Donington Monsters of Rock

By now I’ve been to too many concerts, not all them thoroughly memorable, to make them all worth blogging about.  But every now and then there’s one which merits the treatment, if only briefly.

The other night, on the treadmill, I wasn’t able to find the Thursday night NFL game, but I did find MTV showing footage of Glastonbury Fayre in the UK.  Ack!  Kaiser Chiefs, Shaggy, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa…who are these people?  I suppose Radiohead is the only one of that type of band I can stomach.  Give me Donington and Download…

When we lived in Paris, our parents knew another family – I believe with USTS/USTTA – which lived in southwest London; Baron’s Court was the nearest Underground (“Tube”) station.   Apparently the Chelsea stadium must have been nearby, but at the time I had no clue Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, etc. even existed, much less were anywhere nearby.  Anyhow.   Since we got to go back the Wonderful US of A in even-numbered years, in odd-numbered years we’d vacation in London.  For example, we were in London the summer of 1983 when “Return of the Jedi” came out, and saw it at Leicester Square.  We’ll never forget the cheeky British kids behind us who would NOT SHUT UP, going on about “corr, Wheetabix!” and “corr, Darth Vader!” in their inimitable British accents.

ANYHOW.

I’ve already discussed Metallica’s show here in my recent Metallica blog, so forgive any repetition thereof.  Here’d I’d like to cover the festival itself.

In August 1985 we were back in London.  We learned that RATT were playing at a festival called Donington Monsters of Rock.  Then we learned that Metallica were also playing there.  DING DING DING!  The US Embassy had a bus going there – bus tickets & concert tickets combined in one package.  Where do we sign up?

Our poor Dad had to get up at 5 a.m., drive a right-hand drive car (our friends’ car, which normally stayed in the garage as we normally took the Tube everywhere beyond walking distance) through the streets of London to get us to the Navy Annex where we got on the bus.  

The bus wound its way up the … M1?  No clue.  The highway.  Anyhow.   “Money For Nothing” (Dire Straits) was on the radio literally nonstop, although Dire Straits were not playing at this show.   And my brother and I arrived at this huge empty field at a race track, with a stage at one end.  It was a huge, unruly crowd of Vyvyans, with a few Neals and Ricks thrown in there and there.

Band 1:  Magnum.   Some quasi-metal, quasi-prog British band was up first.  Matt has since investigated this band, but I never did.  They were….OK.
SET: All England's Eyes; The Prize; On A Storyteller's Night; Changes; Les Morts Dansant; The Lights Burned Out; Two Hearts; Sacred Hour; Kingdom of Madness

Band 2.  RATT.  “Round And Round” – of course.  Invasion of Your Privacy was the current album, but Out of the Cellar was the popular one – and remains so today.   A good show, though as of this point I can remember little of it.  Incidentally I’ve never seen RATT again. 

SET: You Got It; Wanted Man; You Think You're Tough; You're In Love; Lay It Down; The Morning After; Never Use Love; Round And Round; Sweet Cheater

Band 3.  Metallica.  YES!   Ride the Lightning tour.   Hetfield, Hammett, Ulrich and CLIFF F’N BURTON.  We were definitely psyched.  Not everyone else was – many bottles and cans were thrown at the stage, which James, Kirk and Cliff had to periodically duck.  Hetfield implored the audience not to “hit our beer”.   More recently I finally scored a bootleg of this show, and lo and behold, I heard him say that again.   Nice.

SET: Creeping Death; Ride The Lightning; For Whom The Bell Tolls; The Four Horsemen; Fade to Black; Seek & Destroy; Whiplash; Am I Evil?; Motorbreath

Band 4.  Bon Jovi.  I can’t remember which tour this was, and to this day remain unimpressed with Bon Jovi.  I certainly wasn’t impressed that day.   Mind you, this was before "Wanted Dead or Alive", which at gunpoint I'd identify as the Bon Jovi song I hate the least.  I think I had a headache and took a nap during their set, believe it or not.
SET: Tokyo Road; Breakout; Only Lonely; Runaway; (guitar solo); (drum solo); In And Out Of Love; I Don't Want To Go Home; Get Ready

