and this gig was no different.

   Overall, Rage Against the Machine’s appearance at Download festival was undoubtedly the best gig of my life, if not the best hour and a half of my life. Highlights included the encore, which consisted of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Killing In the Name’. Another highlight was the surprise cover of ‘White Riot’ by The Clash. Outclassing ten out of ten live acts such as Enter Shikari and LostProphets as if they were school children, Rage Against the Machine put on an outstanding show that will resonate with those present for a long time to come.

Setlist:

• Testify
• Bombtrack
• People Of The Sun
• Know Your Enemy
• Bulls On Parade
• Township Rebellion
• White Riot (The Clash Cover)
• Bullet In The Head
• Calm Like A Bomb
• Guerilla Radio
• Sleep Now In The Fire
• Wake Up
• Freedom (Encore)
• Killing In The Name (Encore)

• The Who
• The Zutons
• Newton Faulkner
• The Attika State
• Imperial Leisure
• Pepper
• Less Than Jake
• Random Hand
• Suburban Legends
• Reel Big Fish
• The Computers
• Mariachi El Bronx
• Polar Bear Club
• Enter Shikari
• Mad Caddies
• The Prodigy
• Rise Against
• Lethal Bizzle
• Frank Turner
• Bloc Party
• Lostprophets
• The Ghost of a Thousand
• Four Year Strong
• Anti Flag
• Alexisonfire
• Rolo Tomassi
• Cancer Bats
• Rock Sugar
• Deftones
• Rage Against the Machine

   The Liberal Democrats have agreed to form a coalition with the Conservatives. Now, let us take a look at the name of the party: ‘Liberal’ ‘Democrats’. At this point, the ‘Democrat’ part, appears to have taken priority over the ‘Liberal’ part. The definition of a democrat is: ‘an advocate of democratic principles’. In the party’s choice to form a coalition with the Tories (far from just Clegg’s decision, 75% of the senior membership had to agree for this to happen) they are honouring the choice of the British public to award the Conservative party with the largest number of votes, and therefore, fulfilling their roles as democrats.

   Obviously, they’re putting this before their role as liberals, but if they had gone and formed a ‘progressive coalition’ with Labour and whoever else it may require, they would have found themselves in a fairly undemocratic position, forming a government between the parties that didn’t garner the largest number of votes.

   Overall, The Liberal Democrats have put themselves in a position where they have done the right thing in terms of democracy, but the wrong thing in terms of ideology. Which in my opinion, was the right thing to do, they put a stable government ahead of personal beliefs, which is fairly mature.

  Now it’s time to defend Nick Clegg, who seems to be getting attacked from all angles for making the deal, people are acting as if he’s just jumping into bed with the strongest party to gain power. During the election campaign he made it clear that the party position on a coalition was to join forces with the party that received the largest number of votes at the polls. The only thing the Lib Dems have done is make good on a commitment that they made during their campaign. If you have issues with the coalition now, you should have had issues with the position that they very clearly explained during the election campaign. 

   Clegg and his team have also done a fantastic job of restraining the Tories in some areas, and even getting Lib Dem policies into action. We’re guaranteed a referendum on AV (which might not be what they said they wanted, but it’s the same thing that Labour were offering.), the implementation of the £10,000 tax policy and a shift in Tory positioning on inheritance tax business. The Tories have had their wings clipped significantly by this coalition, meaning that this government might not end out as one created by the rich, for the rich.

“Journalism is the investigation and reporting of events, issues, and trends to a broad audience. Although there is much variation within journalism, the ideal is to inform the citizenry”

so I guess I need a broad audience to do this…

fuck.

But, in all seriousness, yesterday I met a man named Ben Hammersley who talked to me and a group of others about journalism and what it used to be, what it has become, and potentially, what it will be.

Ben Hammersley is what one might describe as a crazy person, he’s a fairly well known journalist who has laid claim to quite a few different jobs in the past few years, at the moment he’s working on the iPad version of Vogue magazine and in the past he has acted as a war correspondent for a variety of different news companies.

He’s also written books. Books that cover subjects that baffle most normal people.

He also coined the term ‘podcast’, which was something I thought he was bullshitting about until I did some background research when I returned home.

He’s also a photojournalist, taking pictures of the aforementioned wars he reported on and on top of this, he also takes pictures of ‘pretty girls’ in the fashion industry.

He was also enthralling, he presumably mastered the act of public speaking somewhere in his life time as the talk that he gave to us was wondrous, incredible and easily could have been made up. He gleefully told his enraptured audience about how he longed to be an astronaut when he was young and how to be an astronaut you have to be ‘a test pilot’ and ‘to be a test pilot you need to be a fighter pilot’. We learnt that Ben had the full intention of become all of these things that are required on the long road to space, but he was almost immediately shot down by the fact that he was too tall. 

 But, it was in his smaller, and much more personal workshop that he informed me the most, he made clear that the path to journalism was no longer plotted, a journalism degree might be helpful, but a blog is even better. From what he told us, it was abundantly clear that the way forward in journalism was just getting out there and writing.

Yesterday, a man told me to do journalism.

so I did.