reading festival 2009 round up

[now updated with the bbc's tiny slice of covereage from their highlights]

delayed blogging due to a few weeks of being busy and last week was reading fest weekend! last year was my first year there and it was awesome. so far i've been to v festival 2007, glastonbury 2008, reading 2008 and 2009. v fest just felt like a big lifeless corporate money maker (kinda how you'd expect i guess). glasto is just the king of festivals mostly for it's shear size, atmosphere and diverse lineup. but band wise i'd say for me reading fest is the strongest.

last years headliners (rage, killers and metalica) seemed much bigger to me compared to this years (kings of leon, arctic monkeys and radiohead) but i'm a big kol fan and i like most arctic's stuff so that's good enough for me (sorry, i just don't know enough radiohead to call myself a fan).

probably the best news though was rumors of them crooked vultures doing a secret set on one of the side stages. there were already rumors they'd be there a few weeks before the festival but i managed to confirm the rumors were true on the saturday with the help of an iphone and twitter (it's awesome when twitter comes thru and you find a really good use for it) as they played the leeds festival the day before. so i knew where they'd be on and at what time! perfect!

here's the short clip from bbc's highlights. mcfly!? fuck off.

we got there about four bands before they were due to play so we could get right to the front for them. the plan worked brilliantly and by 4pm we were about two rows from the front - which was worth it even if we did have to put up with patrick wolf's set. by then the place was pretty rammed, the crowd were riled up and there had been alot of moshing to even bands you wouldn't expect it for.

after what felt like forever of setting up and mic checking they finally emerged. everyone went mental. and once they started playing they went even mentaler. as expected they sounded amazing. however in all the mentality my pocketed iphone somehow became depocketed. so if your wondering where my pictures from the weekend are, they are probably smashed up somewhere in that field. here's what it was lost in - there will be a handsome reward if you can spot it. was quite a bazaar experience being equally excited and gutted at the same time. but not to worry, review of my shiny new iphone 3gs is probably coming up sometime soon. plus i managed to score tickets for them at freaking plymouth in december!

after the m.i.a iphone had pissed on my festival poncho it was time to get on with the festival good times. one thing i thought was very weird this year is how the the bands before the headliners (with the exception of kol/kasiers friday night) just felt more powerful and had a better atmosphere than the actual headliners. wtf is up with that!? on saturday the prodigy were fuckin awesome, great band, great songs, the crowd went apeshit (as expected) ... arctic monkeys were fuckin dead on stage, as was the crowd. exactly the same happened on sunday with bloc party rocking the party and radiohead killing it. very weird, but i guess radiohead were never really gunna rock the party.

on friday night we dodged the kasiers and went to see friendly fires on the nme stage instead. wow, what a good call. they were infinitely better. i really like their album so we great to get to see them live. after them it was back to the main stage for some king of leon action. i'd say they were the best headliner even if they were pissed off but i would have liked to hear more from their first two albums. ho hum, t'was great to see them live again though.

and that was about my reading festival. one more thing before i'm done. it's great seeing all these cool bands in one place over one weekend but sometimes you do need something to break up all the music - which is where the alternate stage comes in. we tried to get into the tent on friday to see some of tim minchin's set. i don't know much of his stuff but what i heard was good. on sunday we caught quite a odd choice for reading which was a lecture on watchmen. was interesting to see what was basically a film studies lecture at a music festival, but did help break up the music a bit, so that was cool.

later on that afternoon we managed to catch adam buxton's bug show thing. it wasn't what i was expecting but still very cool. if your new to bug (as i was) he basically shows a series of cool music videos from artists you've never heard of with a few of his own songs/videos mixed in. here's one of my favorites from the ones he showed at reading:

now the song will go round in your head all day again and again and again and again!

ok that'll do. end blog post.

podcast playlist

well i've managed to add some cool new mp3 player widgets to the sidebar of the blog now. one of them has replaced the flashplayer for the band covers (which i've also added a song to) and i thought i'd use another to share any other cool audio goodness i find online. don't worry i won't have them autoplay when you visit (cos i hate that, yes i'm looking at you myspace!).

i figured i'd start by just sharing some podcasts i listen to, which at the moment mainly consist of adam & joe on 6music.

if you havn't seen or heard any adam & joe (where the HELL have you been for the past 10 years!) give them a listen and see what you think - it's one of my favorite podcasts. if you are already a fan of their current 6music podcast you should definitely listen to their old xfm podcasts still avalible for FREE on itunes if you haven't for whatever reason.

another favorite is the ricky gervais podcast. these are probably the funniest podcasts out there so i can't recommend them enough. the first series is also still free on itunes so give them a listen when you've got time. they've done about 4 more series since, which they started charging money for (but they can be found online elsewhere if you look hard enough).

