Reading - Day 1

Firstly, the music!

Frank Carter

He just didn’t seem very happy.  But maybe he’d just got the bill from his tattooist

Beauty School Dropout

Some fine rawk, watched by at most 100 people

The Scratch

Weird heavy Gaelic music, which somehow worked.

Black Honey

If you like Hole, then you’ll like Black Honey.  And I do, so I did.

Wallows

A not unpleasant generic festival summer noise.  But not great either.

Queen Mills 

I think this counts as garage, but I’m not 100% convinced.  Impressive rapping and high kicks, but most of it was backing tracks.  It certainly won the award for the gig that smelled strongest of weed though

Sir Spyro

Just a DJ set, but it deserves a mention for pulling a surprisingly large crowd.  And he OWNED that crowd!

Griff

Fine, but I was really just waiting for “Black Hole”

Jay Crookes

Nice mellow sound with a lovely voice  - deserved more sunshine than it got

Circa Waves

Identikit indie-pop which always sounds better at festivals than anywhere else

All Time Low

The first time the crowd really seemed to get into anyone.  Lots of rocking out and a fine The Weeknd cover

Little Simz

Impressive beats and vocal skillz but it didn’t quite click for me.  She did look very happy though.

Glass Animals

Not terrible, but they’re worrying close to an 80s tribute band fronted by Timmy Mallett.

Polo G

I can appreciate he’s good at what he does, but it didn’t come across well live for me.  And he lost the crowd early as they left to get good positions for Megan - so he just stopped, which was odd.  Bizarrely. some bits of his stuff were censored - which hadn’t been the case for plenty of previous acts.  Was he just pressing play on his tape recorder?

As It Is

More rawk - which drew a surprisingly large crowd in a side stage.

Megan Thee Stallion

Undeniable skills.  But, shall we say, “dubious” content.  Which was most definitely not censored.  She also appeared to have forgotten to put on most of her clothes.

Dave

The most impressive set of all, but I struggled to hear him often either because of singing along or just general chatting.  Anyone that can bring on AJ Tracey and Stormzy is going to keep the crowd happy though.

Interesting/amusing incidents

Mice running around underneath my groundsheet

The showers catching fire and having to be evacuated

The boys celebrating their beer getting cold overnight by having it for breakfast 

All the kids picking up cups, bottles and cans - there’s a 10p deposit and some of them did very well out of it.

The hour long walk back to the tent - it was not what I needed…

The guy barking every 5 minutes around 2am - the campsite was not happy.

Overall I enjoyed the music and the experience more than I was expecting - and most importantly, I didn’t lose any teenagers.

Day 2