Reading Festival aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Yes!

Only had a day ticket so was there for the Saturday only, at first I was really happy about this as stories of dire amounts of mud were all over the news pages before we went. But by the end of the evening I sooooo wished I had a tent there and with it the possibility of seeing Graham Coxon, Green Day, Offspring.......

Anyway the line up for Saturday looked pretty good! Arrived as Razorlight came on.... having never been to Reading before I was utterly taken aback by it's size. Somehow I had expected something BIG and yet it was really just one main arena with a couple of other stages..... in fact there was tons of stuff going on outside the arena....which is really unusual for festivals as generally only ticket holders get to join in the fun!! Here you could actually put up a tent, do your festival shopping, join in with the air guitar competition and hear all the main acts for nothing!

Hmm Razorlight were utterly spoiled by their prat of a lead singer.. the music wasn't too bad but Johnny Borell was very full of himself and played the part of the ultimate rock star......... climbing down from the stage to touch his audience was an act too far for the first band of the day!!!!!! Then came The New York Dolls!!!!! Lead singer looked like a Mick Jagger/Lou Reed mix.. a combination that reflects a life of hard drugs, vast quantities of alcohol and maybe a bit of rock and roll thrown in! They did a version of Don't go breaking my heart' which had everyone joining in, well the few people who were at the front of the stage anyway... maybe most had gone off to do their shopping at this point!?! Sad as they missed a really good band... Franz Ferdinand did a good set.. although Sarah and I realised that they were actually a cloned band with all the members being fairly indistinguishable... The Libertines tried really hard without Pete Doherty but didn't get there for me, the vocals just didn't have any errrr umph! Carl Barratt looked cute but lacked a bit!

By this time Sarah and I had supped some ale, danced, sung, and talked to a pile of brand new friends... and the White Stripes came on. I was slightly distracted.. The W S's were good but we had to hike it for the last train... sadly leaving a whole pile of good music, good people and excellent quality mud behind