By Jonny Bakes
Slam Dunk South had all the meanings of a fantastic day – fantastic bands, blazing sunshine and some really special anniversary sets to boot. Yet unfortunately the day was overshadowed by a generally poor experience had by all, but hopefully giving the opportunity to learn lessons for North the following day! Well, maybe not as my colleague Jase subsequently found out and has already noted in these very pages…
With a sell out capacity of roughly 30,000 people (which is about 150% of Bloodstock’s capacity) the organizers had their work cut out to accommodate the swarm of people that was double the number of previous years. Unfortunately, things did not run as smoothly as they had hoped with absolute carnage ensuing with facilities that did not seem suited to the sheer volume of people.
Let’s take a look at some of my experiences of the day before I talk about the great music that provided somewhat of a balance to the day…
- Queuing for over an hour for a vegan burger in the VIP area! I thought I might stand a better chance of getting a quick meal in VIP but I was mistaken. I ended up missing the entirety of Flogging Molly and almost missed a good chunk of Bowling for Soup as a result!
- Friends who spent a couple of hours queuing to get into the festival itself, many of whom missed early bands they wanted to see.
- Being penned in at Hatfield Park and refused exit towards the station with no reason given (although I suspect the station may have been full) despite not needing to go to the station as my accommodation was around the corner.
- Local taxi drivers refusing to use the pick up/drop off point due to the volume of traffic in the area.
- Bar staff who were inexperienced and struggled to fulfill simple orders. The amount of Jägerbombs I had instead of straight Jäger (there’s only so much Red Bull this old man can take) and the beers I had to return that were more head than beer. Normally I’m not one to turn down a decent head (ooh er missus), but this was ridiculous…
- £7 pints. I know we were in London, but that’s getting really silly now… when you’ve got a captive audience that could be seen as taking advantage (there may be good reason for it, but Bloodstock managed to cap at £5 a pint last year, Download however, did not…)
- Toilets that were in a pretty terrible state very quickly, we’re talking like 3am Download kind of level (that also weren’t cleaned before NOFX played the following day – no one needs to be confronted with a mountain of shit and bog roll at an event one hour after opening)
- Pretty naff sound quality at the Dickies Stage
- A huge bottleneck at the Kerrang stage by only allowing entrance through one side. When the sets are running back to back (with a stage at each end of the tent) there needs to be a better way to allow the changeover of people between bands. I missed the whole first song of Spanish Love Songs trying to battle through the crush!
- Queues for the few water points were seriously long which was not ideal considering how hot it was.
- The majority of the food vendors were located in two opposing rows, which made them easy to find but when the queues built up made it a nightmare to get through the area to visit other stages.
But there were some good bits too:
- A decent selection of food vendors catering to veggies/vegans.
- The VIP cocktail bar went down pretty well.
- Project D Doughnuts are always a welcome treat.
- The layout of stages was pretty good with them being laid out around the edge of the site.
- The VIP area offered some good seclusion from the madness and nice clean toilets.
But that’s enough about the state of the event itself, the festival has since offered it’s apologies to customers in a public statement (which essentially says “we were advised we had enough of everything but clearly it wasn’t enough”) and are welcoming feedback to enable them to improve for future events. Let’s move onto the bands…
Getting the day off to a rocking start on the Amazon Rock Scene Stage was VUKOVI who managed to get the early birds starting the first pit of the day for which Janine couldn’t resist getting down to the barrier to be close to the action. Rattling through some of my favourites in their short set, like ‘C.L.A.U.D.I.A’, ‘I EXIST’ and ‘LASSO’, I was having a fantastic start to the day. The set rounded off with the massive ‘La Di Da’ and a strong positive reaction from the crowd which made me wonder why they weren’t higher up on the bill. Although they have graduated up from the Key Club stage, I’m sure there were many who were gutted to miss this earlier set time!
Next up for me, after briefly catching Teenage Bottlerocket belt out ‘Bigger than Kiss’ on the Dickies Stage, was Spanish Love Songs over in the Kerrang! tent. These guys were one of the bands I was most excited about seeing as it would have been my first time and I was not disappointed! Not too long ago, vocalist Dylan couldn’t walk to the end of his block without being out of breath thanks to that bastard COVID but he’s made a fantastic recovery and managed to belt out every single song with that particular voice that makes him sound like he’s on the verge of a complete breakdown (despite looking dead cheerful in his Hawaiian shirt and bouncing about the stage). The fantastic album ‘Generation Loss’ featured heavily in the set list which was perfect for me as I got to hear all of my favourites; ‘Routine Pain’, ‘Self-Destruction (As A Sensible Career Choice)’ and most importantly ‘Generation Loss’. All of which formed the first three songs of the set! So I wasn’t too worried that I’d already decided to leave early to catch Zebrahead on the Dickies Stage.
Getting there at the end of the set meant that I got a triple header of ‘bangers with arguably their biggest songs saved for the end. The energetic delivery of ‘Rescue Me’ and ‘All My Friends Are Nobodies’ was enough to lift me from the harsh realism of SLS’ songs. With the added bonus of watching one of the guys surf across the entire crowd on an inflatable watermelon to get that extra bit of flair. Of course, no Zebrahead set would be complete without the anthem that is, well, ‘Anthem’
We stuck around for Millencolin who unfortunately started late due to technical difficulties, yet still finished on time so it was just a short one for us! Despite this, they packed punky energy into a handful of songs from decades past including ‘Bullion’ but it seemed like the whole crowd was waiting for ‘No Cigar’ which was naturally saved until the very end! When the first chords hit, the crowd went wild and belted out the whole thing, almost drowning out the band itself.
