Reading Festival - Sunday

Sonic Boom Six


_{Sonic Boom!}

Another of the great UK punk bands around at the moment, these guys put on a great show and were a lot better than last time I saw them, possibly something to do with the lead singer not being ill. Really lively tent given that it was early afternoon on a Sunday - highly recommended.

Simon Amstell



The man known either as "..not as good as Mark Lamaar" or "..the one who made a living from being sarcy to pop stars" was, given his long list of TV credentials, naturally the biggest pull to the alternative tent of the weekend. He's brilliant on various programs, but I was interested to see how he could handle 'real' stand-up, as I've not seen him do it before, and I was happily impressed to find out that he can indeed cope with all comers, as well as being extremely funny with just a microphone as backing and no safety net.

He had quite a different style to the other stand-ups, opting for more of a cohesive story around his entire act, interspersed with many, many interjections from the crowd. People were standing so far back outside the tent that I'm not even sure everyone who turned up to see Amstell actually got to hear anything, so I'm really hoping that next year they decide to get some stand-up on the main stage instead. Think about it - there's half an hour between most bands on the main stage, minimum - and would it really interfere with all the set-up and sound checking if they gave one man a microphone?

Fall-out Boy



So, pretty awful, as you'd expect. It was quite amusing as they tried to counter the bottling they received at last year's festival by bringing one of their friends on stage to hit himself over the head with a glass bottle at the start. It didn't work, but it was quite amusing.

Lostprophets


_{How to take a band photo for Myspace}

Having sat around the comedy tent for a while, and listened a little to a couple of other bands, I went and had a glance at Lostprophets. Whilst the music still wasn't massively to my tastes, I was really impressed by the amount of passion and energy they put into their show. It's great to see a band really going for it, and was quite touching to hear the lead singer say "This is one of the best moments of my life" (and look as though he meant it) after he managed (very impressively) to get pretty much everyone watching the main stage 'dancing' for one of their tracks.

Nine Inch Nails



Again, one of those bands that did put on a good show, but where I wasn't really too interested by the music. Fortunately, not many other people were either, so it was quite easy to simply walk through the crowd near the end of their set to get a good place for...

Smashing Pumpkins


_{So I was going to look for a 'smashed pumpkin' to point out how dumb the band were when they named themselves after 'great' pumpkins. I found this awesome picture instead.}

Now I've never been a massive fan of these guys - mostly because I've never given them much of a chance, but Lu's mad about them so naturally I had to jump into the middle of the crowd to go see them with her. We ended up a few rows back from the front in the middle - so there was a good view and a great crowd atmosphere and I was actually quite impressed by them.

A fair bit of the set was, unfortunately, just atmospheric arsing about with effects and the like, but when they played what I assume were their popular songs, everyone (myself included) had a lot of fun and they did sound pretty good. There was one great track near the end, which Billy Corgan lied and said was on the new album, called 'Death From Above'. It's actually on the single Tarantula as a b-side (or double a-side, whatever), and I highly recommend you check it out, it's beautiful.

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Sorry this one's a bit late, but - hey, I've been busy :)