Post by yazuil on Jul 31, 2006 1:02:55 GMT
This was sooooooo worth the overnight Megabus from Inverness to London, and the subsequent bleary-eyed train journey was like a scene from shawn of the dead which amused me (well except it was lacking in Cricket bats to the heads of the undead).
Anyhoo after all the amazing frivolity of finding one of the best places to camp in the history of all things tent-like and then the usual night before the concert starts run into town to stock up on essentials (stella, carling, fosters, the holy Jack, etc.) it was the first night of meeting randomers and engaging in banter.
Boiling in the tent by 9am so after a gr8 snack at the aussie steak bar we headed over to see The Black Velvets on the Radio 1/NME Stage. They had a tough gig it being the opening act of the first day but they came out and rocked the stage! Go see them, i'm hooked.
Stayed at the stage and saw Your Code name is:Milo, Blood Brothers, The Dead 60s and DFA 1979. They werent particularly memorable but i remember Blood Brothers being quite fun.
The Subways then came on Stage and we all admired the Bassist charlotte for a while but then me and my mate Lee headed over to main stage (shame coz charlotte is fit as!) because The Dropkick Murphys were making there appearance. This was one of the best crowds of the weekend with the minor exception of about 4 pricks who decided to kick anyone that came near them really hard in the shin and then turn to throw a fist in their face. This quickly attracted the attention of these two massive, tattoo-covered, irish guys who I had met the other night and are quality craic. they proceeded to pick up the most obnoxious of them and physically chuck him behind them into the air in what is probably the most ungracefully oblique arc i have ever seen a human fly in! Getting back to the band they were excellent! They dedicated the song 'Forever' to someone who they knew well who recently passed away and the whole crowd chanted forever with much feeling and gusto. My highlight, however was when they brought the pipes on and started the intro to Amazing Grace. never heard a rock crowd hit such high notes! When the solo pipes were joined by the guitars tumbling in and a sudden rising in tempo the crowd went nuts and me, Lee and the two tattoo covered irish guys switched from our arm-linked and most probably dreadful singing to joining a large circle pit in the attempt to have bled by the end of the gig.
Wndered for a while after losing Lee and eventually returned to Radio 1/NME stage where my mate Tom informewd me, during a lucky meeting in a crowded mosh pit during My Chemical Romance, that he had just succeeded in hitting Charlie from Busted in the leg with a bottle simultaneously as someone else hit him in the face, causing Fightstar to end theit gig 20 mins early! For this i gave him 50 man points until i took some off after relising the bottle was empty and not full of piss whilst strapped to a grenade.
It was then back to Main Stage to finish the day on a run in of QOTSA, The Killers, and The Pixies!
The Queens of the Stone Age gig was one of the scariest moments of all. You see The Coral was on right before-hand following Graham Coxon and so during these two sets all the teeny-boppers had flooded the front of the mainstage. they had then apparently decided to stay there. As QOTSA mounted the stage the back of the crowd was consumed by a tide of rockers arriving from camp-sites and other gigs. The band stared out at the crowd and then kicked off there set with 'Go With The Flow'. Instant Pandemonium. All the rockers charge forward and everyone ends up sandwiched. this is to be expected but then the crowd started swaying from side-to-side. All the teeny-boppers at the front started falling over and instantly huge crowd cave-ins were happening all across the front of the stage. Seeing what was assumed to be a gap by the fans at the back they rushed forwards again and many people were trampled so badly that some girl broke her neck and had to be carried out. at this point the band were forced to stop the gig while everyone disentangled/went looking for their limbs from among everyone else. They turned out a pretty good gig but didnt quite matrch up to what was to come. The Killers were great, everyone knew the words and were heartily voiced to the darkening skies. It was then the turns of our headliners for the night to take the stage. Something always annoyed me about The Pixies tht i couldnt put my finger on. i think it was the vocals but that night was the best I've ever heard them! They played a greatest hits set and blew us all away. 'Monkey Gone To Heaven', 'Debaser', 'Here Comes Your Man', and of course 'Where Is My Mind' have never sounded so good! staggered back to tents and proceeded in much drunken merry-making and encouraging on the waves of people shouting "BOLLOCKS!!!!!" long into the night.