Band 5.  Marillion.   Yes, at the same concert as Metallica was this band, who we’d never heard before.  No bottles or cans chucked at Fish & his friends.  Indeed not.  It was the Misplaced Childhood tour.   Matt and I were actually impressed, him more so than me.  I got a t-shirt, he got all their albums and followed them even into the Steve Hogarth phase.  He also followed solo Fish and saw his shows, but apparently much of those involve lengthy diatribes about Scottish independence, delivered to American audiences who have no reason to give a shit about that. 
SET: Waterhole (Expresso Bongo); Lords of the Backstage; Blind Curve; Emerald Lies (intro); Script For A Jester's Tear; Assassing; Pseudo Silk Kimono; Kaleigh; Lavender; Bitter Suite; Heart of Lothian; Incubus; Garden Party; Market Square Heroes; Fugazi; White Feather

Band 6.  ZZTop.  By now I was zonked out, and practically sleeping on the bus.  Matt says he was actually watching the show.  I like ZZTop, and now have several of their albums.  With Eliminator and its various videos playing all the time – most notably “Legs” – we knew who they were.  By now I’d call “La Grange” my favorite song.   Reviewing the setlist now, I regret I was not actively enjoying the show, but I’d have lacked the musical maturity to enjoy most of the set, including a Funkadelic cover.   [If anyone has a bootleg of this show, by all means let me know.]
SET: Got Me Under Pressure; I Got The Six; Gimme All Your Lovin'; Waiting For The Bus; Jesus Just Left Chicago; Sharp Dressed Man; Ten Foot Pole; TV Dinners; Manic Mechanic; Heard It On The X; I Need You Tonight; Pearl Necklace; Arrested For Driving While Blind; Hit It And Quit It (Funkadelic); Party on the Patio; Legs; Tube Snake Boogie; Can't Stop Rockin'; Jailhouse Rock (Elvis); La Grange; Tush 

The bus left, brought us home, and yet again our poor Dad had to pick us up again.   We’d scored t-shirts of Metallica (Metal Up Your Ass, the only choice), RATT, Marillion, and a ZZTOP DONINGTON one, none of which fit anymore, assuming we can find them (I recently got a new Metallica one in XL). 

1985 was actually the last time I was in London or the UK, so I haven’t been able to attend any more Doningtons or any Downloads.  Checking the lineups for other years shows that even numbered years had the best lineups.

Here they are, in reverse order (headliner first) (* = show recorded/filmed for official release):

1980.  Rainbow, Judas Priest, Scorpions, April Wine, Saxon*, Riot, Touch.

1981.  AC/DC, Whitesnake, Blue Oyster Cult, Slade, Blackfoot, More

1982.  Status Quo, Gillan, Saxon, Hawkwind (!!!!), Uriah Heep, Anvil

1983.  Whitesnake, Meat Loaf, ZZTop, Twisted Sister, Dio, Diamond Head

1984.  AC/DC, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Y&T, Gary Moore, Accept, Motley Crue

1985.  See above.

1986.  Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Motorhead, Bad News, Warlock

1987.  Bon Jovi, Dio, Metallica, Anthrax, WASP, Cinderella

1988.  Iron Maiden*, KISS, David Lee Roth, Megadeth, Guns N’Roses, Helloween

1990.  Whitesnake, Aerosmith, Poison, Quireboys, Thunder

1991.  AC/DC*, Metallica, Motley Crue, Queensryche, The Black Crowes

1992.  Iron Maiden*, Skid Row, Thunder, Slayer, WASP, The Almighty

1994.  Main Stage: Aerosmith, Extreme, Sepultura, Pantera, Therapy?, Pride & Glory; Second Stage: The Wildhearts, Terrovision, Skin, Biohazard, Cry of Love, Headswim

1995.  Metallica, Therapy?, Skid Row, Slayer, Slash’s Snakepit, White Zombie, Machine Head, Warrior Soul, Corrosion of Conformity

1996.  Main Stage: KISS, Ozzy Osbourne (both headlining, but playing separately), Sepultura, Biohazard, Dog Eat Dog, Paradise Lost, Fear Factory; Kerrang! (Second) Stage: Korn, Type O Negative, Everclear, 3 Colours Red, Honeycrack, Cecil

The festival was discontinued, until 2003, when it was reborn – taking place at the same location – as the Download Festival.   Saxon’s song “And the Bands Played On” (off Denim & Leather) is about Donington. 

