READING FESTIVAL

One of the highlights of Summer 2002, was totally Reading Festival which I went to with one of my best friends and 2 of her friends (who were really nice, so that was great). We only went for one day but I was still exhausted by the end! It was absolutely amazing how many people actually turned up. On the left is a picture of the crowds... thousands! Here were the acts playing on the main stage the day we went:

We got up real early and then we had to take the train all the way up to Reading. We saw loads of, erm, 'radical' people on the train with dyed hair and pierced bodies and stuff so we knew we were on the right train. Ayesha (one of my best friends) changed into her bright purple contact lenses on the train to freak us all out. When we got off the train, there were all these guys selling off last-minute tickets to the festival. We got totally lost and had to ask for directions to the festival site from this shop - they proceeded to sell us a festival guide which came with a FREE CONDOM. How rude! Like everyone who goes to Reading is really rough and going to go around doing... ahem... in the tents? Well maybe some people, yeah, but hey...
We had to walk for about 20 minutes to get to the site. There were so many people walking that way, all the streets were crowded. There were people selling band logo hoodies and t-shirts and this little kid was selling beer! Which was quite worrying. It took us ages to get in, because we had to get these bracelet thingies to show that we had tickets and weren't gate-pushing. I got a bright pink one - yay! There were these people giving out stuff - bin bags that if you returned them full of rubbish, you got a free beer, plastic sheets to sit on and tubs of barbecue flavour mini hoola hoops (yep, random).
We were with Ayesha's aunt and she didn't really want to watch the stars up on stage, so she sat down and looked after our stuff. We all went and sat down by the stage. There were only about 30 or so people around the stage - we got really near the front! Ayesha went off to get ice lollies and she came back with mine - it cost £2.50!!!!!! They had charged up all their stuff to make a massive profit. Thank God we had brought food... There was this big banner across the stage saying "Sahara Hotnights" and had the shadows of the 4 members. There was a drumkit on stage, and mics and stuff. Then, finally, Sahara Hotnights came on.

Sahara Hotnights

Well, I guess they weren't popular or very heard of, because no-one was really round the stage... compared to the massive crowd in the picture at the top which was there for the popular bands! No one was moshing or jumping around, like in all the popular bands. Or screaming, or dancing, or applauding. There was this one older guy with grey hair who was nodding his head in beat to the music and kinda tapping his foot - he had a Sahara Hotnights t-shirt on. Probably their dad or manager or something. They had pretty bad stage presence... they were like "Erm, this song is called blah blah hope you like it" between each song instead of talking to the audience like the other bands. The drummer was REALLY getting into it though, flinging her hair all over the place and wacking her drumkit like it was a poisonous snake or something. But yeah. I kinda felt sorry for them, they didn't get a big applaud or crowd. Their music wasn't too bad actually... not good enough to make me buy any of it though!

Vex Red

I think the drummer was naked, which was kinda wierd. I couldn't see so well as the crowd got way bigger for this act and plus, he was hidden away at the back behind his drum kit. The lead singer had flowers all wrapped round his mic stand which was certianly different. I swear, they turned up the volume so much, I could actually feel my ribs kinda vibrating inside me. There was this annoying fat goth girl behind us moshing really violently, and she kept throwing herself into our backs, which hurt! The music was quite good and the crowd loved them. It was way bigger and there was occassional jumping moments, when everyone leaped up and down (or moshed all over the place). This was a pretty good set. The lead singer spoke loads to the crowd. Everyone was throwing cups of water around too, so I got wet. Oh well.

Andrew W.K.

Who? I think we went to find Ayesha's aunt at this point and skipped the set. No one had heard of them, and they weren't really fantastic anyway.

Less Than Jake

Before Reading, I had never heard of these guys. But they were really cool. The band was kinda varied because there was this guitar player with dreadlocks who looked really hard.. and this other guy who looked perfectly normal and was playing a trombone. Well, the music they played was really good. I kinda want to buy their album now. They spoke loads to the audience and the audience loved them, and was jumping around at every song.