The second day was a day for me to get in touch with a Genre of music i had missed for a while. Hard Punk. For this was the day of the Lock-Up Stage. This stage opened with a band who are now sadly no more called 'No Comply'. They were described by a punk band featuring a couple of brass instruments but were in no way ska at all. They are described apparently as "horn-fuelled punk fury" and they kicked off the day with an amazing opening gig. I now desperately want to find a copy of there albums as they really were great. I then stayed for Senses Fail and some of The Explosion's set but decided my time was best spent curing the hang-over from last night and so i proceeeded back to the camp-site to get drunk and stoned with some people camping next to us. eventually staggered back to the lock up stage for what was the best crowd of the festival. I ended up staying all day in the LOock-up stage until the Foo-Fighters headlining gig on main stage. The lock-up tent was amazing. the crowd where great the bands i heard (Capdown, Dwarves, Eighteen Visions, Rise Against, Anti-Flag and Hatebreed) all gave good performances and regularly a huge circle pit broke out round a pillar in the centre and this was the most gnarly crowd i've ever been in. Girls filling ther mouths with water and spitting it up into the air over the crowd, all of us moshing away violently, insane circle pits with a concrete centre, crowd-surfers dispensing ther drinks on us at regular intervals, much bruises and blood drawn, generally just great. pretty sure i still have marks from the pillar....
Bad religion closed the Lock-Up tent of 2005 with a great set which has had me hooked on the song 'Infected" ever since. anyhoo wandered out into the introduction to the Foo FIghters Headline act on Main Stage. Timing or what?!! Needless to say it was immense and Dave Grohl is a ledgend.
So onto the last day. this is possibly the best day of my life as it was the day i finally saw the greatest band of all time! they where headlining the last night of the Reading festival and i was determined to hit that front barrier!
Anyway before i get onto that i should start from the start in the style that is traditionally adopted. I tstarted with Bullet For My Valentine on Main stage. They were extremely high energy and managed to get us into a circle pit 50m across at one point. i lost my mates at this point as they refused to enter this pit with me and so whilst losing them i gained scars and so my festival experience felt more complete because of this. Stayed at mainstage to watch Turbonegro who were entertaining and put on a stage show innvlolving many stage props and balloons so generally fun fun fun was had. they were followed by alkaline trio who pumped hits well known to most at us whilst the lead-man whose name temporarily escapes me jumped down to the front barrier where he high-fived many crowd members including me! that hand remained unwashed for.....well until i got to a shower the next day tbh. I then went and hung out in the comedy tent which was amazingly funny until deciding that getting stoned whilst drinking port was the way to go and spent a pleasant couple of hours with ppl next to our tent. The afternoon drew on until i realised that the band playing just before the penultimate act of the night had already started their set and so i rushed off so that a good space could be assured for the headliners. Realised as i reached the back of the crowd that i could hear Incubus floating to me on the afternoon heat. managed to weave through the crowd and hit the first circle pit just as they broke into the final chorus of 'Megalomaniac'. Went wild, felt pain, pushed forward. Incubus were alright but unremarkable and so i concentrated on getting as far forward as possible for the penultimate act of the Reading festival so as to get a gr8 position for the last. Actuly managed to secure a good position for the second act, dead centre, 4 rows back. As the light faded from the day ac urtain fell across the main stage and a light swayed to and fro. A ragged voice started growling at us and we waited in suspense util it climaxed with a scream, a sudden crash of guitars, the sudden dissapearance of the curtain, and Marilyn Manson strutted forwards through the smoke towards a crowd going absolutely mental. At one point during this gig i was pretty sure i almost popped a rib during one crowd surge and was carried back slowly throughout the set. I wasnt particularly into Manson before Reading but after seeing the show the stage show he puts on i thought he was fantastic! With that performance he has one over at least one new fan! 'The Beautiful People' was great as was 'Tainted Love' which ive always liked even before i was into him.
