Reading Festival 2008
In recent years the title of Britain's favourite festival has slipped away from Glastonbury under the pressure of bad weather, average line-ups and sound difficulties.
Meanwhile the organizers of Reading and Leeds have built a brand towards which fluorescent adolescents have flocked en masse by carefully compiling a three day extravaganza from a range of established arena and stadium rock bands alongside the crème de la crème of NME endorsed acts.
Arguably though, this push towards the Radio One market has come to the cost of your more ardent metal-head who used to enjoy his time at Reading by throwing bottles of his own urine at the more tepid afternoon acts before pushing himself in the face to the beat of the heavier evening acts like a sadomasochistic metronome.
The arrival of Dizzee Rascal onto the main stage midway through the Friday afternoon provided a fine example of this gravitation towards the teenage market.
Greeted by a swathe of screaming fans the grime minister was preaching to crowd of rabid converts and delivered a hit packed set in which older material such as the likes of Fix Up Look Sharp mixed well with the new, particularly a storming Dance Wiv Me.
Equally later at the NME stage, the double-billing of MGMT and Vampire Weekend provided a similar crowd make up with drastically different results.
MGMT, whose Time To Pretend has become something of an anthem among the Skins generation with its fusion of prog and dance, dismally failed to deliver, interspersing their better know songs with three minute instrumentals and nonsensical banter.
Vampire Weekend's plug in and play approach went down much better instead with every other song providing a mass sing-along.
So far so face-melter free, however, such was the popularity of one band T-shirt on the Friday that you suspect that Melvin Benn could have put Rage Against The Machine alongside identikit indie for the whole weekend and there would have been few complaints.
Of course, the band themselves came nowhere near to disappointing the expectant masses delivering a blistering mix of rap, riffs and politics.
Killing In The Name Of particularly inspired an almost field wide mosh pit the likes of which I had never seen before.
Despite a continuing dearth of 'rawk', Saturday still delivered it's fair share of magic in the form of many acts for the vinyl-junkies and music lovers.
Early highlights were provided by an energetic Joe Lean and The Jing Jang Jong and a thoroughly endearing Mystery Jets performance. 12»
