Reading Festival

We had a great time at what was probably our last ever Reading Festival this weekend. I went with Will, Claire & Nic, & there was also a large group of staff from school there, but we didn't end up meeting up with them on the Friday. My highlight on Friday was Florence and the Machine who was absolutely awesome. There is a link below to a youtube video of her performance. The sound is pretty awful, but it gives you an idea of the atmosphere!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qas8HZFZqqM

Jack Penate & Jamie T were also really good on Friday, but the headliners, Kings of Leon, were a bit disappointing. They sounded good, but had no banter with the crowd & didn't really create any atmosphere. I thought the lead singer was a grumpy old bugger! On Saturday we met up with the others from school. The weather was lovely, so it was really nice just chilling out early on & catching a few rays as we listened to the music. There weren't many bands I really wanted to see early on. However we did spot that there was a huge gap of about 2 hours scheduled on the NME Radio 1 stage. Often at a festival this means that a band is going to play a secret set. We turned up, & sure enough it was a 'supergroup' playing unannounced. It consisted of Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighters) on the drums, John Paul Jones (Led Zep) on bass, & Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) on guitar & lead vocal. They were calling themselves 'Them Crooked Vultures' & they sounded amazing. It was funny because people were just flocking to the stage as word got out who was playing.

The other highlight of Saturday was The Prodigy, who played an incredible set. They had the crowd going absolutely mad. Arctic Monkeys headlined the main stage on Saturday & I was really looking forward to seeing them. However they were also slightly disappointing. Again, there wasn't anything wrong with their sound, it was just that they mostly played stuff from their new album, whereas the crowd wanted songs they knew from their first 2 albums. On Sunday we went in early as I wanted to catch Noah & the Whale who were playing the main stage at 12:30pm. I love them as a band & they didn't let me down. They were brilliant, if a little melancholy (Claire would say depressing!) as the lead singer had recently split with his girlfriend. Other highlights were The View, Vampire Weekend, & the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Then it was time for Sunday's headliners, Radiohead. Will loves this band, so he was incredibly excited. They don't interest me quite so much, but I have to admit, they were very very good. Especially when they were playing the big crowd pleasers. They opened with 'Creep' which was awesome.

Sometimes the action was a bit much...

So there you go, our last Reading Festival... & what a good one to go out on!