The DMS Reading Festival Experience - Day 2
Created | Updated Jul 11, 2003
This is my account of the second day of the Reading Festival Weekend. Today starts starts slightly later than the day before. I'm still recovering from the events of Friday, the first day of the Festival. Today is hotter as well and the crowds seem bigger.
Saturday, 25th August 2001
1.30pm, Carling Stage
The sun is baking and I carefully creep further into the tent to avoid sunburn and to see Thirteen:13. Seeing them is virtually impossible, but hearing them isn't. My Reading Festival day has begun with mellow indie tracks such as Perfect Imperfect and The Truth Hurts easing me into the day's listening.
2.40pm, Main Stage
I'd like to give a review of And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead but I can't remember much. I have to admit that I sit through most of the performance hoping that the crowd might keep me in the shade as the back of my neck is burning. It's too hot for this sort of thing. I think the band destroy their instruments at the end. I'm not sure. It's possibly the best noise they've made since being on stage.
4pm, Radio 1 Evening Session Stage
At last in the shade again and the Welsh band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci are playing their psychedelic folk music. Their eclectic taste in instruments include a violin and, unusually and unfashionably, a Hammond organ. Poodle Rockin', possibly their silliest song, is the only one whose name I can remember.
5(ish)pm, Radio 1 Evening Session Stage
Out of curiosity, I stay to listen to Mancunian band and Mercury Music-nominated Elbow. It seems that Pink Floyd have had a huge impact on this band. But I'm tired, hot, irritable and not really in the mood for this sort of thing. It takes a lot of stamina to survive a Festival like this. I leave in search of something to drink at a reasonable price (virtually impossible) but can still hear them droning on from a distance.
6(ish)pm, Carling Stage
I've been looking forward to this all day. At last a chance to see some home grown talent in the form of Reading's 6-piece Cooper Temple Clause. The band are renowned for being noisy. The tent is packed and I'm just outside so the music is loud but muffled. An album is eagerly awaited from them after their debut The Hardware EP which was followed by The Warfare EP.
7.05pm, Main Stage
Isn't it nice of Oxford's Supergrass to take time out from recording their forthcoming album and play for us? They play just about every single they've done from Caught by the Fuzz to Pumping on your Stereo via Richard III and Sun Hits the Sky but not Alright. They also play some new stuff. They seem happier and more relaxed here than when they played at South Park, Oxford in the shadow of Radiohead.
9(ish)pm, Main Stage
Stick 'em up, punk, it's the Fun Lovin' Criminals, or at least the last half hour. Possibly the coolest, most laid back act of the weekend munching on Scooby Snacks and reminiscing about Barry White. They leave after Huey, tongue firmly in cheek, spends ten minutes recounting to us "that there's A Supermodel on my 'D'".
10pm, Main Stage
The screens show a man with a beard and, oddly, an English accent. He greets us and introduces himself as Karl Marx and then has the pleasure of welcoming on stage "the Greatest Band in the World", The Manic Street Preachers. The Reading festival may be a second home to them now, but does it pale in comparison to the Karl Marx Theatre, Havana? Does it matter? Here the bassist, Nicky Wire, can get away dressed in a military camoflague dress for the first half and in a nurse's costume with a stetson in the second, complete with Burberry knickers, while the guitarist and singer, James Dean Bradfield, bounces around the stage and the drummer, Sean Moore, beats out the rhythms. They begin with You Love Us and then play just about every hit they've had in the past ten years or so including Design For Life, Ocean Spray, If You Tolerate this, Your Children Will Be Next, La Tristesse Durera (Sream to a Sigh), and so on. Before launching into Motown Junk they confuse and delight the audience with the opening bars and verse of Van Halen's Jump. James Dean Bradfield asks us:
'How fast do you want to go? Or better, howdo you want to get there? Car? One of those sh*tty little silver scooters? Or motorcycle?'.
Too much riotous cheering Motorcycle Emptiness, possibly their best song ever, then follows. They are not known for fluffy love songs and whip the mob into a frenzy with Masses Against the Classes before leaving. There are no encores. But then, Everything Must Go. Including me. Home.
DMS concludes his Reading Festival Experience in next week's gripping final instalment.