A

One of my friends was obsessing about their song called 'Starbucks' but I had never heard of it. They all looked like really normal guys, not all pierced and long haired and dyed hair etc like most of the guys at the festival. The lead singer didn't even have a guitar, just his mic. But he was nice and jumped down from the stage and shock hands with loads of fans that were right up front, by the barrier. Which was nice of him. The music was pretty good and everyone liked them loads.

The Hives

Couldn't be bothered to listen to them so don't really know what they were about. I think I was eating lunch at this point?????

Sum 41

Ohmigod. We were waiting so long for them to come on stage. They had up this banner for them, with this logo "sum like it loud" which was seriously cool. Ayesha and one of her friends tried to get near the front, so they could mosh but I didn't want to and neither did her other friend, Kate. So we stayed nearer the edge. We could still see part of the stage and we could both see the whole screen. Kate was really worried that we would get pushed apart in the crowd so we ended holding hands throughout the whole set! Everyone probably thought we were lesbians, but what the hell. These guys infront of us, while we were waiting for Sum 41 to get up on stage, started talking to me. Well, one of them did. I was wearing this Emily Strange t-shirt and he asked me what it said. So I had to read it out to him! Then he turned around about 5 minutes later and asked to try on my glasses. I said no and said I couldn't see without them, sorry. But really I suspected he was some pyschotic loser and would throw them on the floor and stomp on them. Then, when Sum 41 FINALLY turned up, everyone started screaming. They were so fantastic! And I could actually sing along to the songs! For the first time! Yay! They talked to us too, and taught the whole audience the Sum 41 salute. It was so cool. The lead singer all told us to yell abuse at him. And hey, we did. They swopped instruments half way through, to proove they were multi-talented I guess. And they so were. Sum 41 rule!

Ash

I wandered off at the start of this, 'cos thought Sum 41 were doing a signing. But they weren't and the queue was like, 10 miles long for this guy I didn't even recognise. So I headed back to the main stage but gave up trying to find Ayesha in the massive crowd. So I kinda walked around while listening to them play. Tim Wheeler's guitar broke, I think one of the strings came off! The backdrop was really cool, Ash's trademark eyes in bright red. One of the band was in a neck-brace thing which looked kinda painful. They did some really good songs, and on the whole it was a great set.

Muse

By the time they came on stage, it was raining. I was wearing this really thick Offspring hoodie I had brought, so I wasn't to cold. But I got really damp from my wet clothes, even if the rain didn't get all the way through. I don't really listen to Muse so I didn't recognise any of their songs, but there was this great atmosphere because everyone loved them. I said to Ayesha, really loudly "The lead singer/guitarist looks like Gareth Gates" which suppose was a big mistake since I was at a rock/nu-metal festival and probably 99.9% of the crowd hated Gareth Gates and similar fake pop acts. ut hey, he had spiky hair. On the whole, it was a good set although wet and cold. The lights were brilliant shining through the rain (it was dark by this time).

The Foo Fighters

I can't believe we missed those guys! I only realised how hard it is to get tickets to their tours after Reading. We couldn't stay because we had to get the train back, which we ended up missing anyway and had to get the bus as well. We heard part of their first number as we were leaving though... it sounded pretty good.

It tooks us ages and ages and ages to actually get out of the site, as it was completely dark and people were walking in all directions. It was so muddy, too, and really wet and cold. I had to walk really fast to keep up with Kate and Ayesha's aunt. It took us so long to get back to the station, then we had to wait around and get in this manky lift. We finally got on the train though, and then took this really nice coach thing then we were picked up by Ayesha's mum. I was too tired to shower when I got back, so I just went straight to bed.

Some more stuff to mention...

1. The smell of cannabis in the air... phew. Alot of people were smoking it!
2. As it got colder, and the sun went down, people started lighting camp fires all over the place. It was really sweet, seeing these lights all over the field. I was walking past one with Ayesha, when this festival official came running past, bellowed "no fires allowed, it against rules and regulations" and extinguished the fire with a mini hose thing.
3. There was one set of female loos in the whole site... you can imagine the queue!!!!!
4. There were no bins so everyone chucked their rubbish on the floor, it was totally disgusting.
5. They were selling all kinds of cool merchandise. I really wanted a Reading t-shirt, but they ran out of the type I wanted. So I bought a poster instead, with all the acts of the festival written up on it.