Reading 06

I promised an update about Reading. This time last week I was drunk in a field, so it seems fitting.

Wednesday night, the night before we were to go away, I was sulking. It was cold, dark and it had been pissing it down with rain for days. I remembered Glastonbury in 1998, the knee-deep mud and feeling miserable almost the whole time, and didn't want a repeat of that. I wished that Pearl Jam weren't playing on the last night, because there was no way I was leaving before they played. So I was stuck with it. We were due to leave about 6am on Thursday morning, so we could get to the site for when the gates open and find a good place to camp. There were quite a few of us going, too, so it was important to find a spot with a lot of space. Later into the evening, I got a message from Jon saying his friends from work we were going with didn't want to leave until 10am now, but that it should still be okay. It was phrased like a question, would it be alright, but it wasn't much of a choice. I sulked about that, too.

Thursday morning it was still raining. We loaded up the car, met Jon's friends, and set off. I fell asleep almost immediately, and remained semi-comatose for the whole car journey. I was only semi-aware that a little way into the journey the rain had stopped and it was instead just cloudy. We found our way to the festival site, parked the car, and trudged on for what felt like forever. I was still having a bit of a sulk, even though it wasn't raining in Reading and didn't look like it had, either.

Our camping spot was found (because some of the others had already got there and set up camp before us), we got the tents up and staked out a perimeter fence using wooden poles bought from a camping shop and some "Police line. Do not cross" tape. Then all that was left to do was sit around and drink. So that's what we did; sat, and talked, and drank, and actually ended up getting sun burned. My mood lifted.

Friday was the first day of music -- and a fairly quiet day for bands we wanted to see, since Audioslave although originally billed had pulled out a few months back. The first band we watched wasn't even on the main stage, they had a name like Zox and used a violin in the place of a guitar. I wasn't all that impressed, until they played a cover of "Where is My Mind". However, "impressed" doesn't begin to describe how I felt about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They were incredible, Karen O has an amazing voice -- although she is a complete freak. I can't work out if she was dressed as a dragon or as a dinosaur, but it was quite strange to hear her singing "Maps" and it was almost touching, yet at the same time she was lying on the ground in front of the barrier to the crowd, and refusing to get up for security. Gold Lion, Maps, Pin -- they really set the tone of the festival for me. I knew it would take some beating.

That night we watched the Twilight Singers, the band of Greg Dulli from the Afghan Whigs. We got to the second stage for the tail end of Eagles of Death Metal, and pushed our way to the front against the tide of metal fans when the band finished. Greg Dulli is a golden god, but what really raised the bar was his duet with ex-Screaming Trees singer, Mark Lanegan, on "Where Did You Sleep Last Night". I've seen Mark Lanegan before, when he was singing with Queens of the Stone Age, and yet I'm always surprised by him. He's like a relic of the grunge age, and I can't help but wonder if he might have OD'd back in the 90's and just failed to notice he's been dead all this time. He looks like a reanimated corpse of himself, and shows almost no emotion -- he appears on stage with no introduction, sings with an intensity and power that chills you, and then he walks off. No acknowledgement to the crowd or to the band, not even a smile of gratitude for the fans at the front going mad in appreciation. I'm trying to work on my own intense Mark Lanegan look -- and grunge fashion is so hot right now. I was only slightly disappointed that the Twilight Singers didn't play any Afghan Whigs covers, like Honky's Ladder might have been nice, but they went one better than the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was one of those performances you hope to always remember.

Saturday was a less Emo day for bands than Friday -- which had boasted Fall Out Boy, Dashboard Confessional and Panic! At the Disco. Incidentally, Panic! covered "Karma Police" -- but the singer didn't have Thom Yorke's range. He was, however, a damn sight better than the twats in the campsite who kept singing it all that night. But, yes -- Saturday. After I painted two black stripes on my face, just because, we settled in fairly early to drinking. San -- via text message -- was surprised that anyone would be drinking when it was barely 11am, but we'd been up for hours and there was nothing else to do.

We headed to the main stage to watch Wolfmother -- who didn't do a lot for me -- and the next band we wanted to see were Feeder. My friends and I have been seeing Feeder live since we were 15, so for the last 10 years we have seen them play local pubs when the only singles they had were Stereo World and Tangerine, and they were soon to be releasing Cement. We used to joke that if you set up some speakers in your garden and called it a festival, Feeder would probably turn up and play -- it seemed like they used to play every festival going. We were excited before they took to the stage as someone said apparently they were going to be playing some old material -- we speculated whether it might be something like "Sweet 16" or "My Perfect Day".

It goes without saying they were good. However, their idea of "old school" was playing "High", which they said was from their first album. First full-length album, maybe -- and even then, the album was re-released to include that song. My copy doesn't have it, we just bought the singles at the time. The set seemed way too short, and it didn't seem quite right that they should be lower on the bill than Arctic Monkeys.

