Yeah, I went with 3 friends and we camped in the huge dusty area outside the concert grounds all three days. It was over a long 3 day Memorial Day weekend and each day had a music theme (Day 1 = New Wave, Day 2 = Metal, Day 3 = Rock).Bandit72 wrote:Were you there for the whole festival? I'm sure I read on wiki it was one day of Heavy Metal and the other 3 of other pop/run of the mill stuff?
We got there late Friday night and spent the next morning getting drunk either riding in the parking lot shuttle buses that drove in circles around the huge mile long parking lot to drop people off the the festival gate or sitting waist-deep in this little stream in lawn chairs next to where we camped trying to stay cool. Unfortunately, we later discovered the run-off from hundreds of porta-potties outside the entrance gates a quarter mile up the hill dumped directly into this stream - we'd been lounging in piss water all morning!
We originally didn't plan on seeing the first day's bands (New Wave Day), we thought we'd just party in the camping area all day, but it was so hot, dusty, boring and uncomfortable in the camping grounds we decided to just walk up and get tickets at the gate mid-day (first day was far from sold out) and spend the afternoon and evening inside. Not just because we wanted to see most of the bands that day, but moreso because they had running water and outside showers, food and drink vendors and simply areas of shade in the concert grounds. The only bands that evening we really paid attention to and enjoyed was The Stray Cats and The Clash (who really weren't that good and which turned out to be their final show in that lineup).
Second day was all metal bands and that day was sold out with something like 300,000 people. Depending on our endurance level and interest in whoever was onstage, we'd try to get as close to the stage as possible or hang way back in the upper bowl and kick back. I think it was in the low 100 degrees by mid-morning and extremely smoggy. Quiet Riot and Motley Crue were surprisingly entertaining early in the day, Ozzy featured the first appearance of his new post-Randy Rhoads permanent guitarist Jake E Lee, Judas Priest and Scorpions were reliably good for what they do. I only thought Triumph was dull, we spent their set getting dinner at one of the shitty food vendors in the back of the bowl. Van Halen was near the height of their popularity with David Lee Roth but they were showing signs of burn-out and Roth especially was notoriously wasted for their set. At the time, I was recording shows with this little AIWA walkman style tape deck and I recorded most of the 2nd days bands including Van Halen although me and my friend's drunken, loud chatter made most of the recordings useless for trading. By the end of the day, we were all severely sunburned, filthy, hung over and overall, dragging anchor.
3rd Day featured a lot of great music, especially from U2 and the Pretenders. U2, plugging the "War" album impressed me enough that I saw them again just a few weeks later when they played the LA Sports Arena. We made it a point to get in to the festival grounds early to use the out door showers (they shut them off without warning at 11am so there was lots of people, some buck naked stuck with soap and shampoo all over them with no way to wash off). At some point early in the day when we were trying to get close to the stage in the crush up front, I stepped on someone's suntan lotion tube, it burst like a catsup package and squirted right up the front of my body into my eyes which took forever to get the sting out. By the afternoon, most of the porta-potties were unusable, with human waste piled over bowls, overflowing out doors. One amusing instance I'll never get out of my head was a long line of people wanting to use one porta-potty that was still in decent condition and a bunch of people got pissed at one drunk guy taking so long the started rocking the porta-potty back and forth. You could hear the guy inside moaning and thumping/flopping around until the porta potty tipped over on it's side causing the door to fly open with the unconscious guy spilling out covered in shit.
Of course, the big deal was this was David Bowie's first US show in about 5 years plugging the "Let's Dance" album. But by Bowies evening set, many people were burned out exhausted from the heat and people were either leaving in droves to beat the traffic or huddled around camp fires in the back of the bowl on the hill far from the stage (it got brutally cold the last night). One of my friends managed to pick up on some girl and left early heading back to our campsite. We we eventually got back, they were passed out in the bed of the El Camino so being typical dicks, we poured the remainder of our warm beers on them to wake 'em up!
It took me days to recover from that weekend. Back when Coachella used to have bands worth seeing, every year I'd think about going and have US Festival flashbacks that would quickly kill that idea.