The ultimate summer festival: Reading/Leeds

by Ramon Lobato

'Yes yes yes it's the summer festival, the dreary detestable summer festival' -- Edwyn Collins

English summer festivals are a big business, with scores of hopefuls starting up each year and just as many going bust. While Glastonbury with its picturesque location and crusty hippie vibe easily sold out, punters also showed up in droves for the Virgin-affiliated V99, Creamfields, T In The Park, psychedelica anti-fest Terrastock, or any of the scores of other lager-drenched rockfests.

Traditionally, the last of the season, Reading is second only to Glastonbury as the oldest and most established player -- albeit with a less defined identity, caught somewhere between crowd-chasing commercialism and serious street cred. This year there were copious amounts of both.

For the first time in its history, the Reading weekend was spread over two venues, with an identical line-up playing the Reading site (Friday-Sunday), then the slightly smaller set-up at Leeds (Saturday-Monday), an industrial town four hours north of London. Despite what we're lead to believe, Reading is not that much bigger than its Australian counterparts, save for the incredible line-up and equally incredible 80 pound ticket price, both of which would have had Australian promoters foaming at the mouth. As is usually the case, the biggest surprises were to be found on the side stages, where on Day One the lucky might have caught newly reformed ELASTICA whipping a crowd of green-eyed open-mouthed indie boys into a frenzy; or NASHVILLE PUSSY doing the trailer-trash thing, complete with girl-on-girl action, vodka fire breathing and a Confederate flag (?!) draped over the guitarist's amp. The luckiest of all were the few hundred punters who showed up for THE FALL's evening slot. It was as anarchic as all hell, but as Mark E Smith casually set about assaulting his fellow bandmembers, randomly turning off their amps and disappearing backstage for minutes at a time, you knew you were in the presence of something great.

Slightly less entertaining were valley girls THE DONNAS who dished up a set of B-grade power punk that would make the most lowly Rock n Roll High School band sound like pros. 'Keep out of my room! Yeah!' screams one Donna, while the other punches the air maniacally ... You get the idea. GENE put in an A-grade hour of classy indie which translated beautifully into the stadium-rock setting. You'd think THE CHARLATANS would have done it even better, right? Wrong. The Charlies did, however, supply a sexy lightshow which was far more interesting than the bland outdated shite coming out of their speakers. It was sad indeed.

Unfortunately, the saddest fall was yet to come. Day Two saw SEBADOH arrive on the main stage 20 minutes late and without half their equipment. They claimed they 'just woke up 8 minutes ago' which I hope was the real reason behind the tragic mess that followed. Without even the slightest attempt to look enthusiastic, Barlow mercilessly mauled 40 minutes worth of quality material, leaving little more than a few half-catchy guitar chords and his frequently cheesy sentimentalism. Let's just hope they were having a bad day ... Unlike PAVEMENT who were in top form -- even if they did include just a wee bit too much of the average Terror Twilight material.

Veterans MADDER ROSE were superb, if you were among the tiny number who could tear themselves away from the main-stage histrionics of hacks like REEF. Cerys belted her little heart out but couldn't quite salvage an average set from CATATONIA. STEREOLAB, looking a little over the whole festival scene, contributed a pretty unremarkable half-hour which didn't come close to the magic of their last Melbourne shows.

BLUR, Day Two headliners and Britain's favourite (and most overrated) art school dropouts, wound up proceedings with a massive 2 hour set in which they did what they could with what they have ... which ain't much really. Great show 'n' all, but hardly worth the 1 million pounds organisers Mean Fiddler reportedly paid to secure Damon and co. BETH ORTON, fringe and all, was charming and inoffensive enough, even if her legion of bongo drummers, cellists and other folky instrumentalists lent her diverse material a slightly same-ish texture. Perhaps the day's most interesting set came from Icelandic dance collective GUS GUS, eight black-clad skinhead artistes whose crazy dance moves alone were worth the trek from London. I'd promised myself that, for the purposes of this review, I'd try to sit through SILVERCHAIR (oops, small 's' now, right? Tossers!), but after thirty seconds of Pure Massacre I'd decided I didn't have it in me.

Too Pure's latest darlings HEFNER managed to inject some off-kilter cheer into a rainy Day Three, which was just as quickly squashed by Cockney gits MY LIFE STORY whose mike-stand-swinging, keyboard-drenched cheesiness was painful beyond belief. I was hoping to find some solace in Scot depressives ARAB STRAP but, plagued by technical screw-ups and the same fuck-you attitude that made Sebadoh so disappointing, they didn't supply much. More obliging were THE AUTEURS, who provided a satisfying if slightly disinterested set of tracks mostly lifted from their new LP. However, the best was yet to come, in the form of 2 hours of side-stage brilliance from a pair of bands at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. LUSCIOUS JACKSON were irresistibly fun, putting in an energetic 45 minutes of sexy street soul alongside their more recent excursions into commercial dance territory. Undoubtedly the greatest surprise of the weekend came from THE FLAMING LIPS who, tongues firmly planted in cheeks, trail blazed their way through a set of orchestral space-rock, most of it from the brilliant "Soft Bulletin" album. It was truly incredible, believe me -- don't let anyone ever tell you they're a one-joke band. And even if they are, well it's a mighty fine joke all the same.

Flea must have been in the Lips' crowd somewhere, for about three songs into the CHILI PEPPERS' dull set, he did the euphoric rockstar thing and ripped all of his sweat-soaked clothes. And no, there wasn't even so much as a sock in sight. Urrgghh ... Unfortunately, this was as interesting as it got, and their bare-boned set failed to excite on any level. Maybe they could have borrowed The Charlatans' lighting engineer ... Either way, the tens of thousands of punters weren't really fussed, as they crawled through the mountains of lager cups and unconscious teenagers and overflowing Portaloos on the 20 minute hike back to their tents. The guitars were loud, the prices were extortionate, the odours were foul, the beer was warm -- what more could you ask for? It was the ultimate summer festival ... and it sure put Big Day Out to shame.