New Jersey

[Originally written in 2009.  Updated in 2021.]

Prior to graduating from college in 1990, I had no experience with New Jersey.  We had been to New York City a few times, Long Island a few times, and upstate New York a few times, but New Jersey was simply a transit area between the Washington DC area and New York.  When my friend Ken moved to New Jersey to study for his masters in psychology at Montclair State University, living in Bloomfield (Exit 148 from the Garden State Parkway), I visited him several times.  This gave me most of my experience in New Jersey.

From 2009 to 2018 I was going up to New Jersey fairly regularly, to Fort Lee, which is on the NJ side of the George Washington Bridge.  These adventures put me in Edgewater fairly often, Hackensack (county seat for Bergen County), and Paramus with its Garden State Plaza.  Fort Lee is also next to Palisades Park, where my buddy Ken, Dave, and I saw Blue Oyster Cult in 1992 at the Soap Factory, a club that isn't there anymore.  

I started by driving up the Turnpike, then started taking Chinatown buses, private buses which left DC near Bethesda and dropped off across from Madison Square Garden, with the 158 bus from Port Authority taking me through Edgewater to Fort Lee.  Then towards the end of that chapter, I was driving again, this time avoiding tolls by driving due north from Baltimore up to York, PA, then over northeast to Lancaster, Reading, Allentown, then on I-78 over into NJ, 287 north, then I-80 east to 95 and 46, a five hour drive from Northern Virginia to Fort Lee.    

 

Bloomfield.  Bloomfield is fairly run down, with old houses, and no less than 3 strip clubs.  It’s fairly close to New York City and Newark. Close by are Newark, Lyndhurst, and Giants Stadium (in East Rutherford).  Newark has a high population of Brazilians.

 NYC.  Forget driving in Manhattan – that’s for fools and masochists.  What we did was drive to Hoboken (where the Hindenburg crew lived in the 30’s, as the Nazis didn’t trust non-Germans to service the zeppelin) and park there, taking the PATH train into the city, specifically Greenwich Village.  Near Fort Lee there is a shuttle which takes you into Manhattan at 175^th Street.  For much of northern Jersey, the NYC skyline is visible, especially the Empire State Building (now that that World Trade Center is gone).

 Mid-Jersey.  This part includes Trenton, Princeton, and Hillsborough.  On the more recent trips to visit Ken, I visited him here.  The voyage from my area completely avoided the New Jersey Turnpike, instead driving up 95 past Philadelphia and crossing over into New Jersey somewhere close to Trenton, and driving through Princeton.  My friend Jim was married in Princeton (his wife was from there, though she went to Cornell) in 1995.  Since northern New Jersey is pretty much a suburb of New York City, and southern New Jersey is very much a suburb of Philadelphia (particularly Camden and Cherry Hill), central Jersey is really the only part of Jersey that is more or less an independent suburban area in its own right.  Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, could be considered in this area.  I ended up visiting its main campus in New Brunswick fairly often for a four year period, though not as a student.  

 “Mentertainment.”  New Jersey has an impressive array of strip clubs.  The law says that if the venue serves its own alcohol, the girls have to wear bikinis; one specific club, Frank’s Chicken House, had no alcohol on the premises – just soda and greasy chicken – and completely nude dancers, many of whom were porn stars.  The state has a guide to the clubs, called the “Mentertainment Guide”, which I joked was the “New Jersey Tourism Guide”.  I suggested to Ken (over 10 years ago) that we hit every strip club in the state, to which he reacted in horror: in his county, Essex (when he lived in Bloomfield) alone there must have been 10-15 clubs, and 3 in Bloomfield alone.  As mentioned in my magazines blog, NJ’s convenience stores can be trusted to offer a wide array of porn mags in plain view.  Definitely convenient!

 Jersey Shore.  This starts at Sandy Hook in the far northeast, and runs down the coast to Wildwood.  Asbury Park and the boardwalk are included in this area.  My experience with this is very limited (Sandy Hook and Atlantic City), but to me beaches are pretty much the same everywhere except the south of France or Rio de Janeiro. 

