Toto, Uriah Heep & Slade — Anticipating an Unforgettable Concert, Hit by a “Biblical Flood” (2024)
Toto, Uriah Heep, Slade ![🫶]()
Schlosswiese, Moosburg, Austria
Friday, July 19, 2024
Anticipating an unforgettable concert, we were hit by a “biblical flood” 
We caught Slade’s opening set. When Uriah Heep were due on stage, the intro lights and signage appeared — and then it opened up like the sky had been ripped apart.
When the rain hit, they chased everyone off the grounds — photographers included, with all their gear. I was appalled at how the security staff and police treated us, like we weren’t even people. One guy who tried to shelter from the downpour by stepping under a tarp near the venue entrance got grabbed by three heavies (a cop and two security guards) and slammed to the ground — one of them actually stepped on his head, which was half-buried in the mud. The crowd was completely calm, and I genuinely can’t understand why that kind of force was necessary. I would have taken photos, but with the rain bucketing down I couldn’t even get to my camera in my backpack. In my opinion, the organiser should have cancelled the show given the weather forecast. By my count there were close to 10,000 people on site, and a cancellation — along with the refunds it would have meant — would have cost the organiser too much.
I honestly don’t know how the two of us made it to the car, parked 2 km away in the middle of a harvested wheat field. We waded through ankle-deep “streams” that hadn’t been there an hour before. Lightning lit the way, and the thunder kept pushing us forward 
Bottom line — disappointed, and not so much by the downpour itself as by the way the organiser treated its audience. The world really is going “somewhere it shouldn’t”!
Thankfully, we got out in one piece. I’ve never walked through rain that heavy in my life — we were soaked as if we’d jumped into a pool 
Quite the experience…
p.s.: We missed around 20 minutes of Slade’s set because the organiser — aware that severe weather was rolling in — reshuffled the schedule on the day of the festival, pushing the shows earlier than billed. But what we did catch confirmed that Dave Hill and company still have it. That Noddy Holder remains irreplaceable is simply a fact of life for the band’s later era, ever since he left in the early nineties. Dave Hill — the legendary ‘pint-sized’ guitarist who was instrumental in bringing glam into rock music — was absolutely back on his symbolic pedestal! And the little guy is holding up brilliantly. Still sharp, still on fire onstage. The rest of the crew — John Berry (bass guitar, violin, vocals, backing vocals), Russell Keefe (vocals, keyboards, backing vocals) and Alex Bines (drums) — delivered a polished, confident performance all round. Most of the setlist drew from the first half of the seventies, when Slade hit their commercial peak. Riding the wave of all-time rock anthems like Mama Weer All Crazee Now, Cum On Feel The Noize, Far Far Away, My Oh My, Cuz I Luv You, Take Me Bak ‘Ome, it’s hard for anything to go wrong. People were visibly loving every second of it, cheering as classic after classic rolled out. With such a massive crowd on top of everything else, the whole thing hit that much harder.
Authors: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Edita Klemen
Slade – setlist:
1. Take Me Bak ‘Ome
2. Everyday
3. Coz I Luv You
4. Run Runaway
5. Far Far Away
6. The Bangin’ Man
7. Mama Weer All Crazee Now
—encore—
8. My Oh My
9. Cum On Feel the Noize
