Reading Festival - Saturday

The Dead 60's


_{Someone dead from the 60's on stage would have had better stage presence. Awful pun I know :(}

I really liked these guys when I saw them last year, but they weren't very impressive first thing in the afternoon on the main stage. Possibly the wrong location, or possibly just a bad set - but they just came off as generic (indie?) rock.

Ed Byrne



I last saw this guy at the Microsoft gig at Wembley, so I was a bit apprehensive he'd be re-using a lot of material from there. He actually started to try, but soon found out that most of his set wouldn't really translate across the audiences, so I was quite impressed to see him move onto new material and start improvising instead. Hilarious and really packed out the comedy tent - must see if he's ever in your area.

Hal Cruttenden



I'll be honest, I saw a bunch of comics over the weekend, and whilst some were great and some were just awful, I never really caught many names. I recognize this man's name as I saw him recently at Jongleurs - and good though his set was, I was a bit disappointed to see him use pretty much identical material at Reading - especially as some of it was completely inappropriate for the crowd of 20 year olds who weren't even born for parts of his satire.

Panic! At The Disco



So, as I noted on one of my older blogs, when I used to be prettyian on Last.fm, instead of tiedyeina on Blogspot, Panic! weren't too popular at last year's festival. As such, I had to stay and watch them this year, in the hopes that the bottling would continue - and I wasn't to be disappointed.

Right from the start the band started playing some awful shite and getting hit - though to be fair to them they did take it quite well. I particularly liked the lead singer's "Hey, this is going better than last time" (after getting through the first song without being hit) and then "At least you didn't get knocked out" after the bassist complained (on mic) about being hit in the head by a full bottle.

There's no great video collages of them being hit up on YouTube yet (if I can find the material I'll happily make it and set it to one of their godawful songs), but the start of this video should give you the idea:



Bloc Party



So I never realised that the lead singer from Bloc Party was actually Lenny Henry until I heard him talking at this year's festival. It explains why he was good with the crowd, and a pretty good singer to boot - though I'm worried as to how much weight Lenny's lost, and how different his face looks nowadays...

Arcade Fire



Best. Band. Of. The. Festival. Of the ones I saw at least. Sir. Timothy McCormick was playing their albums at me on the car journey up to the Peak District, and I wasn't really very impressed, and so only planned to stay for 15 minutes inbetween bands at their set in the Festival. I was so impressed by the passion, massive range of musical ability (and I just loved the renaissance instruments and pipe organ) and stage show they put on that I stayed right till the end. Absolutely superb, I highly recommend going to see them live if you get the chance.

Still don't like the album though...and was the percussionist on some highly potent drugs?

!!!



The band that made themselves completely unfindable online (unless you know that the verbal pronunciation of '!!!' is spelt as 'chkchkchk') were absolutely brilliant live - I can't believe I've never seen them before. I really like their albums, so I thought I'd check them out, not expecting too much from a dance band in terms of a live show, but I was really, really tempted to miss the Chili Peppers just to watch the end of !!!'s set.

Red Hot Chili Peppers


_What?

I think it says something that a very disappointing live performance from these guys still didn't take away from the fact that they were one of the bands I enjoyed most at the Festival. I saw Kiedis screw up a few times, but I never noticed the problem some people at the back later whined about - though it's certainly believable.

The band seemed not to care between songs, just wandering about the stage chatting to one another, but there was enough good material in their back catalogue not to care, once they started playing. A lot of great jams too - with Flea using some of my favourite Herbie Hancock & Paul Chambers bass riffs whilst the guitarist (I can't be bothered Googling his name...) alternated between laid-back, quiet riffs, and trying to impersonate Hendrix (and doing a damn good job of it).