Chase And Status For Download Festival 2012: What The F*ck!

When it was announced today (January 17) that dance duo Chase & Status would be joining the line-up for this year's Download festival, it didn't take long for one particularly riled-up individual to head over to Facebook and create a page campaigning for the group's removal.

It's a little difficult to call it a campaign when the Facebook page in question has obtained only 16 'likes,' but it was enough for Download organiser Andy Copping to defend his decision to the NME.

“They're a great live band,” he said. “They totally fit with what we've done before with bands like Pendulum and The Prodigy. I know they're going to step up and win people over. I saw them perform in Hyde Park last year and they totally blew me away with the intensity of their show.”

He then added: "They even had circle pits going on and that's what Download's all about.”

So, what is about Chase & Status that has made 16 people so furious, when, as Andy Copping points out, the line-up already includes The Prodigy, who headline the Friday night?

The answer is tied to the fact that Download Festival and more specifically, the site in Donnington on where it is held, has engrained itself so deeply in the trajectory of rock music over the last three decades that the inclusion of a group like Chase & Status can feel almost sacrilegious.

From the Monsters of Rock festivals, which helped establish the likes of AC/DC, Aerosmith and Iron Maiden throughout the '80s and '90s, to the modern day Download festival which not only revived interest in these very same bands, but baptised a whole new generation under the church of rock, Donnington Park has essentially became one of rock and heavy metal's few spiritual homes.

It's this history which inspired the marginally more successful Facebook group (76 'likes') going by the name of 'Bottling Chase and Status at Download 2012.' “Download has and always should be a Rock/Metal festival,” writes the group's anonymous creator. “So why have they announced 'Chase and Status' as a f*cking Main support!!” (sic).

Now, who's getting deja vu? You may remember that this is not the first time a festival's pandering to popular taste has left purists angered. It was only in 2008 that Jay-Z controversially headlined Glastonbury, blowing the doors open for his wife, Beyonce, to headline the festival three years later.

“If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” quipped Noel Gallagher in response to Jay-Z's inclusion at the festival. “I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong," he added.

Fair enough, hip hop already had a home of its own – and it wasn't in a muddy field in Somerset. But with Coldplay making five appearances at the festival in the space of a decade, was it not time for something a little different? Glastonbury, after all, had never been aligned with a certain genre in the same way that Donnington had, and although it has tended to favour guitar bands, notable acts in the last decade alone have included Moby, Basement Jaxx and James Brown.

If Noel Gallagher was guilty of losing touch, then those campaigning to see Chase & Status banished from Donnington, bottled off the stage or even strung up for Ozzy Osbourne to decapitate are simply misguided.

Would this anger not be better targeted at slickly-marketed pop acts such as You Me At Six? Their distorted guitars may deceive rock fans into thinking they're from the same lineage as Download's forefathers, but their inclusion below Black Sabbath on the Sunday would surely have Ronnie James Dio turning in his grave.

Download is a rock festival and Chase & Status are not a rock band. The frustration is quite easy to comprehend, but they still deserve a chance to prove themselves. The naysayers may well have a point, but if Chase & Status succeed in doing half the job that Jay-Z did, there's going to be at least 16 people with egg on their face.