Anyhoo i now found that in being so mesmerised by Manson's show, which included a keyboard strung from a gallows and Marilyn himself perched in a pulpit at times while at others striding around stage on stilits, i was now quite a few rows back for the finale of the weekend. An instrumental intro was played and then with a sudden burst of furious guitars, pounding drums and galloping bass, Iron Maiden strode into the spotlight and took the last act of Reading 2005 by the neck and attacked it with a 3 guitar assault. Maiden were just back from america playing on Ozzfest and (DIE IN A HOLE!!!) Sharon Osbourne (DIE IN A HOLE!!!!) had tried to mess up their set with various planned attacks by audience members (including Kelly Osbourne and members of other bands sucking up to Sharon in a real show of the Metal attitude which these jumped-up, fake, commercialised, so called metal, piss-poor, no talent, american filth are supposed to have) and also by her cutting their sound every so often. During the first pause in Maiden's apopleptic set Bruce attempted to say something but was interrupted by 65,000+ people chanting "FUCK SHARON, FUCK SHARON". pure quality. Maiden were obviously playing with pride in the knowledge that here in Britain if anyone tried to mess with them, that person would not get out alive. During the 4th song of the hour and a hafl set i went crowd surfing to "The Trooper" and managed to lose my shoe. still a few rows back and determined to make it to the barrier once the crowd let me down i plunged into the closest circle pit with one foot bare and procceded to batter my way to the front. after forcing my way slightly further forward i came across another circle pit and managed to drag my shoeless foot after through this until almost reaching the fornt barrier. by this point my ffot was throbbing and ther was an interesting stain appearing on my sock. I managed to ease my way to the barrier briefly during the Performance of my favourite song, "The Phantom of the Opera", just as a camera flashed by. Mission well and truly accomplished. On TV at the front barrier of the greatest band on the planet and spotted on the big screen by my mates.
I may have lost all skin on top of my foot but it was worth it. Oblivious to pretty much everything but them band i plunged back into a formiddable circle pit until the band played their last song and Bruce attempted to speak the massed fans. He was completely drowned out by the wall of noise that is thousands of people absolutely screaming "MAIDEN!!!!!!! MAIDEN!!!!!! MAIDEN!!!!!" Never hav i seen a musician so lost for words as the entire band seemed genuinely moved at our show of obvious support. The band collected themselves and launched into an encore of epic proportions until with a final scream from Bruce and guitars alike, and a vocal-chord ripping chant from the crowd, Reading was over for 2005.
All the last night riots, burnings and explosions all seemed pale in comparison to Maiden's performance and i have to say it was probably the greates hour and a half of my life. Not to say that stopped us going stupidly off our skulls on all the booze left over and eventually hobbling around and joining the random mosh-pits breaking out aroung any available music source but my god Maiden were awesome. and not awesome in the american sense but in the Wow! this thing is so big it fills my horizon awesome. Trust me. Maiden will be the best gig you go to.
Anyhoo after all the amazing frivolity of finding one of the best places to camp in the history of all things tent-like and then the usual night before the concert starts run into town to stock up on essentials (stella, carling, fosters, the holy Jack, etc.) it was the first night of meeting randomers and engaging in banter.
Boiling in the tent by 9am so after a gr8 snack at the aussie steak bar we headed over to see The Black Velvets on the Radio 1/NME Stage. They had a tough gig it being the opening act of the first day but they came out and rocked the stage! Go see them, i'm hooked.
Stayed at the stage and saw Your Code name is:Milo, Blood Brothers, The Dead 60s and DFA 1979. They werent particularly memorable but i remember Blood Brothers being quite fun.
The Subways then came on Stage and we all admired the Bassist charlotte for a while but then me and my mate Lee headed over to main stage (shame coz charlotte is fit as!) because The Dropkick Murphys were making there appearance. This was one of the best crowds of the weekend with the minor exception of about 4 pricks who decided to kick anyone that came near them really hard in the shin and then turn to throw a fist in their face. This quickly attracted the attention of these two massive, tattoo-covered, irish guys who I had met the other night and are quality craic. they proceeded to pick up the most obnoxious of them and physically chuck him behind them into the air in what is probably the most ungracefully oblique arc i have ever seen a human fly in! Getting back to the band they were excellent! They dedicated the song 'Forever' to someone who they knew well who recently passed away and the whole crowd chanted forever with much feeling and gusto. My highlight, however was when they brought the pipes on and started the intro to Amazing Grace. never heard a rock crowd hit such high notes! When the solo pipes were joined by the guitars tumbling in and a sudden rising in tempo the crowd went nuts and me, Lee and the two tattoo covered irish guys switched from our arm-linked and most probably dreadful singing to joining a large circle pit in the attempt to have bled by the end of the gig.
