Slam Dunk 2024 - Leeds

There was mud here, there, and everywhere… 

It's a few days after Slam Dunk North 2024, my ears have finally stopped ringing, I’ve managed to get mud out of all the places mud shouldn't be and I’m ready to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. And believe me, there was plenty of all three. 

The Good

You Me at Six:

Can we please have a standing ovation for Slam Dunk and You Me at Six? Because the set list, the execution and YM@6’s performance will go down in history for the princes of pop punk emo. As it was their very last UK festival performance I can see how much pressure was on them and on Slam Dunk, not to drop the ball and they didn’t - you can see my clips all over tiktok. 

Overall lineup: 

Like most things, there were two sides to this. Let’s start with their line up…they had a very unique line up, bringing in acts from the US like ‘Boys Like Girls’ and ‘The All American Rejects’ - and they don't even do stand-alone shows or even other festivals’ performances meaning you had to come to Slam Dunk to see them. The All American Rejects haven’t done a festival performance in at least 10 years and Boys Like Girls haven’t done a performance in 14 years, throwing back to the Karange tours days.

I felt like the other stages had a lot of new talent who hadn’t performed at any UK festival before or even in the UK so this was a great way to showcase “headliners” in the making. 

And most importantly…every set I saw ran on time - a miracle by most festival standards.

So overall these were massive improvements on last year and you could clearly see the effort, time and attention that was taken to make it a much more enjoyable and worthwhile experience.

The Bad 

Overall Lineup/Time Slots:

The main stage line up was not at all diverse. Iit was very nostalgic, which is lovely, but it had no diversity. There were definitely more diverse artists on other stages who deserved a slot on the main stage - I do understand that time slots and stage slots impact the money made by the artists and that sometimes taking a better slot on the second or third stage could be better financially for them than taking a lower slot on the main stage. It’s like a huge game of chess across 4 boards and with millions of pieces so it;s not a job I would want but I would have liked to have seen a more diverse mainstage lineup.

This does lead on to my next point - complete clashes! It’s not a big festival and you can normally walk from one stage to another to catch the start of the end of an act but there were complete overlaps which I think could have been more thought out.

Carpark:

Let’s be honest, if there is one thing you wo’;t ever control, it's the weather. So, as Brits, we all know you have to plan for rain which Slam Dunk just didn’t do. It seemed they had no plan B, no clear communication plan with the festival goers and all communications being made too late. If I hadn't been checking socials I wouldn't have known until I arrived about the change of plans as I didn’t receive the See Ticket text until 12:30, when the car park was meant to open at 10am and was closed by 9:55am. 

Missing acts:

I missed Honey Revenge because of all the extra time it took to get the festival site due to the car park closing and on top of that there wasn’t even a fully manned ticket scanning gate - Like, really? Come on!

The App:

It was only useful pre-festival. Otherwise all it did was suck your battery dry and the find a friend feature did not work. I understand that a signal is needed to use it but it’s not a very good design when, at a lot of festivals, you get no signal. 

Merch - once again

I will never understand why merch needs to be stressful. But once again there almost too many places to buy and not enough at the same time. I understand this stems from bands selling their own merch as well as Slam Dunk having their own stands but it’s just not well organised. A simple solution - a sign outside letting you know whose merch is where. This would have stopped us having to line up twice and ask people what they are selling. The Slam Dunk tent didn’t even show you the information until you reached the till - annoying and time wasting

The Ugly

I’m afraid the ugly is uglyyyyy:

This all stems from the car parking issue - and I don't think it would have happened (at least not in my case) if the weather had been better. But this truly highlights that there was no real plan in place. 

So it’s 9:45pm, You Me At Six have just finished Stay With Me, and we realise that we need to leave otherwise leaving will be murder, or so we thought. Turns out, it was so much worse. 

When arriving at the shuttle bus we were told we have to pay for a ticket or wait behind everyone else - even though we were originally told that our parking pass would get us on the bus. People had already been waiting for an hour so we opted to bite the bullet and buy a ticket as we just wanted to get on the bus and also, we didn't know Leeds well so any other route would be difficult. We were originally told the wait for the bus would be 40 minutes which was fine as we understood there was a long line. But, fast forward 3 hours and we were still waiting. At this point we had not been offered any water and we were not able to leave the queue. So I asked about water and where the nearest toilet was, only to be told that the toilets are now locked and water is only accessible within the festival grounds but the grounds are locked and we could not go back in. I did state that this isvery unreasonable and they have a duty of care to ensure we leave the festival safely and I was then met with “f*ck off, you don’t have to wait for a taxi just leave”. So we did because we no longer felt safe or comfortable around the staff  - however our alternative wasn’t much better. We walked for an hour in a dark country park that we didn’t know and finally managed to make it back to “the real world’ so we could get uber. 

Long story short - Slam Dunk still have a long way to go. - But I’m still rooting for them, because they can defiantly do it!