After that it was time for a blast from my own past back on the Amazon Rock Scene Stage – Floridian metallers Underoath. Now I’ll admit I was here entirely because of the ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’ album so I was hoping for a decent helping of the old shit. Despite that album being nearly 20 years old and the band clearly aged about the same, I was instantly impressed with how they still sound as good as the first time I spun that album! ‘It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door’ was seriously tight and when we finally got ‘A Boy Brushed Red Living in Black and White’ it was delivered with such emotion that it even managed to stir some emotions in me, which is no easy feat. Now, I know I said I was only in it for the old shit, but I have to admit that new single ‘Let Go’ was also a real belter, it’s got a heavier edge than the older stuff and I’m totally here for it!
I rounded out the day on the Dickies stage to catch three bands who were an integral part of my youth starting with, what was quite possibly the highlight of the day, Less Than Jake. When we were promised ‘Hello Rockview’ in full, that was exactly what we got, the whole album from cover to cover. Considering the album is 25 years old, the guys bounded around the stage as if it was still the 90s while they nailed every song with near album perfection! Knowing they had a whole album to cram in, they rattled off each song in pretty quick succession which kept the crowd hyped. Fortunately the album itself is so strong that the set didn’t tail off as soon as ‘All My Best Friends Are Metalheads’ dropped third in the set (which is arguably their biggest success in the ÜK). It was the most fun I had all day, with Bowling for Soup coming a close second (more on that later) so when they later announced a 2024 UK co-headline tour, I immediately set a reminder to pick up tickets when they go on sale on Friday! If the crowd weren’t already satisfied with ‘Hello Rockview’, including the moustache skit song at the end of ‘…Just Cheez’, the band even managed to squeeze in one extra song ‘Gainesville Rock City’ to end this outstanding set!
Bowling For Soup brought their trademark humour to their set which had me laughing just as much as it had me dancing but with only nine and a bit songs I was left hungry for more when it finished; in fact I audibly said “was that it?” when it finished! That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, as they had me so completely hooked from the moment they launched into ‘High School Never Ends’ that I completely lost track of the time. The surprise inclusion for me was ‘My Wena’ (which I believe the video was banned in the ÜK…) as a song that I had never expected to hear live but snuck in between classics like ‘The Bitch Song”, ‘1985’, ‘Girl All the Bad Guys Want’ – you know all the classics that make you feel like the awkward nerdy kid again… or is that just me?
‘Punk Rock 101’ was played with blistering speed so that, I assumed, the Texans could cram an extra song into the set, but no, instead it was to make some room for a musical interlude photo opportunity (which is essentially the band striking a bunch of poses to Rick Astley)! They may have arrived with a new bassist, but the jokes were the same as when I saw them back in 2007 so I guess you can say the banter never changes, just the names and faces…
But then it was time for the main event, the band that started it all for me, Californian punk royalty The Offspring. Dexter and Noodles knew exactly what the crowd had come for, we wanted the old shit, and that’s exactly what they delivered with a set heavily weighted towards ‘Smash’ and ‘Americana’ with only a couple of their other albums getting a song or two in the set, hell only ‘Want You Bad’ made the cut from ‘Conspiracy of One’!
The set kicked off with the band stating their intentions to ‘Come Out and Play’ and that’s exactly what they did as they rattled through some of my favourite songs of all time including ‘Staring at the Sun’ and ‘Genocide’ before we hit ‘Bad Habit’ which turned into the biggest tease of all time… you all know the bit we wanted to hear after the breakdown, well before we could get to it Noodles spent a good while dicking about on his guitar giving us licks from Sabbath, Maiden and GnR which meant the screams of “You stupid, dumb shit, god damn mother fucker” from the crowd were almost rabid!
As the band steam rolled through the rest of the set, leaving very little room for idle chat, we hit ‘Pretty Fly For A White Guy’ where a flappy-arm-tube-guy rendition of everyone’s favourite wannabe appeared on the stage. The crowd got so carried away with this one that they carried on without the band for a while! The regular set ended with none other than ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’ and the noise of the crowd almost drowned out the band with everyone belting out the choruses.
For the encore though, it had to be the song that inexplicably ended up being absolutely massive (and a platinum record!), ‘You’re Gonna Go Far Kid’. Now I thought the crowd was loud during Kids but this was something else, it’s a track that crosses the boundary between ageing Offspring fans (hello) and the younger fans so it’s pretty fitting that this got the biggest reaction of the day. All in all it was a professionally delivered set that shows exactly how The Offspring are as big as they are and more than deserved the headline slot. Hell they might be considered old punks now (Noodles is 60 after all…) but they still smash out a massive set and probably will for a few more years yet!
So, Slam Dunk 2023 was a pretty great day for the music with the older pop punk/ska bands stealing the show for me, but there’s definitely plenty of lessons that can be learned for 2024 to deliver a better experience for fans!