Leeds Festival

I went to the Leeds Festival and had a good day, I saw quite a few bands, Fightstar, Dashboard Confessional, Panic! At The Disco, The Subways and Body Count. I also watched part of the following peoples sets, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Franz Ferdinand, Primal Scream and The Vines among others.

The highlights to me were The Subways and Body Count. Body Count I first listened to in 1993 when someone lent me a tape. The singer is Ice T, who most people will of seen in a few films. He was one of the first rappers to turn into an actor. Body Count I guess were also the pioneers for the nu metal groups that followed years later. Anyway they played all the major songs, KKK Bitch, Body Count, Voodoo, Evil Dick, There Goes The Neighbourhood and Cop Killer. They finished off their set playing Hendrix's Angel and Ice T's son joined him on stage to sing it.

The Subways were the highlight of the Main Stage for me. They played all the major songs from their debut album (Young For Eternity) including, Rock & Roll Queen, Mary, Oh Yeah and With You. They also played 3 new tracks including "California". I really liked their album which is probably why I enjoyed them but I think other bands there could take some lessons from them on how to interact with the crowd. At one point Billy Lunn (Singer/guitarist) jumped into the crowd and they were clearly enjoying themselves.

Some of the bands were disappointing to me, I wasn't very interested in Franz Ferdinands set at all. I watched the first couple of songs and got sick so went to watch Primal Scream, who started off quite good with "Movin On Up" but then I sort of lost interest after that as well. I was more interested in the bloke who had climbed up one of the supports in the tent while people cheered him on. I got bored of Primal Scream and my feet were killing me, so went outside and sat down by the Nokia tent and could still listen to Primal Scream. After another 10 minutes or so I was still bored so decided to go back to Franz Ferdinand and meet up with the others. I saw the last 2 or 3 songs but they hadn't got any better. I'm not a massive fan as you can probably tell, but it just seamed like there was something missing?

From what I hear Kaiser chiefs were supposed to be excellent, I didn't see them because I was watching Body Count.

I didn't think much of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs either but again I listened to their last album the other day and wasn't very keen on them but its probably just not my sort of music. From the sound of it I should of watched Peaches but didn't realise who she was until I just read a review. Lets just say it was supposed to be very raunchy!!

I couldn't believe how many tents there were in the campsite, there were thousands of them all a couple of inches apart. Another experience was the toilets near the camp site. Think Sara Cox on the radio called them "High Drop Toilets". You go in a cubicle and its just a hole that drops straight into a massive storage tank thing underneath. All of the toilets "drop" into that same huge tank (you can see everything). It obviously stinks and isn't very nice. Luckily I only went to those particular toilets once.

I spent quite a lot on food throughout the day. I think I had 3 pork rolls, 1 beef roll and 2 jumbo Hot dogs. Adding it up I spent £22.50 on that lot. I had about 6 or 7 pints throughout the day as well which were £3 for lager and £3.20 for cider, I mainly drank cider because the first lager I had didn't taste very good.

I enjoyed the day and it was a good experience. I'm not sure how much I would of enjoyed an entire weekend camping though, unless I was drunk for most of it. Will see who is playing next year and will think about going for a whole weekend if the line up looks good. Some tickets actually go on sale next week but I'm not buying any until next year when there is some idea of line up!