Wndered for a while after losing Lee and eventually returned to Radio 1/NME stage where my mate Tom informewd me, during a lucky meeting in a crowded mosh pit during My Chemical Romance, that he had just succeeded in hitting Charlie from Busted in the leg with a bottle simultaneously as someone else hit him in the face, causing Fightstar to end theit gig 20 mins early! For this i gave him 50 man points until i took some off after relising the bottle was empty and not full of piss whilst strapped to a grenade.
It was then back to Main Stage to finish the day on a run in of QOTSA, The Killers, and The Pixies!
The Queens of the Stone Age gig was one of the scariest moments of all. You see The Coral was on right before-hand following Graham Coxon and so during these two sets all the teeny-boppers had flooded the front of the mainstage. they had then apparently decided to stay there. As QOTSA mounted the stage the back of the crowd was consumed by a tide of rockers arriving from camp-sites and other gigs. The band stared out at the crowd and then kicked off there set with 'Go With The Flow'. Instant Pandemonium. All the rockers charge forward and everyone ends up sandwiched. this is to be expected but then the crowd started swaying from side-to-side. All the teeny-boppers at the front started falling over and instantly huge crowd cave-ins were happening all across the front of the stage. Seeing what was assumed to be a gap by the fans at the back they rushed forwards again and many people were trampled so badly that some girl broke her neck and had to be carried out. at this point the band were forced to stop the gig while everyone disentangled/went looking for their limbs from among everyone else. They turned out a pretty good gig but didnt quite matrch up to what was to come. The Killers were great, everyone knew the words and were heartily voiced to the darkening skies. It was then the turns of our headliners for the night to take the stage. Something always annoyed me about The Pixies tht i couldnt put my finger on. i think it was the vocals but that night was the best I've ever heard them! They played a greatest hits set and blew us all away. 'Monkey Gone To Heaven', 'Debaser', 'Here Comes Your Man', and of course 'Where Is My Mind' have never sounded so good! staggered back to tents and proceeded in much drunken merry-making and encouraging on the waves of people shouting "BOLLOCKS!!!!!" long into the night.
The second day was a day for me to get in touch with a Genre of music i had missed for a while. Hard Punk. For this was the day of the Lock-Up Stage. This stage opened with a band who are now sadly no more called 'No Comply'. They were described by a punk band featuring a couple of brass instruments but were in no way ska at all. They are described apparently as "horn-fuelled punk fury" and they kicked off the day with an amazing opening gig. I now desperately want to find a copy of there albums as they really were great. I then stayed for Senses Fail and some of The Explosion's set but decided my time was best spent curing the hang-over from last night and so i proceeeded back to the camp-site to get drunk and stoned with some people camping next to us. eventually staggered back to the lock up stage for what was the best crowd of the festival. I ended up staying all day in the LOock-up stage until the Foo-Fighters headlining gig on main stage. The lock-up tent was amazing. the crowd where great the bands i heard (Capdown, Dwarves, Eighteen Visions, Rise Against, Anti-Flag and Hatebreed) all gave good performances and regularly a huge circle pit broke out round a pillar in the centre and this was the most gnarly crowd i've ever been in. Girls filling ther mouths with water and spitting it up into the air over the crowd, all of us moshing away violently, insane circle pits with a concrete centre, crowd-surfers dispensing ther drinks on us at regular intervals, much bruises and blood drawn, generally just great. pretty sure i still have marks from the pillar....
Bad religion closed the Lock-Up tent of 2005 with a great set which has had me hooked on the song 'Infected" ever since. anyhoo wandered out into the introduction to the Foo FIghters Headline act on Main Stage. Timing or what?!! Needless to say it was immense and Dave Grohl is a ledgend.
So onto the last day. this is possibly the best day of my life as it was the day i finally saw the greatest band of all time! they where headlining the last night of the Reading festival and i was determined to hit that front barrier!
