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Colder than ice: Reading Saturday
It was certainly chilly outside, but were the Arctic Monkeys like dynamite? New tracks showcased slower, more Last Shadow Puppet’s influenced songs and the Reading crowd lapped up the hits.
‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ was dropped early on to warm the crowd up and it seemed to work because by the time ‘When The Sun Goes Down’ started the large crowd were loving it.
A solid performance by worthy headliners but for the second night it looked like the band topping the bill didn’t love it themselves - maybe that’s just their Sheffield nonchalance? They certainly seemed appreciative of the crowd response, but not truly excited to be there.
That can’t be said for The Prodigy, who completely owned the main stage and for me provided the best set of festival so far, plenty of hits, plenty more energy and a great light show got the crowd going crazy.
‘Omen’ and ‘Firestarter’ seemed to get the biggest crowd response, showing that tracks from their new album ‘Invaders Must Die’ sit well against classic hits. As ever Keith Flint and Maxim strode the stage like men possessed giving Arctic Monkeys a lot to follow.
I had to catch some of Beth Ditto from The Gossip's Radio 1/NME headline set on BBC3 when I got back from the Festival, as ever the singer gave her all in a set that saw her running to the crowd, randoms taking over vocal duties and a stage invasion, with a shock of orange hair she proved the band were the perfect choice for the slot.
Earlier in the evening on the same stage The Maccabees played a mixture of tracks from their two albums but early hits still seemed to go down the best, a solid set but without the frantic audience excitement of some of their previous Reading performances.
In the early evening slot on the main stage Ian Brown was a disappointment with very muffled and out of tune vocals. It took a rendition of the Stone Roses ‘Fool’s Gold’ to get the crowd moving and I can’t say it held my interest.
In more positive news, Hockey gave indie-funk good times on the Festival Republic stage and seemed pleased with the large crowd that gathered to watch them. Initially unconvinced, they won me over with a mixture of beats, bass and melody.
As ever at a festival I missed plenty of people I wanted to catch but fortunately The Prodigy gave me enough to smile about and dance to.
Who did you see on Reading Saturday? Who should I have seen? Who am I lucky to have missed?
By Jim Bowes
Josaka is at Reading Festival all weekend and you can keep up with the action with Josaka on Twitter - come and follow us.
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