Bottle Bank
Alright, who’s idea was this? Did they really expect anything other than the reaction that rapper Lethal Bizzle received when he took the stage at the UK‘s biggest rock and metal festival? Before he’d even spoken a word Bizzle and his cohorts are greeted with an absolute avalanche of bottles thrown from the crowd! Everyone knew it was coming but it’s still quite a sight to see.
Alas the anticipated guest appearance from collaborators Gallows doesn’t materialise. To his credit Bizzle takes the whole thing in his stride and even though the bottles keep coming (for the first half of his set at least) he laughs it off and wins some of the crowd over with amusing moments such as “Is this what Download’s about? Man you ruined my outfit!”. Unfortunately his music falls pretty flat today, the sound for his decks is really poor and what should have been the highlight (his cover of The Ruts ‘Babylon’s Burning’) is barely recognisable. It probably doesn’t help that he’s also fending off pots of Muller Rice by this point.
Fair play to the guy, he keeps going and manages to get a decent section of the crowd at the front bouncing along with him despite a pretty dire take on the Clash’s ‘Police on My Back’. The bottles eventually stop coming (probably because there were none left anywhere but the stage) and when he goes into House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ it seems that he’s turned it around nicely with much of the crowd jumping. Let’s face it, musically he was crap but he was certainly entertaining and he finishes with a triumphant “I fucking did it though!”. He’s earned some respect but I don’t suspect many will be rushing off to add him to their play list.