Post by DaveyC on Sept 7, 2005 12:21:04 GMT -5
Thursday - AL
Our little convoy of my van, beck's mini and sophie's fiat left Dave's folks place in Southampton at 9.30am. We have a special route into Reading which means we miss all the queuing in from the M4, however somewhere around Newbury on the A34 the temperature needle in my van starts doing alarming things, I manage to coax it on a few more miles before, somewhere in the depths of rural Berkshire, it nearly goes off the scale. We stop and lift the front seats to take a perk at the engine and discover steam pissing out of a cooling hose and no water in the radiator! Bugger. A quick repair with gaffer tape and a cable tie is the best we could manage, so we continue hoping to god it holds out untill reading. Which it does, despite ending up waiting in a big queue into caversham (our quick route wasn't so quick this year!). We try the site carpark, but it's full so head to the overflow one instead. more traffic queues, so I keep stopping the engine to try and prevent it getting too hot (the temp gauge was starting creep up again!), unfortunately 200 yards from the Kings Mead car park it refuse outright to start again. This time we called in the services of britannia rescue, who turned up an hour later. The others had driven on to get a decent camping spot. The breakdown guy administered a few fine engineering adjustments to the starter motor (ie he smacked it fucking hard with a hammer) and the engine burst back into life.
We parked up and decided to walk along the river to the festival as the ferry queue was huge. On arrival and a bit of searching we found the rest of our merry bunch setting up by the road through the brown M field, just in time as 3 minutes later the heavens opened. Once the rain subsided we returned to the carpark (via ferry this time) to pick up the rest of our beers, guitars and the big bag of firewood I'd brought.
After a hectic start to the festival, we (Al, Dave, Becky, Milly, Sophie, Sam, Rose and Caz) settled down to a relaxed night of drinking, guitar and gazebo appreciation (we had a green and white stripy halfsize gazebo!)
Friday – Dave
Woke up in the tent around 6am, and allowed my addled brain to come to terms with where I was. After a quick check of important item, wallet, check, phone, check my stomach decided for me that I must quickly head to the nearest hedge. After this and a trip to the already 100% fouled portabogs I didn’t feel any better. Ah well. Downed water and nuro-wotsits and crashed out again.
After all were up, watered and fed we head in to the arena.
Mmm, to be back in the Reading arena. It looks just as I left it last year, except for ‘Orange’ is now ‘Nokia’ and the grass is… green! We wonder through to catch ‘Do Me Bad Things’ open up the weekend. A very odd mix of a band, who aint too bad. They seem like a total mix of tastes though, with the guitarist sporting an old-skool Metallica t-shirt and freddy mercury leading, along with soul style backing vocals. They don’t do a bad job of getting the crowd of ’05 into things. With my hangover well, hanging, the crowd builds for the return of the GLC. Witty as ever they do a greatest hits set with a few new ones thrown in, on top form indeed. As this point we wonder off for sustenance and for a ricky round the arena. We watch on in the Radio1/NME tent as Fightstar survive the relatively minimal bottle onslaught and chants of ‘busted’ to play through a pretty good set. I’m always confused when those who hate a band so much will spend so much time getting to the front and staying there for the whole set to heckle. Now we must return, for it’s finally Graham Coxon’s turn to play the main stage. His typical geeky style goes down a treat and great tunes are enjoyed along with top notch guitar trickery as the hangover begins to ebb. We hang on a watch a little of Elbow before, bored, headed back to the Radio1 stage for The Coople Temple Clause., whom play a energetic set. Good stuff considering I knew very little of them before now. After catching the end of the Corals easy-going summer tunes its time for grub and wondering.. before Queens of the Stone Age take to the main stage. Now this is proper festival rock music, none the worse for a lack of a certain, naked bassist. Proper chilling dark roll n rock, oh yes. We watch the first few of the Killers clinically played chart-bothering numbers before heading back to the campsite knackered. A few round the fire until the early hours is a welcome end to the first day of Reading ’05. What with the JD flag and our, still with us for now, mini-gazebo we attract a fair amount of attention, but its all good.