now a couple for lost fans. first one is kinda obvious: the official lost podcast. the shows executive producers damon lindelof and carlton cuse answer questions sent in from lost geeks. being a pretty big lost fan i'm interested in any extra clues on offer from anyone working on the show so this is all good.

the official podcast is good for most casual lost fans but if you wanna get really hardcore try listening to the o.d.i lost podcast. these are some pretty big lost geeks who will analyze any and everything from the show and also share some interesting theories. if your hardcore you should like, if your casual or just not a lost fan this is probably not recommended :)

that'll do for podcasts for now. try out this weeks adam & joe podcast in the sidebar on the right and keep an eye out for any new stuff i add to the playlist.

what podcasts do you listen to? leave a comment below or @reply me on twitter.

in an unrelated matter, celebrity deaths have been all the rage this week so for no reason here's jeff goldblum, he will be missed:

glastonbury 2009 round up

the first and arguably the biggest music festival of the year just ended this weekend and it looked pretty awesome as always. i didn't actually go this year (two main reasons: the lineup for the most part didn't appeal much to me and i had no way of getting there or back) but i did go last year and had a really great time. glastonbury seems to be famous for it's weather issues (i don't understand why they don't move the festival to july/august time) but it seems both this year and last year seem to have been pretty varied but mostly dry, from what i saw anyway and i saw alot.

i spent most of the weekend watching the bbc coverage which i really can't fault. 6music had full coverage all weekend just playing live music from the festival with an extra weekend dose of adam and joe - 6music ftw! they also showed a wide selection of all the good bands and the stuff i wasn't really interested in on bbc 2 and 3, but with the red button stuff too at least i could pick and choose who i wanted to see and when. the only way the bbc could have done a better job would be to replace the retarded hosts (bring back adam and joe!) or do away with the hosts altogether and just play some bands. nobody gives a fuck edith! nobody is watching this for your awkward "banter" with reggie dickhead yates! get back to the music already!

one of the particular highlights for me would have to be pendulum. i saw them live last year at the reading festival and that was a pretty incredible experience. i wouldn't even say i'm that big of a pendulum fan but live they are immense! really get the crowd going, check them out:

quick list of other bands there that i thought looked really good live: bloc party, yeah yeah yeahs, kasabian, prodigy, fleet foxes, the ting tings, maximo park, franz ferdinand, doves and friendly fires. that said some of these i'll be seeing at reading festival this year :)

one of the things that put me off going this year most was the headliners. don't get me wrong a diverse lineup is probably one of glastonbury's biggest strengths but this year's just didn't appeal much for me. except one.

blur was probably the first band i actually liked when i was young so i was looking forward to seeing what they'd do. i know alot of their songs but there's so many you forget and seeing them performed live it just looked awesome. they played 24 songs in total and ended on the universal.

probably not my favorite blur song but that's the only clip i could find :)

to see more of glastonbury be sure to check out more on the iplayer while it's online or i think it'll be on bbc 3 during the week too.

after seeing the highlights i'd say i'm pretty set on going next year regardless of the lineup (which normally isn't announced till the tickets sellout anyway). plus i think next year is the 40th glastonbury festival so they should have something special planned.

see ya there! :D

quick links info

thought i'd do a quick post just explaining what the quick links are on the right of me blog. they're basically a few site's i like and go back to every now and then so if your reading this maybe you might too. so with the help of my brain and wikipedia (both of which never lie...) here goes:

first is zero punctuation - this is a video game review series created by video game journalist ben “yahtzee” croshaw. he does awesome animated game reviews every week so if your into gaming give this site a go - it's a great afternoon killer and very funny.

cinemassacre is the creation of james rolfe (aka angry video game nerd). it was the first place to feature his old game reviews and now he uses this site to talk about and review movies.

ashens is another reviewer of shit games but his mostly centre around cheap made in china tat and generally quite funny.

adam & joe radio show is a radio show featuring adam & joe ... doesn't need much explaination really does it? anyway they are great, as is their show so either join black squadron or download the podcast but give them a listen sometime.

screenwipe is charlie brooker's tv fucking great tv series. for some reason it airs on bbc four which nobody watches. it's a tv show basically taking the piss out of tv shows. judging by how much shit is on tv i'm all for this and agree with everything this guy has to say.

charlie brooker also writes for the guardian and this is a link to his column titled screen burn. basically screenwipe in text form.

pogue's blog is written by technology writer david pogue. he covers all kinds of technology related cool stuff, so i like to check here now and then.

llewtube is robert llewellyn (kryton off of red dwarf)'s web site. he does this series called car pool where he drivers a comedian somewhere and records the chittle chattle that transpires. it's pretty good. 'nuff said.

fail blog you've probably already heard of from youtube. it's basicially an achieve of people failing with hilarious consequences... meh anyway give some videos a look sometime it's normally quite funny.