The Carling Weekender: Reading
About time too! I'd never have guessed it would take four long years to follow up Leeds 2002 and a lot has changed since then, both within and around me. Good music has surely reached a ridiculous plateau of popularity in 2006 after years of steady growth, beginning with the astonishing selling-out of Glastonbury 2003 in an hour. Bands such as Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and, most significantly, Arctic Monkeys, are enjoying insane success and have frustratingly left me by the wayside as their live shows are now almost impossible to get tickets for. I've stated elsewhere and now I'll say it again: the point where I start to resent their success is when I'm no longer able to pay £12 to amble along to check them out in mid-sized venues to decide if I like them or not, and being deprived of the live viewing means I never get into them as much as I'd wish. Of course I have managed to see some top gigs, and am very proud of the gigging record I have maintained, but the chance to see the most important bands of 2004-2006 (Franz, Kaisers and Monkeys respectively) was something that could now only be done properly at a festival. This festival in fact!
After being robbed of the festival experience in 2003 (the missed Benicassim festival we'd actually got tickets for), embarking on a boycott in 2004 and being held back by the disinterest of others in 2005, it seems frightening to think prices have gone up by £45 since Leeds 2002, and doubly terrifying that they'd still sell it out at twice the cost. And I still can't believe that getting others to come to festivals is still difficult, as it's just about the most fun you can possibly have and works out cheap compared to other holidays! Luckily, Nick and Ali didn't put up any fuss in deciding to come along, and things went as smoothly as they possibly could have done. I was also very conscious that I was getting older and had barely survived the two-day V2000 festival. However, apart from being a bit more prone to sore feet and wanting to sit down a lot more, I'm quite pleased with how I held up, even if I kept the moshpits to a minimum.
My primary change in approach was intensely trying to see as many bands as possible, hopping between stages and trying to not miss anyone. This contrasted with the get-to-the-front-and-stay-there-all day method, and the jury is still out on which is more enjoyable. I just can't decide if this was better than Leeds 2000 or 2002, and certainly don't feel it was as special as V2000. In many ways it was superior, which is nicely summarised by the stat that I saw 35 bands at Leeds 2000 (seven of them so briefly it barely counts) but at Reading I caught FIFTY THREE acts. It was also far and away the greatest festival I'd been to from an organisational viewpoint, as they'd actually put some thought into people wanting to get into and out of the site! I was worried that with wandering to and fro so much that I wouldn't be in the best position for some of the favourites, but there were only a few occasions when my plan really let me down. Anyway, enjoy the map below that beautifully sets out the lay of the land, and prepare to read about my Reading Festival Experience in ludicrous depth and detail!
Reading Richfield Avenue
25th/26th/27th August 2006
£135.00