Anyway before i get onto that i should start from the start in the style that is traditionally adopted. I tstarted with Bullet For My Valentine on Main stage. They were extremely high energy and managed to get us into a circle pit 50m across at one point. i lost my mates at this point as they refused to enter this pit with me and so whilst losing them i gained scars and so my festival experience felt more complete because of this. Stayed at mainstage to watch Turbonegro who were entertaining and put on a stage show innvlolving many stage props and balloons so generally fun fun fun was had. they were followed by alkaline trio who pumped hits well known to most at us whilst the lead-man whose name temporarily escapes me jumped down to the front barrier where he high-fived many crowd members including me! that hand remained unwashed for.....well until i got to a shower the next day tbh. I then went and hung out in the comedy tent which was amazingly funny until deciding that getting stoned whilst drinking port was the way to go and spent a pleasant couple of hours with ppl next to our tent. The afternoon drew on until i realised that the band playing just before the penultimate act of the night had already started their set and so i rushed off so that a good space could be assured for the headliners. Realised as i reached the back of the crowd that i could hear Incubus floating to me on the afternoon heat. managed to weave through the crowd and hit the first circle pit just as they broke into the final chorus of 'Megalomaniac'. Went wild, felt pain, pushed forward. Incubus were alright but unremarkable and so i concentrated on getting as far forward as possible for the penultimate act of the Reading festival so as to get a gr8 position for the last. Actuly managed to secure a good position for the second act, dead centre, 4 rows back. As the light faded from the day ac urtain fell across the main stage and a light swayed to and fro. A ragged voice started growling at us and we waited in suspense util it climaxed with a scream, a sudden crash of guitars, the sudden dissapearance of the curtain, and Marilyn Manson strutted forwards through the smoke towards a crowd going absolutely mental. At one point during this gig i was pretty sure i almost popped a rib during one crowd surge and was carried back slowly throughout the set. I wasnt particularly into Manson before Reading but after seeing the show the stage show he puts on i thought he was fantastic! With that performance he has one over at least one new fan! 'The Beautiful People' was great as was 'Tainted Love' which ive always liked even before i was into him.
Anyhoo i now found that in being so mesmerised by Manson's show, which included a keyboard strung from a gallows and Marilyn himself perched in a pulpit at times while at others striding around stage on stilits, i was now quite a few rows back for the finale of the weekend. An instrumental intro was played and then with a sudden burst of furious guitars, pounding drums and galloping bass, Iron Maiden strode into the spotlight and took the last act of Reading 2005 by the neck and attacked it with a 3 guitar assault. Maiden were just back from america playing on Ozzfest and (DIE IN A HOLE!!!) Sharon Osbourne (DIE IN A HOLE!!!!) had tried to mess up their set with various planned attacks by audience members (including Kelly Osbourne and members of other bands sucking up to Sharon in a real show of the Metal attitude which these jumped-up, fake, commercialised, so called metal, piss-poor, no talent, american filth are supposed to have) and also by her cutting their sound every so often. During the first pause in Maiden's apopleptic set Bruce attempted to say something but was interrupted by 65,000+ people chanting "FUCK SHARON, FUCK SHARON". pure quality. Maiden were obviously playing with pride in the knowledge that here in Britain if anyone tried to mess with them, that person would not get out alive. During the 4th song of the hour and a hafl set i went crowd surfing to "The Trooper" and managed to lose my shoe. still a few rows back and determined to make it to the barrier once the crowd let me down i plunged into the closest circle pit with one foot bare and procceded to batter my way to the front. after forcing my way slightly further forward i came across another circle pit and managed to drag my shoeless foot after through this until almost reaching the fornt barrier. by this point my ffot was throbbing and ther was an interesting stain appearing on my sock. I managed to ease my way to the barrier briefly during the Performance of my favourite song, "The Phantom of the Opera", just as a camera flashed by. Mission well and truly accomplished. On TV at the front barrier of the greatest band on the planet and spotted on the big screen by my mates.
I may have lost all skin on top of my foot but it was worth it. Oblivious to pretty much everything but them band i plunged back into a formiddable circle pit until the band played their last song and Bruce attempted to speak the massed fans. He was completely drowned out by the wall of noise that is thousands of people absolutely screaming "MAIDEN!!!!!!! MAIDEN!!!!!! MAIDEN!!!!!" Never hav i seen a musician so lost for words as the entire band seemed genuinely moved at our show of obvious support. The band collected themselves and launched into an encore of epic proportions until with a final scream from Bruce and guitars alike, and a vocal-chord ripping chant from the crowd, Reading was over for 2005.
All the last night riots, burnings and explosions all seemed pale in comparison to Maiden's performance and i have to say it was probably the greates hour and a half of my life. Not to say that stopped us going stupidly off our skulls on all the booze left over and eventually hobbling around and joining the random mosh-pits breaking out aroung any available music source but my god Maiden were awesome. and not awesome in the american sense but in the Wow! this thing is so big it fills my horizon awesome. Trust me. Maiden will be the best gig you go to.
