Rock Triumph - Festive Interlude

It should probably be a matter of embarrassment that I didn't attend a music festival until well into my fifth decade. My defence is that when I was of prime festival-going age, at the back end of punk and new wave, the festival circuit was in a heavy rock timewarp, and I never saw any attraction in camping in a muddy field in order to watch the likes of Uriah Heep or Wishbone Ash. To be honest, I was never a particulary intensive gig goer anyway, and my preference is for mid-sized venues, of the Brixton Academy sort of size, not arenas. There are a few bands I have seen several times (The Fall in particular), but I have always tended to be a bit choosy unless the event was a social occasion as well.

So, to Reading (1). This wasn't actually our first festival - a visit to the "family friendly" Applecart event in Victoria Park last year gets that distinction - but it was the first serious one, both in terms of interest in the line-up and of not being a bus ride from the front doorstep. We went only for the Saturday, and didn't camp - a Premier Inn at Didcot seemed a much more attractive proposition, especially with a 7-year-old in tow - so this was far from being a full-on festival experience.

Colour coordinated festival goers awaiting the shuttle boat

The weather was reasonably co-operative, in that this was the sort of British summer day when you can get both soaking wet and sunburnt in one go, but the rain held off till fairly late and was not of the really torrential variety at any time. We arrived at the site by shuttle boat from a distant car park to find that late festival additions Green Day had just finished their set, up early on the Main Stage. Not terribly disappointed - they're one of the better frat punk bands, but they're still a frat punk band. We were much more interested in the advertised openers, Blood Red Shoes, and were not disappointed. I've heard them described as a "reverse White Stripes", and you can see why, but they're less into the rock archaeology than Jack W., and Steven Ansell can actually play his drums... Anyway, they were excellent. Laura Mary Carter is probably the most complete rock fantasy chick this side of Mira Aroyo of Ladytron (2).

Actual live footage from actual Reading gig where I actually was (not actually filmed by me).

BRS make a lot of noise for two people, and put to shame those bands who populate the stage with various hangers-on who seem to contribute very little. I start to get twitchy when I see more than five people in a band.

After some lunchburger (a little overpriced, of course, but perfectly palatable), and an abortive attempt to get into the Alternative Stage to see Reginald D Hunter, we headed over to the Radio 1 / NME tent for Santigold (3). This was on my say so, as Jenny didn't really know her, and it turned out to be an excellent decision. I like Santi; her musical sensibilities owe a lot more to punk and reggae than your average black New Yorker, and she doesn't sound at all like you might expect. She's been compared to M.I.A., but I prefer her. She also puts on a good and slightly deranged live show, including at one point a pantomime horse.

Actual ... oh, you get the point.

The next event was at the main stage: Enter Shikari. I like some of Enter Shikari's stuff - they show a willingness to engage with other musical styles in their electronic diversions, and are refreshingly political in a musical landscape full of blandness. But they are a curate's egg, and the show reflected that. Also, there is the trustafarian thing about them - as Jenny said after one of Rou's monologues, "They're a bit posh, aren't they?". Yes, they're from St. Albans and the band is named after his uncle's boat... Unfortunately the real lower class are too busy auto-tuning vapid love songs or threatening to shoot each other over minimal accompaniment to make decent music. We also got surprised by an outbreak of moshing that almost engulfed Dave; I knew that ES shows could get a bit fruity, but had thought we were far enough off to the side to avoid it. Thank-you to the unknown stranger who pulled him out before I could react to the surge.

I think he may be enjoying himself.

Shortly afterwards, the rain arrived for the first time and I elected to return to the NME tent rather than get wet at the main stage. Dave had a 3DS interlude with me while Jenny slipped off to check out The Vaccines, a band I find difficult to warm to. Playing in the NME tent were Billy Talent, who I largely ignored; I've never heard anything by them that registered as worth remembering, and nothing has changed. We left just as Mastodon were starting up; I knew nothing about them but I'd seen people wearing t-shirts with their name in "heavy metal" typeface, so I feared the worst, apparently correctly. It's one of those desperately unimaginative names that immediately suggests a genre, and also suggests that you don't need to bother unless you are a true believer in That Sort Of Thing.

Returning to the Main Stage we took in Florence and the Machine, and the worst of the rain. I have mixed feelings about Florence and wasn't that impressed by the show; I like her more robust songs but there aren't enough of them, and much of the performance was rather meandering. Judging by the bizarre and over lengthy between-song spiels, she is also either a total space cadet or was thoroughly off her face. I'm not sure she's that great live even on the better songs; I noticed she didn't do my favourite, the brilliant "Drumming Song", which I've seen live on TV, and it didn't work at all. Let's be fair though - part of the problem is that her songs are quite demanding (and heavily worked on in the studio), and if she fails it is at things others aren't even attempting. But she's not Kate Bush.

Florence at Reading, stepping off the Magic Roundabout for a while.

And so to the main attraction - Kasabian (4). It seems that admitting to liking Kasabian is, in hipster circles, almost as damning as liking Oasis (though not, puzzlingly, the ghastly Paul Weller). However, Oasis are (or were, before they fissioned into two equally awful halves) genuinely shit, whereas Kasabian are not. Granted, the fourth album was very patchy (and contained far too many songs about heroin - sort yourself out, Pizzorno), but when on their game Kasabian remain in a sweet spot between the more rocky, swaggering end of indie, and the gnarly outlands of electronica (see for instance Switchblade Smiles). Unsurprisingly for a festival performance, this was largely a greatest hits package, which saved us from the more questionable moments of the Velociraptor album - though there were a couple of (slightly oddly chosen) cover versions. "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometimes" by The Corgis? Eh? There were some points also when I thought Tom Meighan's vocal performance was a bit lazy - a couple of scuffed cues, and a tendency to "swing" it a bit when singing live, which makes him sound too like Robbie Williams for comfort. I also didn't like what they'd done with the arrangement on "Club Foot", which seemed to have rather submerged the monstrous riff which makes the song such a classic.

Not their best song, but it's what the BBC have chosen to put on YouTube

But it was a pretty good set, and this was what young David had been here for - he loves Kasabian.  I caught him singing along to "Velociraptor", "Rewired" and various others (though I hope it's a while before he realises what "Rewired" is actually about...), and he was gawping like a true believer, albeit some way from the stage, and mostly at the big screen. I wonder whether he can be persuaded to do some proper work on his 3/4 size guitar now he's a little bigger....

This is what it looks like at minimum safe distance.

After that it was back to Didcot for a lie-in and then some tourist stuff in Oxford on Sunday (about which, perhaps, more shortly). All in all a success I think. Best not mention the toilets.

(1) OK, so after five days this is hardly up-to-the-minute reportage. The 21st century can wait.
(2) Mira Aroyo, an attractive, exotic (Bulgarian Jewish with a Spanish surname) scientist (biochemistry PhD candidate at Oxford before joining Ladytron) who plays keyboards in an electro band. Amazingly, not the product of some geek's overstimulated imagination.
(3) Formely Santogold, but Miss Santi White modified the band name after some nutcase of a film producer-cum-jewellery salesman (no, seriously!) harrassed her about the rights.
(4) Though, shockingly, some people seemed to have headed off after Florence, and the audience was slightly but noticeably smaller for Kasabian. Young people today....