BST

04.07.2014

I listen to Planet Rock during the day when I am working with Wyatt Wendels show from 10-2pm being a particular favourite and on a Friday throughout the Summer he has a segment called Festival Friday where you can win tickets to a major event such as Download, Sonisphere, Calling Festival and last week it was British Summer Time which in honour of the headlining band had been renamed Black Sabbath Time.

As tickets were not cheap for the day I had looked but decided the cost was beyond my means, so when Wyatt announced he was giving away tickets for the show, I decided to enter it even though I didn’t have a hope in hell of being picked as this competition has hundreds of people entering and I am just not that lucky.

So it was a total shock when listening to who had won to hear my name called out. I’ll admit I didn’t think I had won at first as due to a slightly wrong location given I thought some other person with my name had won and was just thinking typical when part of my email was read out which made me think surely that has to be and a quick log into my email confirmed this. So I was super excited all week about this with a slight nervousness that the tickets would arrive in time as I would be devastated having actually won something for it all to go wrong and there be no tickets.

It is going to be impossible to write about everyone song and every moment without it ending up like war and peace with the amount of bands that were on the bill so let’s just say every single band there was excellent and worthy of being at the event. Special highlights in the smaller Barclaycard Theatre were Broken Hands and Wolfmother and it was great that these played between the sets on the main stage giving everyone a chance to go and see these bands as well.

Soulfly kicked off the proceedings on the main stage which is always going to be a tough gig as looking at the t-shirts around the place the majority were here for Black Sabbath. Motorhead followed with Lemmy still showing the crowds that he could still rock. Faith No More were 3rd on the bill which even though I loved the set being a 5:15 pm start time obviously quite a few people saw this as a time for refreshment – philistines! Soundgarden were the last band before the main headliners and to me this was the highlight of the day, Chris Cornell showing the crowd how the band became such a huge influence in the grunge era and it was great to hear Superunknown played in full for the last time.

Then came Black Sabbath. It was a big crowd and I was back a bit from the stage so I was really grateful for the sound systems and big screens as it was impossible to see the band from the distance I was. With an opening song of War Pigs and Ozzy sounding as good as ever the crowd knew they were going to be in for an excellent show. As it has been rumoured this may be their last ever live tour the crowd lapped up the set and although the rain finally made a late appearance after a glorious summer day, the entire crowd ended the day very happy as the last notes of Paranoid played out.

It was a brilliant day and I will remember it as one of those gigs of a life time moments where I don’t think I will ever see such a line-up of bands on the same list ever again. So yes I did get the T-shirt and I have seen it and done it!