Saturday- AL
Woke up on saturday morning in a tent doing an impression of a sauna. We got into the arena early enough (for us anyway) to see the end of From Autumn to Asheson the main stage. They sounded alright, considering I wasn't really listening properly that early in the day!The real reason for the early start was to meet up with one of becky's friends, who's the brother of the lead singer of Million Dead. Hence she was staying in the guest area backstage. Next up, The All American Rejects lead singer (with a high pitch camp accent) promised 'to give our ears a good dooshing', at which point I stopped taking them seriously. Following on from them was Biffy clyro, we I've never seen before, and probably won't ever feel the need to again. We watched them for a song or two before heading off to the Lock Up stage to see Million Dead. MD put on a good show, pity the PA at the start of the set was shit, and you couldn't hear the vocals properly.
The rest of the day was spent at the main stage, with occassional trips to the bar/toilet/food stalls. Roots Manuva were the token Hip-hop act for the weekend, and were alright. I'd never heard Dinosaur Jnr, and was underwhelmed, but I guest they don't hold as much importance to me as the do to other people.
The Charlatans provided some light relief in the late afternoon slot. Razorlight started well, they have some good tunes, the only problem being they don't have very many tunes in total. the first 40 mins were excellent, but then it went down hill rapidly, the last 20mins was nearly all fill in material and mucking about. New material is definitely required and someone needs to deflate mr Borrells ego some what.....
On the other hand the Kings of Leon filled their set to the brim, they sound ten times better live than on CD, didn't chat much, but the music was spot on. The shadows on the screen was a cool touch!
Which left the Foos, I had high expectations after seeing them in Birmingham in 2002. They didn't quite match that performance, but it was very good none the less! It was really great to hear them play songs from all their albums (we could have had most of 'In Your Honour'!)
'Uncle' Dave was on his usual form talking to the audience. Stand out songs included the slow version of Everlong and 'This is a Call'. And oh yeah, the lasers fucking rocked too!
The only downer to the day was when some bastard shoved past Milly (my girlfriend) at the start of the Foos, twisting her back in the process, which left her in a fair amount of pain, although she stuck it out untill the end of the set.
Sunday – Dave
Wake up early to a much better day, sunshine oh sunshine. After food and beverages of the non alcoholic variety, and seeing all the others rise from the dead once again, I head off to the festival entrance to meet with the mrs, whos just got into reading on the train. She is by far the cleanest person on site as I pay my 2nd visit to the wristband exchange and we head back to the campsite. We all move off quick.. gotta catch the mighty Bullet! Unfortunately they seem to started early I found out as we head through green, but nevermind, we head toward the stage as ‘4 words to choke’ upon rings out. Excellent, cant wait for the album in October guys! They pulled quite a crowd. Relax back in the sun as turbonegro take to the stage. Interesting I have to say, I little cheesey but hey, we’ve got Maiden to come yet!
Not being interested in anything else going on we decide to stick with the main stage, and see alkaline trio play well through the familiar and not-so. Not bad at all. Now it’s the old emo lads F4AF. Saw these guys way back when in Cambridge when the first ep was all they had to their name. They’ve lost none of their energy for the 2 albums later, and now have a solid following. Their live set has developed brilliantly. Excellent.
Being rather disinterested in what was to follows, and deserted by the younguns who head in for nofx we head back to the tents for cool, err no ok warm, beverages and to escape the sun for a while. As well as to recover our gazebo for the first time. The sound of iggy twisting off stage brings us back to see Incubus, who I was actually much impressed by and whos set served a perfect closer to the afternoons atmosphere. Manson was really up against it after his magnificent set of Reading 2001, and unfortunately I was left rather indifferent, although it was cool to hear those tunes again. Maiden come on after an odd start, well I though anyway. Now they were by no means bad, but just didn’t blow me away. I love the real maiden songs but there’s only so much old bloke with his 80s metal guitar solo’ing I can take. We watched through until Eddie had made his appearance and then headed back out to avoid the crush, to leave the arena for another year.
The usual Sunday nights campsite antics are no less present this year and a damn good fire is had, with the last of the lager/cider/meths flowing in abundance. Our gazebo suffers greatly for its efforts and is lost to those that be. We finally pass out around 4am to the sound of banging bins and 1000s of drunks. That little bit of sleep until mission ‘leave the campsite’ is put into operation under what seems live constant mortar fire.
