What The Hell Is Going On? #51: Reading & Leeds 2010 Week
By: Thomas Hannan
Hey mate.
Reading Festival 2001. The first festival I ever went to. Like a virgin, touched by a festival for the very first time, I arrived very early and ran to the barrier at the main stage to watch The Donnas, who were opening. I stayed all the way through the Lo-Fidelity Allstars being abominable, Run DMC being brilliant, Iggy Pop getting his lad out in front of me for the first of what would become at least a dozen times, and some band called The Strokes making their UK festival debut. Then, my tiny adolescent frame was duly crushed beyond comfort by an increasingly rowdy crowd, and I was subsequently manhandled to safety by a concerned security guard during a Green Day set where Billy Joe Armstrong set everything on fire (and made Travis headline straight after them. Travis!). I would later watch a lot of pop punk and nu-metal (I was freakin’ FIFTEEN!) and drag my disinterested friends to see Frank Black, as at the time I never thought I’d get to see the Pixies, and therefore he and The Catholics doing a limp wristed version of ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’ was as close as I could ever expect to get. I threw up a lot, argued with my girlfriend, and it subsequently became an annual pilgrimage.
This weekend Rockfeedback returns not to its beloved Reading but to its equally amorous sister site in Leeds, where we’ll be hosting our now customary Alternative stage on the Sunday with our dear brethren at Transgressive Records. I’m pleased to point you in the direction of the full details of said hoedown, but rest assured any party that has Everything Everything, Gaggle, Slow Club, Egyptian Hip Hop, Dam Mantle and Chew Lips playing live, and disc jockeying courtesy of not only ourselves but Two Door Cinema Club, Pulled Apart By Horses and those aforementioned Transgressive jokers is something I’d like to shake my bag of bones at.
The Rockfeedback Telly player this week is similarly concerned with goings on at the Reading and Leeds festivals, dedicating itself to five acts appearing across the weekend who’ve at some point got in front of the RFB.TV cameras and strutted their respective stuffs. Monday had Bow boy done good Dizzee Rascal turn in a formidable performance at the 2008 Underage Festival, Tuesday sees Mumford and Sons deliver an exclusive Rockfeedback Session just on the verge of them becoming bigger than a super God made out of Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha rolled in to one, Wednesday will witness The Mystery Jets’ 2009 Field Day set document their leap from indie prog favourites to masters of modern wistful pop, Thursday has Los Campesinos! deliver a set of half tongue in cheek, half heart-wrenchingly honest rock and roll in another exclusive Rockfeedback Session, and we don’t pause for breath on Friday neither, with The Drums playing an inadvisably intimate set in front of a packed North London sweatbox known as The Old Blue Last earlier this year. Longest sentence I’ve ever written? Yes, now where’s my medal...
Tom.x