Essential Festival - Ashton Court - Bristol - May 2002

This event was a complete waste of time from start to finish. Poorly organised and very badly managed, many fans requested their money back but I am not aware of anyone succeeding. Park and ride was in operation but what they forgot to mention at the point of boarding was that they would drop you at the bottom of a field with a fairly steep hill (I have no idea how people with disabilities were supposed to manage). There was no information and no signs of any kind so we had to take a guess as to which way to go. In order to get to the venue we discovered that you were expected to trek through the field, up the hill and negotiate a style with barbed wire. Naturally, the way was paved with touts - no effort made to deal with this and to be honest it was dead dodgy.

On arrival at the entrance there were several small crowds of people, a group of whom were being wound up to storm the entrance. I got in just before they made their attempt. Having made this attempt they were thwarted by security (handled by Stuart Security). What I (and many other festival attendees then witnessed) was a young man being ' restrained' by a group of security guards, interestingly, security on this occasion seemed to think that 'restraint' necessitated kicking and punching this young man - as he was well restrained at the time it was a little puzzling (to say the least) as to why putting the boot in was deemed appropriate - but put the boot in they did - with a vengeance. There were no police on site (this is now a common place symptom of the times) - I complained to Health and Safety, made a witness statement and after the festival wrote to the concert promoters (no response), the local authority who sent an e-mail many months later after I had to follow it up twice, the police who finally responded after being reminded after some months. I certainly didn't feel that I was taken seriously and I doubt very much that the young man received any form of appropriate justice. There was little doubt that this young man had behaved badly but even so he was well restrained and I don't believe that it is the job of security personnel to dispense their own form of justice. It was a bad thing to witness and has left a lasting impression.

You would have thought after all this that things couldn't get any worse right? - well actually, one of the acts ( De La Soul) failed to turn up with no explanation offered to the waiting crowd who were puzzled and no-one could find out what was going on.

Busta Rhymes was very late arriving - again no explanation and no announcements were made - mid way through the set the sound was cut as apparently time had run out!

On leaving this event many fans found the gate to one of the fields padlocked - it was apparent that apart from the appalling value for money, the lack of appropriate facilities etc. Safety was so far down the agenda as to be non existent. This was a very dodgy gig in which fans were totally ripped off.