Loved it. Roll on 2006.
Our little convoy of my van, beck's mini and sophie's fiat left Dave's folks place in Southampton at 9.30am. We have a special route into Reading which means we miss all the queuing in from the M4, however somewhere around Newbury on the A34 the temperature needle in my van starts doing alarming things, I manage to coax it on a few more miles before, somewhere in the depths of rural Berkshire, it nearly goes off the scale. We stop and lift the front seats to take a perk at the engine and discover steam pissing out of a cooling hose and no water in the radiator! Bugger. A quick repair with gaffer tape and a cable tie is the best we could manage, so we continue hoping to god it holds out untill reading. Which it does, despite ending up waiting in a big queue into caversham (our quick route wasn't so quick this year!). We try the site carpark, but it's full so head to the overflow one instead. more traffic queues, so I keep stopping the engine to try and prevent it getting too hot (the temp gauge was starting creep up again!), unfortunately 200 yards from the Kings Mead car park it refuse outright to start again. This time we called in the services of britannia rescue, who turned up an hour later. The others had driven on to get a decent camping spot. The breakdown guy administered a few fine engineering adjustments to the starter motor (ie he smacked it fucking hard with a hammer) and the engine burst back into life.
We parked up and decided to walk along the river to the festival as the ferry queue was huge. On arrival and a bit of searching we found the rest of our merry bunch setting up by the road through the brown M field, just in time as 3 minutes later the heavens opened. Once the rain subsided we returned to the carpark (via ferry this time) to pick up the rest of our beers, guitars and the big bag of firewood I'd brought.
After a hectic start to the festival, we (Al, Dave, Becky, Milly, Sophie, Sam, Rose and Caz) settled down to a relaxed night of drinking, guitar and gazebo appreciation (we had a green and white stripy halfsize gazebo!)
Friday – Dave
Woke up in the tent around 6am, and allowed my addled brain to come to terms with where I was. After a quick check of important item, wallet, check, phone, check my stomach decided for me that I must quickly head to the nearest hedge. After this and a trip to the already 100% fouled portabogs I didn’t feel any better. Ah well. Downed water and nuro-wotsits and crashed out again.
After all were up, watered and fed we head in to the arena.
Mmm, to be back in the Reading arena. It looks just as I left it last year, except for ‘Orange’ is now ‘Nokia’ and the grass is… green! We wonder through to catch ‘Do Me Bad Things’ open up the weekend. A very odd mix of a band, who aint too bad. They seem like a total mix of tastes though, with the guitarist sporting an old-skool Metallica t-shirt and freddy mercury leading, along with soul style backing vocals. They don’t do a bad job of getting the crowd of ’05 into things. With my hangover well, hanging, the crowd builds for the return of the GLC. Witty as ever they do a greatest hits set with a few new ones thrown in, on top form indeed. As this point we wonder off for sustenance and for a ricky round the arena. We watch on in the Radio1/NME tent as Fightstar survive the relatively minimal bottle onslaught and chants of ‘busted’ to play through a pretty good set. I’m always confused when those who hate a band so much will spend so much time getting to the front and staying there for the whole set to heckle. Now we must return, for it’s finally Graham Coxon’s turn to play the main stage. His typical geeky style goes down a treat and great tunes are enjoyed along with top notch guitar trickery as the hangover begins to ebb. We hang on a watch a little of Elbow before, bored, headed back to the Radio1 stage for The Coople Temple Clause., whom play a energetic set. Good stuff considering I knew very little of them before now. After catching the end of the Corals easy-going summer tunes its time for grub and wondering.. before Queens of the Stone Age take to the main stage. Now this is proper festival rock music, none the worse for a lack of a certain, naked bassist. Proper chilling dark roll n rock, oh yes. We watch the first few of the Killers clinically played chart-bothering numbers before heading back to the campsite knackered. A few round the fire until the early hours is a welcome end to the first day of Reading ’05. What with the JD flag and our, still with us for now, mini-gazebo we attract a fair amount of attention, but its all good.