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed t'Monkeys. They kicked off their set with the blistering intro to "Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor", and naturally cranked out the favourites -- "Mardy Bum", "When The Sun Goes Down", "Fake Tails of San Francisco" -- for great crowd sing-a-long moments. But they did seem to struggle a bit for material. It was after this that my friends and I parted company -- they wanted to watch Muse (who, granted, are a fantastic band) and I wanted to watch the Racontuers. Jon was scathing of my choice -- "You would rather watch a band you haven't heard instead of the tried-and-tested?" he asked me. Yes, I said. I want to see at least a couple of bands I don't know. "Fair enough" he said, and checked I knew how to get back to the tent.

I wandered off on my own, eventually found the NME/Radio 1 Stage (tent) and sat myself down on the grass outside to watch the video screen, rather than try and cram into the tent. Jon had also claimed I would never be able to see or get into the tent because of all the people, but I was happy to just relax on the grass outside. I was early, and after looking around at the other people nearby and watching the end of Coheed and Cambria, I noticed a cute girl sitting near me. On her own. Okay, so I had noticed her there before I even sat down, but anyway. It reminded me of years ago at Glastonbury in 1999 when I met Fiona -- a random girl on her own I took a liking to and struck up conversation with. In a similar vein I asked this new girl if she knew what the time was -- exactly how I had started conversation with Fiona. She checked, and told me, and then asked me if I, too, was waiting for Reel Big Fish. It was going to plan, this was where we were going to carry on talking and the rest would be history. Except for one thing: I wasn't waiting for Reel Big Fish. They were playing on the Radio 1 Lock-Up Stage, an easy mistake to make. But it meant one of us were in the wrong place, so we discussed this, and then together we tried to establish exactly what stage we were waiting at. I was right, she was in the wrong place, and so she left.

I watched her walk away and thought about catching up with her, telling her that I'd rather watch Reel Big Fish with her. Or meeting her over there, telling her I'd changed my mind. But I decided both courses of action made me seem both over-eager and a bit of a stalker, besides I wanted to watch the Raconteurs.

A short while later, a couple of guys sitting near me on the grass started talking to me. I don't remember what they said, but they invited me to join them sitting on the piece of plastic sheeting they had. One of the guys was cute, and they were talking about how he had slept with an actor on "Coronation Street". I don't remember which one, some guy who works in the factory in the programme, or something like that. His friend had apparently slept with a member of SClub8 -- hopefully when they weren't still SClub Junior, but she was 15 at the time. The cute guy said he'd told him he could sleep with them after they left school, so his friend had slept with her after 3pm. They asked me about bands I like "Do you like AC/DC?" they're okay "Do you like Jet?" yeah, I quite like them "Do you like Kid Rock?" I just laughed. They questioned whether I was allowed to be their friend based on these answers, I just wanted to go to bed with the cute guy.

Then quite confusingly they got a phone call from another friend of theirs that was nearby, and promptly left. I had now managed to lose two hotties -- one of each set, if you will -- almost without trying. You will be glad to know that I enjoyed the Raconteurs, though. I don't know if they were as good as everyone tells me Muse were, but I think I made the right decision. Whether I made the right decision not to follow hot chick to Reel Big Fish, I don't know.

Sunday was -- of course -- the big day. It was the big lead up to the mighty Pearl Jam; the big PJ. There were a few bands I was open to seeing earlier in the day, but instead we got into a drinking game in the campsite and that didn't quite happen. We executed our plan for Pearl Jam with almost military precision -- we'd get into the crowd for My Chemical Romance, and make our way forwards until we were at the front when Pearl Jam came on. It was a lot easier than that -- we just walked straight to the front, rather than working our way through the course of the bands. My Chemical Romance were unimpressive -- not bad, just not that good. They also seemed annoyed at the hail of plastic bottles that greeted them, on taking to the stage.

My Chemical Romance were followed by Placebo -- a band I haven't seen live in years, and even then only at festivals. I wasn't surprised by the number of songs I didn't know -- after all, I only own their first album -- but it was enjoyable, if uneventful.

Pearl Jam were what the whole weekend had been building up to, and I think I fell a little bit in love with Eddie Vedder that night. It's only the third time I've ever seen Pearl Jam (although the second time this year), but previously although the gigs have been momentous they have never ranked up there with my favourite ever. Even if Pearl Jam were a technically brilliant band, they were never my favourite band. But Sunday night was something else -- they played for hours, racking up the classic songs like "Better Man", "Even Flow", and "Animal" alongside "Given To Fly", and new songs like "Worldwide Suicide" and "Life Wasted". The encores were breathtaking.

And then it's over. In a kind of daze we all go back to our tents, and in the Monday morning rain we pack everything up. The campsites smell of smoke and are now already half deserted. We trudge back to the car in a reverse of Thursday, load everything up and set off back home, and back down to earth.