The NEW online home of former Rollingstone.com columnists and Generation Ecch authors Jason Cohen and Michael Krugman.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
NOWHERE NEAR LIVE FROM THE READING FESTIVAL, DAY 2 CONTINUED
Hey, the damn thing wears you out.
So about the Arctic Monkeys. They were typically great. Played the hell out of every song and did not look lost on the big stage under those brilliant lights. They were, I think, nervous in a way that came off as nonplussed, just as it was hard to tell whether Alex's exhortations for the crowd to be a little more excited was ironic (but if it wasn't, hey, the place was also full of Muse fans. Though Susan says the fringes of the field were way more crowded for the Monkeys).
The songs are too wordy and Alex's phrasing too adept to really lend themselves to sing-along, but you cannot accuse the man of failing to give the people what they want -- the crowd's takeover of "Mardy Bum" pretty much overwhelmed him, so for "When the Sun Goes Down" he let the "Hungry Heart" thing happen.
As for Muse, my feeling about them is if they were any good, I'd like them. So I know they aren't any good. Sounds circular I know, but I like prog, I like guitar wank, I like sci-fi pretentiousness. But they play bad prog, and it's incompetent guitar wank. Hey, remember when Muse and Travis were the most prominent post-Radiohead bands? Come back, Fran Healy! And what does Thom Yorke's brother do for a living these days?
2:15 pm Rumble Strips, who are already guaranteed to be better than the SXSW show we saw with 40 people in a wanting venue (and they were pretty darn good then). Guitar/drums/trumpet/sax; invariably compared to Dexy's.
2:22 pm What's up with people who continue sitting down even as the crowd fills in all around? They deserve every tipped beer and stepped-on hand.
3:10 pm Two things today I should have had the camera for:
1. A girl outside the men's squatting on the ground and peeing. It's a forlorn sight, but then again, she probably has nothing to blame other than her beer consumption.
2. Another girl's lacy pink trimmed but mud-splattered plumber's crack.
3:20 pm Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are backstage briefly. Alec's got a copy of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" in his front left blazer pocket.
3:49 pm Good Books. Recently semi-slagged by NME for being like Athlete, but we like Athlete. Plus they're way, way better live. And are a former Art Brut franchise. And have a song about WWI. Does that mean they are influenced by Franz Ferdinand? The actual Franz Ferdinand, I mean.
5:09 pm
Dirty Pretty Things. Zzzz. Truly, they are Sparta to Pete's Mars Volta, or just the Foo Fighters to the Libertine' Nirvana. Carl has one arm in a sling, having suffered an injury while patting himself on the back. (Aw, just kidding. We hear he's nice).
5:33 pm We-ah, now call-ah, this meeting-ah, of everyone-ah at Reading who's over thirty-ah, to order. That's right, it's time to see the Fall. It's just too bad there are no bands here who have been influenced by them.
5:40 pm People are clearly expecting a Brian Jonestown-like shenanigan, but Mark is elegant and calm, and the band well-drilled and whetstone-fine. We especially liked the song that sounded like the Fall. And the other song that sounded like the Fall.
5:55 pm Brix looks damn good for her age. Oh wait...
5:56 pm Mark, on the other hand, makes me think of the South Park Rod Stewart episode.
6:00 pm Really, it's like we've stumbled into an alternate universe where everyone at Reading is our age.
6:30 pm Clap Your Hands Say Yeah come on and the crowd instantly goes from pre-CD to post-CD. And the set is pretty magical.
8:30 pm Arctic Monkeys time -- but since it's already 2 pm on Day 3 as I type this, better save that for tomorrow's post and get the hell back to the field.
11:55 am Since he got in through a band, Michael is in guest list queuing hell. Whereas the press booth is a ghost town (too early?). We make the mistake of using the main entrance. The 10 minute walk through Tent City is amusing, but they take away our pricey 1.5 l bottled water, even though we bought it at a booth. By the time we make it to the second stage tent, it's...
12:25 am Duels are rocking the sunlight with strobes and doing everything they can to make it feel like the biggest gig of their lives instead of just a band that, in our case, a begrudging stand-in for an extra cup of Joe. We only hear one song, but would have liked a couple more.
12:35 am
12:47 pm Fields seem like the sort of band you'd rather see at night, but they come out loud and trancy and dynamic in that Doves-like way (Hey, remember Doves? They were like our favorite band six years ago).
12:57 pm There's a guy in the crowd wearing a Donovan McNabb t-shirt. This is why I always wear my hockey t-shirts over here -- because it comes off as "hip and/or ironic reference to American sport" instead of "stupid tourist."
1:00 pm I'm feel bad for my wife 'cause I can ogle 18 year-old girls all day, but British boys at that age are just not that dreamy. Except, she says, for Daniel Radcliffe. Hey, he just might be here!
1:03 pm Leaves, I mean Fields, are actually not weird enough. The texture is all loud drums and guitar thrums, which puts them over in the tent but ends up kinda samey. Without the little blonde Icelandic girl behind the keys they'd be a bore to look at too. Not because she's hot per se (although she is), but because four dudes would just be same-old-same-old. On several occasions they are, in fact, gazing at their shoes, if only to hit a pedal. Will definitely see them play a proper show, however.
1:34 pm Bring on Long Blondes. The erection-giving power of lead vocalist Kate Jackson are only slightly muted at 400 yards. It's the dress. And the matching hat/scarf/tights. And the songwriting.
1:37 pm The guy five rows in front of me thankfully removes his tilted-back straw hat.