Saturday- AL
Woke up on saturday morning in a tent doing an impression of a sauna. We got into the arena early enough (for us anyway) to see the end of From Autumn to Asheson the main stage. They sounded alright, considering I wasn't really listening properly that early in the day!The real reason for the early start was to meet up with one of becky's friends, who's the brother of the lead singer of Million Dead. Hence she was staying in the guest area backstage. Next up, The All American Rejects lead singer (with a high pitch camp accent) promised 'to give our ears a good dooshing', at which point I stopped taking them seriously. Following on from them was Biffy clyro, we I've never seen before, and probably won't ever feel the need to again. We watched them for a song or two before heading off to the Lock Up stage to see Million Dead. MD put on a good show, pity the PA at the start of the set was shit, and you couldn't hear the vocals properly.
The rest of the day was spent at the main stage, with occassional trips to the bar/toilet/food stalls. Roots Manuva were the token Hip-hop act for the weekend, and were alright. I'd never heard Dinosaur Jnr, and was underwhelmed, but I guest they don't hold as much importance to me as the do to other people.
The Charlatans provided some light relief in the late afternoon slot. Razorlight started well, they have some good tunes, the only problem being they don't have very many tunes in total. the first 40 mins were excellent, but then it went down hill rapidly, the last 20mins was nearly all fill in material and mucking about. New material is definitely required and someone needs to deflate mr Borrells ego some what.....
On the other hand the Kings of Leon filled their set to the brim, they sound ten times better live than on CD, didn't chat much, but the music was spot on. The shadows on the screen was a cool touch!
Which left the Foos, I had high expectations after seeing them in Birmingham in 2002. They didn't quite match that performance, but it was very good none the less! It was really great to hear them play songs from all their albums (we could have had most of 'In Your Honour'!)
'Uncle' Dave was on his usual form talking to the audience. Stand out songs included the slow version of Everlong and 'This is a Call'. And oh yeah, the lasers fucking rocked too!
The only downer to the day was when some bastard shoved past Milly (my girlfriend) at the start of the Foos, twisting her back in the process, which left her in a fair amount of pain, although she stuck it out untill the end of the set.
Sunday – Dave
Wake up early to a much better day, sunshine oh sunshine. After food and beverages of the non alcoholic variety, and seeing all the others rise from the dead once again, I head off to the festival entrance to meet with the mrs, whos just got into reading on the train. She is by far the cleanest person on site as I pay my 2nd visit to the wristband exchange and we head back to the campsite. We all move off quick.. gotta catch the mighty Bullet! Unfortunately they seem to started early I found out as we head through green, but nevermind, we head toward the stage as ‘4 words to choke’ upon rings out. Excellent, cant wait for the album in October guys! They pulled quite a crowd. Relax back in the sun as turbonegro take to the stage. Interesting I have to say, I little cheesey but hey, we’ve got Maiden to come yet!
Not being interested in anything else going on we decide to stick with the main stage, and see alkaline trio play well through the familiar and not-so. Not bad at all. Now it’s the old emo lads F4AF. Saw these guys way back when in Cambridge when the first ep was all they had to their name. They’ve lost none of their energy for the 2 albums later, and now have a solid following. Their live set has developed brilliantly. Excellent.
Being rather disinterested in what was to follows, and deserted by the younguns who head in for nofx we head back to the tents for cool, err no ok warm, beverages and to escape the sun for a while. As well as to recover our gazebo for the first time. The sound of iggy twisting off stage brings us back to see Incubus, who I was actually much impressed by and whos set served a perfect closer to the afternoons atmosphere. Manson was really up against it after his magnificent set of Reading 2001, and unfortunately I was left rather indifferent, although it was cool to hear those tunes again. Maiden come on after an odd start, well I though anyway. Now they were by no means bad, but just didn’t blow me away. I love the real maiden songs but there’s only so much old bloke with his 80s metal guitar solo’ing I can take. We watched through until Eddie had made his appearance and then headed back out to avoid the crush, to leave the arena for another year.
The usual Sunday nights campsite antics are no less present this year and a damn good fire is had, with the last of the lager/cider/meths flowing in abundance. Our gazebo suffers greatly for its efforts and is lost to those that be. We finally pass out around 4am to the sound of banging bins and 1000s of drunks. That little bit of sleep until mission ‘leave the campsite’ is put into operation under what seems live constant mortar fire.
Loved it. Roll on 2006.