Muddy fields are supposed to be fun!

So once again I found myself at reading festival albeit only for the one day this year, and by the end I couldn’t help but feel the shadow of old father time chasing me down. I’ll be honest I was finding it hard to be excited about going this year, and this was soon enforced when I decided to check on the line up, only to discover that it was dominated by shit.

Finding the line up to be less than I expected is fine and there’s no problem with that, I’ve felt that way on previous years; however that was not the problem. The problem was that I didn’t know a lot of the new bands that’s were playing! This is not a good feeling, especially when I’ve gone on previous years and been the one to go and see all the bands that none of my friends had ever heard of. Instead I found myself confronted by my younger friend, talking about the bands she’d seen while I’d been wandering around the arena aimlessly waiting for Weezer and Blink 182. Not only had she seen bands she liked, she also stated that there were a few clashes so she’d missed some bands; but that wasn’t a problem as she was going to see the band later in the year. Now you think that’s bad I then of all crazy things found myself saying ‘aren’t you cold wearing that’…WTF!!! Yes I was concerned about her well being but seriously, when I think about it I feel like I was just criticising and basically being a bore.

These truly are bad times.

But then I thought maybe not. When I looked at the acts she went to see they were on the dance tent! I’ve never liked dance music, with the exception of Crystal castles I would happily see the demise of the genre and all of it niches. So I was safe on that account. Then I recalled standing by the main stage to see a huge crowd gathering for Limp Bizkit a crowd consisting of people of all ages but mainly those younger than me. Limp Bizkit just for the record lick balls I’ve never liked them and never will, they were bad in 1999, now their bad and outdated.

Later a huge crowd gathered for Paramour, who criminally were given billing above Weezer, but that’s ok because they went on to prove how inappropriate this was by going on to suck at a spectacular level offering a by the numbers almost forgettable performance. If you saw Weezer that day you’ll know what a memorable performance looks like, thanks to the efforts of rivers. Who came on stage looking like Lewis Tully from Ghostbusters and proceeded to put on the best show I’ve seen in a long time. With genuinely great songs, classics even, which to be fair Paramour haven’t been around long enough to have.

So what was the problem with reading this year? I’ve decided it’s not because of my age because upon closer inspection of my cd’s or more importantly my itunes library, I have lots of new music, as well as some classics. Also a great deal of my younger friends like the same music as me and they listen to the older stuff. The crowd for limp Bizkit proves this. I think that in the end it comes down to the fact that the Sunday at reading just wasn’t a very good day.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that all new music is bad, there are lots of new bands that I like. It just so happened that they weren’t at reading this year. So basically I think the point of all this was that the reading line up sucked this year, at least I’ve convinced myself of this and im sticking to it.