Photo by Ben Coneybeare
A feature in which one party enthusiast goes to some of the best (and not-so-best) events in wherever he happens to be at the time and gives his objectively correct opinions on them. This time, we take a look at Reading Festival, where the only thing more impressive than the popularity of the acts performing is quite how grimy everything still manages to be.
At this point, everyone knows the stereotypes levelled against Reading (and to a lesser extent, its rowdier Northern cousin, Leeds ). If conventional wisdom is to be believed, it’s a festival attended exclusive by sweaty teenagers who drink three Strongbow Dark Fruits, revert to a state of primal savagery and take occasional breaks from wallowing in their own filth to go and jump around to the music of overly-poppy headliners that just can’t hold a candle to the ‘real’ music of years past. Armed with a team of researchers, a detailed questionnaire and the spirit of scientific curiosity, I could have done a detailed demographic survey of this year’s attendees to see whether any of these accusations hold any water. Unfortunately, I had none of those things, so I had to settle instead for wandering around the main arena making a mental note of all the debauchery I saw (of which there was plenty).
The main reason why it matters so much to me whether Reading Festival is really as underwhelming as they say is that, without it, the town of Reading really has nothing going for it. Outside of the festival, its one redeeming feature is a well-connected train station that, through being part of the Elizabeth line, allows me to shamelessly tell everyone I meet that I am in fact from West London. However, I think it speaks volumes about the nature of Reading as a place that its most attractive feature is how easy it is to leave. Merton college may be where fun goes to die, but Reading is where fun goes to get its nails pulled out with pliers and forced to watch Riverdale. Everything in Reading, from the dead pigeons scattered every couple of yards to the skyline that looks like the world’s most depressing game of Tetris, is just the most soul-crushing shade of grey. On top of that, all the permanent residents act like they are suffering from an infection of the rage virus from ‘28 Days Later’. I can say with complete sincerity that I once witnessed a group of fourteen-year-olds square up to a sixty-year-old man in broad daylight. In the middle of the main high street. On a Tuesday. As someone who has lived in Reading pretty much my whole life (a fact which I am still yet to forgive my parents for), being able to say we have one of the best festivals in the United Kingdom offers a ray of hope amongst the clouds that seem to perpetually block out the sun here (which shockingly, are also grey).
The other reason why I have such a weirdly deep sense of emotional attachment to this particular festival is that I happen to work there. Those who know me well will undoubtedly be shocked that it has taken me so long to mention this fact, given the near-pathological regularity with which I usually bring it up. Seriously, I reckon if you took a shot every time I managed to shoehorn this little bit of trivia into an otherwise unrelated conversation, your blood alcohol content would soon only be matched by Kanye West any time he promises he is going to let you finish. It’s not that I mention it just to be pretentious, given that my work usually consists of putting up fences, constructing tables and moving Port-a-loos by hand (hardly what anyone would consider the most glamorous tasks in the world). It’s more the case that it’s such a rich source of anecdotes and name drops that it inevitably seems to worm its way back into the conversation. Plus it makes me sound way cooler than I actually am. So as I said, not just to be pretentious. Did I mention I’ve met AJ Tracey?
So this year, after a long, gruelling week of (you guessed it) putting up fencing while inhaling enough dust to mimic the effects of a twenty a day cigarette habit, I was more than looking forward to just getting to enjoy the festival weekend. Naturally, because the universe exists only to spite me personally and there is no God, ‘enjoying the festival weekend’ actually translated to ‘getting up at 5am to move limes around in a buggy and then spending a fourteen-hour shift dropping supplies off to all the bars’. I am admittedly a pretty terrible driver, but I am proud to say that this year I did not once get caught accidentally reversing over a crate of Redbull. On completely a completely unrelated note, we never did find out how all those Redbulls ended up so crushed. For the most part, the work wasn’t actually that difficult, but when the Pepsi-Max bar, which only serves drinks that involve Pepsi-Max, wait until they have completely run out of Pepsi-Max before asking for more, things could get a little hectic.
What this meant in terms of getting to draw my conclusions about the festival is that while, on the one hand, I wasn’t able to fully immerse myself in the experience the entire time, on the other, my observations were conducted from a more impartial, detached and (relatively) sober perspective. I saw plenty of acts, even if I wasn’t able to shove politely make my way right to the front like I usually would. By the end of it, I came to understand exactly how a young David Attenborough must have felt when he watched a troupe of chimpanzee’s fight over scraps and throw faeces at anyone who came too close.
At this point, I am sure many of you will feel that it its extraordinarily harsh on the chimpanzees to compare them to the average Reading Festival goer, and perhaps you are right. I’m fairly certain that a chimp would only ever throw a bottle of its own urine at me in self-defence, whereas many of the Tik-Toks I saw in the days after the festival certainly looked like acts of random aggression. If you haven’t guessed by this point, it is with great sadness that I must conclude that all the negative press given to the crowds at Reading Festival is more than well earned. They brawl, they burn everything they can get their hands on and they mosh pit to every single song that gets played. I’ve even seen a sizeable pit open up in the queue for one of the fairground rides, which is truly shameful.
Yet those in flimsy pop-up tents should not throw stones (or bottles of their own urine), and as someone who themselves attended Reading Festival as teenager, I must confess that I was equally ill-mannered, boisterous, and generally unpleasant. As such, I can forgive most of this unseemly behaviour. Everyone has to have their first festival somewhere and if we can quarantine this nonsense to just Reading Festival and avoid transmitting it to other, better events, we should all just accept it. If it bothers you that much, simply don’t camp.
That being said, the one thing I absolutely refuse to excuse or justify, the most insidious crime of all, is the incessant chanting of ‘whoop-there-it-is’, whether it at all matches the beat of the song or not. I can barely put into words the blinding rage that overcomes me when I hear an otherwise decent tune defiled with such foolishness. If I’m ever next to you in a crowd, and you try to start up that chant, I promise you I will start swinging, and I don’t mean that in the way that a married couple looking to spice things up would.
So that is one half of Reading’s reputation confirmed, but what about the other half, the claim that there just isn’t any ‘real’ music there anymore? Even just typing those words I felt myself become 50% more snobbish and out of touch. The brute fact of the matter is that the demographic that loudly complains about the perceived decline in the quality of the music at Reading Festival are the same group of people that don’t think rap music is real music and unironically use the phrase ‘back in my day’ whenever they condescendingly lecture anyone younger than them. Times change and in case these people haven’t noticed, rock music in general is no longer as popular as it once was. It would make no sense for a festival with nearly 100,000 attendees to bend over backwards to cater to the tastes of people who make up a tiny fraction of their revenue. As I said before, if it really bothers you that much, no one is forcing you to attend. I’m sure there are plenty of other places to go and watch Kings of Leon or Liam Gallagher milk every last drop of cultural mileage they have left. Let the kids have their fun and in a couple of years, I’m sure the staff at the nursing home would love to hear all about how great Reading Festival used to be in the good ol’ days.
In conclusion, will I ever be attending Reading Festival as a punter again? Probably not. It firmly belongs to the 14-17 age group now, and that’s not the worst thing in the world (at the very least it gives me a smug sense of superiority when making fun of it). Will that be the last I ever see of it? Who knows? Did I mention I work there?
Rating: 2.5 uncontrolled blazes / 5