1:40 pm Two shirtless dudes come past us with magic marker slogans all over themselves. SAY NO TO EMO is emblazoned across the first guy's chest. He's presumably the guy who didn't fall asleep last night, as what's written on the second guy, with an arrow pointing towards his mouth, is GAY WHO WILL BLOW HIS MATES. Or, as that's also known in England, a public schooler. Or so we've always understood.
1:45 pm It's only the second hour of the first day, but already putting your hands in the air and clapping it an unpleasant olfactory experience.
1:47 pm Wolfmother? Wolfman.
2:53 pm "They're better than you think," someone tells me about Panic! At! The! Disco! (ok, sorry, exclamation point jokes are totally played out). Miss the singer getting bottled, but catch their version of "Paranoid Android," which does not go over all that big. Guess the fans are too young to really know that one.
2:55 pm Which reminds me -- Panic! frontman Brendan! Urie! is 19? I saw the Cure! two years before he was born. Mid-period Cure, no less!
3:15 pm Hi, I'm Eugene Hutz. You might know me from such movies as "Everything Is Illuminated."
3:20 pm At the side of the stage I watch a kid in a GBH t-shirt who looks like he could be on an Oxford Circus postcard get hustled down the barricade by security, both of them grinning madly. He waits 10 seconds and goes barreling back to the first row, taking the horizontal route.
3:27 pm That Eugene Hutz must get a lot of ass. He's a fine damn frontman but I bet Black 47 put on a great blustery fist-pumping show as well?
3:55 pm My two favorite facial expressions of the day:
1. Every single person's disbelieving grin as G-String Man walked by.
2. The pretty young thing with a look that can only be described as fear upon exiting the men's toilets.
4:00 pm The third stage is overflowing for Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. (It would probably be even more crowded if he had some exclamation points). From a distance Sam Duckworth looks like a cross between Conor Oberst, Gaz and Alex Turner; his songs sounds like Wonderwall sung by Guy Garvey and written by a cooler David Gray, and since I'm drinking tea and enjoying a cool breeze, everything seems right. Live, with a drummer and a second vocalist, and every single member of the crowd eating out of his hand, he basically kicks ass. Upon leaving the tent people are still doing the bah-bah-bahs from his set-closer three minutes later.
4:05 pm Gold Blade t-shirt. You see one every year.
4:10 pm Bromheads Jacket fans are waving flags that say -- that's right -- "Bromheads Flag." And if you buy a t-shirt? Yep, "Bromheads t-shirt." I miss them later, so perhaps Michael will fill in on that.
4:38 pm Little Man Tate vocalist Jon has a giant smile on his face. "If somebody had told me a year ago that I'd be playing at Reading I'd have licked your bollocks." Most concerts, you pay to see the band. At Reading, bands get paid to see the crowd.
4:40 pm "I'VE SEEN YOUR BAND/I HATE YOUR BAND." They're going over big but have, surprisingly, progressed way past scruffy in that year -- just a little too mersh for my tastes, and Jon a little too annoying in that Greg Dulli/Damon Albarn way (though as Michael later says, that is the character).
5:55 pm Much was made of the new barricade, but it turns out to be some 80 rows deep and instead of creating a sardine-like front-of-the-front, seems to discourage people from trying to get in even when there's room. Thumbs up. And what with Fall Out Boy preceding them, it's very easy to get into the 10th row for Belle and Sebastian.
6:00 pm The nice thing about being in the pit for Belle and Sebastian, compared to every other place I've stood today? The fans don't smell as bad.
6:30 pm B&S are not really the sort of band you expect festival magic from; if anything their own shows already have that communical ecstatic vibe other bands can only get at festivals. But when Stuart brings a girl named Katie up to dance for "Jonathan David," she is, by far, the most mortified person I've ever seen get brought up on stage at a Belle and Sebastian show, what with 40,000 people right in front of her. She eventually gets over it, but continues to make the same gesture that every other girl I've ever seen at a Belle and Sebastian show makes onstage -- hand over the mouth in swoony wonder.
6:40 pm Even less composed than Katie: Stuart Murdoch, who turns bright red when Stevie leads a massive Happy Birthday singalong. Definitely a moment to check out on You Tube.
9:50 pm After a much-needed nap, Franz Ferdinand are about to go on. But first, a word from Jarvis Cocker.
9:55 pm
10:30 pm Franz rock, but as Michael says, there's a coldness there. It just doesn't feel like the rapturous headlining moment of a band at its commercial and artistic peak (as it might have been 12 months ago. The second record is better than anyone might have had a right to expect, but it certainly didn't make them bigger. And I saw a lot of copies of the first one in the discount bin at Music and Video Exchange. The pogoing and singalongs are muted by comparison to other headliners I've seen. Even Alex seems to know this, that it's a show to tie a bow on the last record -- presumably his head is already elsewhere and I have high hopes for a great third record. I leave to check out the Primals but the tent is stifling and the chunk of new stuff mixed with "Medication" and "Kowalski" doesn't do it for me.
12:25 am Yup, nothing like a chicken mayonnaise sandwich to cap off a long day.
Ice-T and I just finished breakfast with our stripper wives at the hotel. At least, I think his wife's a (former) stripper. Whatever happened to Darlene anyway? And has it really been 15 years since "Cop Killer?"
My wife now has the Law and Order theme song playing in her head.
Also spotted Chris and Stuart from Belle and Sebastian wandering the hallways. Would have liked a picture of them with Ice-T.
