READING YOUR RIGHTS: A quick trip round Berkshire

The most important thing about the Panic! At The Disco Reading injury, of course, was not the aim of the person identified - on solid evidence - by Stereogum as being a Bloc Party fan. No, it was the gay undertones identified - on equally strong evidence - by Slash! At The Disco:

So, I'm sure you all know about Brendon getting knocked out at the Reading and Leeds Festival this weekend. But have you seen this? It was taken right afterwards. Is that Ryan's hand on his shoulder? Why yes, yes it is.

You'll have to imagine the photo, or follow the SATD link above. We might seem to have no standards, but I'll be buggered if No Rock is going to become fuel for the masturbatory fantasies of Panic At The Disco fans. It's Conor Oberst in his pants being whipped by Evan Dando using a crop made from his own hair, or it's nothing, do you hear?

More violence this evening at Reading, with NME describing the barrage of missiles targetted at My Chemical Romance as "shelling" so unrelenting was it. Of course, Brendan Urie's knocked out, stood up, played on performance had set a precedent that forced any band targetted this weekend to keep going whatever happened, so My Chemical Romance could do little except whine:

[Gerard Way] then introduced a track saying, "This song is called thanks for all the bottles, thanks for all the piss, thanks for all the golf balls, thanks for all the apples and thanks for all the sticky shit."

He then attempted to suggest that his bunch of middle class kids were, in some way, taking the rap on behalf of "the outsiders":

"We might be outsiders today, but we represent every outsider out there".

You're on Warner Records, man. You're not outsiders. I suspect you couldn't even find outside if you had a map and some flunkies to do the door opening.

Jack White found another way to cope, as ContactMusic noted:

The excitement spiralled out of control when festival-goers started throwing cups of beer onto the stage, soaking the band and forcing security to frantically dry off the stage to prevent any slip-ups. But White had no qualms about turning the tables on his fans. An eyewitness says, "Suddenly the crowd at the front went crazy and the band got soaked. Security had to come on and mop the floor down. But White got his own back at the end of the set when he picked up a bottle of water and sprayed the front row."

We love the idea of security turning up with the bucket and mop - "can I do you now, sir?"

David Sinclair, reviewing the festival for the Sunday Times, echoed Conor McNicholas' disappointment with the lack of rapport brought by the Arctic Monkeys - and it seems Alex noticed it, although didn't blame himself:

It takes a certain sort of act to harness this volatile combination of mob psychosis and surly enthusiasm successfully. Arctic Monkeys, for all their band du jour credentials, didn’t quite pull it off. With his increasingly bushy hairdo and sardonic sneer, their singer Alex Turner is beginning to look like a real rock star. But he sounded more like a Northern stand-up comedian as he rattled off his quickfire, narrative lyrics. The group’s spiky, new wave songs delighted the steaming scrum at the front, but lacked the weight needed to punch through to the back under these conditions. “You seem a bit lethargic,” Turner complained to the crowd.

This Is Fake Diy drop by their blog to report that Tapes N Tapes are going down well, while Soundgenerator have got some pictures from the last couple of nights up.

We've been busily debating here the reasons for Brian Molko's number one crop - hiding hair loss? Some sort of infection? Better for the hot weather? A hell of a lot of chewing gum got caught in there and needed to be cut out? A passing blogger, Twisted Freak notes that it makes him look "weird" but offers no suggestion as to what may have led to the hair-cutting.

All this not being at festivals wondering about male pattern baldness makes you wonder if life is going on elsewhere. At least we're not alone. Bluecinders has a Proustian moment, thanks to the Orange network:

My sister sent me a text from Reading Festival with no kisses on the end. I remember when I was young and skinny and trendy and went to festivals and didn't have time to send my family kisses on the end of texts. It lasted about the three months when I started sixth form college and went out with trendy Harry.

music reading 2006 arctic monkeys my chemical romance jack white slashfiction