Just a quick one to run through who rocked at Reading - now that the fog has cleared enough for me to remember what happened there.
This might sound like rubbish but pretty much everyone we saw rocked at Reading because one of my favourite things about the festival is that it's small enough that if you decide you're not feeling a band, you can be watching another one in a few minutes. Not that this happened very often because another one of the good things about Reading is that the crowd are so up for it all of the time - it's totally infectious and makes seeing bands so much more fun than perhaps at other festivals where people tend to just nod their heads along to the music.
I was there to do a twitter feed of the weekend (along with a colleague Jane) so you can get the gist of what I did by Reading through that - but here are the bands that stood out...
Bands I've not seen live before that I particularly enjoyed seeing: The Joy Formidable (moody Pixies rock), Flashguns (Wedding Present meets The Monkees sort of), Black Tide (a new Iron Maiden with very, very long hair), Friendly Fires (special mention to them, totally, totally brilliant with carnival dancers thrown in), Esser (great pop going on), Cancer Bats (rawwwwk), Fucked Up (rawwwk with utterly amazing frontman), Santogold (looking and sounding great - NME calling her music genre-buggery is so appropriate), Yeasayer (sooo soothing after the brute force of...), Bring Me The Horizon (more heavy metal, amazing voice), The Whip (fat bassy repetitive beats on a pop tip), Holy Fuck (beautifully hypnotic live), Johnny Foreigner (utterly delightful indie that should be too twee but isn't) and Seasick Steve (drinking Jack on stage, how blues can you get?)
There might be more from the new (to me) stuff but that'll do for now...except for Metallica who'd I'd not seen before but were simply awesome - I can't really say much more than that to be honest. Unbelievable. Rage Against The Machine were fantastic but the sound was pretty crap where we were so we just couldn't get the full impact of it...plus it felt like they really lagged after the first few tracks, although admittedly they were back at full steam for the encore.
As for people we'd seen before: QOTSA, Justice and Gallows were totally superb - although Josh's new crew-cut is the subject of some debate. QOTSA played a fan's set, missing out many of the obvious hits in favour of some longer. more noodly tracks. Justice did a shortened set which upset Ian (who loves a bit of 'Phantom' but if you watch the video before it goes offline and check out the crowd reaction, you'll see that most people didn't seem to mind). Crystal Castles, Foals and These New Puritans were also as good as ever.
What a line up eh? It was a great chance to see loads of brilliant music with a lot of people who were up for hearing it - one of the reasons why it remains one of my favourite festivals of the year.
Roll on Bestival in a couple of weeks!
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