 Atlantic City.  Along the boardwalk and shore, on the southern end.  Remarkably, there is no direct connection between the Atlantic City Expressway and the New Jersey Turnpike: you have to drive through Camden (or is it Runnymeade?) to get to the Expressway.  AC is very much like Las Vegas, but with a beach & boardwalk and nasty weather in the winter.  To my experience, though, the only thing to do in Atlantic City is gamble, whereas Vegas is far more versatile.  On the other hand, if you’re in my area (DC/Baltimore), AC is only 2-3 hours by car, compared to a plane trip for Vegas.  The Viets love to gamble, and love Atlantic City.  And of course, Monopoly was originally designed here: is there an Atlantic City variant of Monopoly?  Go figure.

 Roads.  Aside from the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, the roads in Jersey are… unique.  There are a confusing array of state, local, and municipal roads, and the exits are poorly marked: typically they’re posted 5 feet ahead of the exit itself, so that by the time you see it, you’ve already passed it.  Then you have to turn around at a jughandle – because of the concrete barriers running across the median – and go back again.  It really seems that the roads are set up for the benefit of people who live there, at the expense of anyone else: if you can’t figure it out, tough shit, that’s your problem. 

 New Jersey Turnpike.  This opened in the 1950s and serves as a high-speed conduit for traffic coming from Delaware over the Memorial Bridge, all the way to New York City (Final Exit 18 & the George Washington Bridge).  Oddly, it does not hook up with the New York State Thruway.  Most of the traffic on the Turnpike seems to be out-of-state.  There are various service areas which – until recently – had Roy Rogers restaurants, at a time when McDonald’s had bought out and closed most of the ones down here.  There are 18 exits, but they are not evenly spaced apart: the southernmost exits are far apart and then they get closer and closer in as you get closer to Newark and NYC.  The Turnpike also divides into cars-only lanes and truck lanes, changes from being surrounded by forests down south to surrounded by chemical plants further north.

 Garden State Parkway.  This serves as the primary conduit of traffic within the state itself, and most cars on the GSP seem to have NJ tags.  There seems to be a toll plaza every 10 exits or so.  NJ natives tend to orient themselves by GSP exit numbers, though I recall when visiting Hillsborough that the GSP was rarely part of our travel plans – in that part of the state it runs far to the east, near the shore.

The two cross in upper-middle New Jersey, exit 11 on the Turnpike, exit 129 on the Garden State Parkway.  South of the interchange, the Turnpike winds through the middle of nowhere, and the GSP goes east over to the Jersey Shore.  North of the interchange, the GSP goes up in the middle of highly populated areas, and the Turnpike goes up parallel to the river, with exits for the Outerbridge Crossing and Goethals Bridge (to Staten Island), the Holland Tunnel (to downtown Manhattan), the Lincoln Tunnel (to midtown Manhattan), and finally ends at the GW Bridge.  

 Celebrities.  Bon Jovi are not only from New Jersey, they named an album after the state.  Bruce Springsteen makes much of his Asbury Park origins.  Danny DeVito grew up there; and Joe Piscopo was very much in-your-face about his home state.  Frank Sinatra is from Hoboken.  Kevin Smith is from Red Bank, and sets most of his movies there.  Zakk Wylde (Ozzy’s guitarist), the Misfits (who we saw at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park) and Glenn Danzig are from Jersey.  The Seton Hall University radio station, WSOU (89.5) played an impressive array of metal and obscure rock (e.g. “Sabbra Cadabra” and “Megalomania” by Black Sabbath).  What all these celebrities seem to share is a consensus that “New Jersey is f**ked up, but it’s our home and we’re proud of it.” 

Vs. NYC.  My father's side of the family is from Brooklyn, and many of my relatives have that distinctive accent - though for some reason my father didn't.  It seems New Yorkers look down on those from New Jersey, bragging that "we're better than them,"  as if everyone from New Jersey - at least the northern half - is trying to bask in the glow, glory and notoriety properly the exclusive domain of true New Yorkers.   But once you leave that area, the rest of the country makes little or no distinction between Jersey and NYC.  To everyone else, everyone from that area has an attitude problem.