Saturday, August 27, 2005

READING FESTIVAL: CRIME HOT SPOT

Normally the number of arrests being reported at festivals are usually comprised of little more than local police picking off kids for minor drug offences to help boost their clean-up rate; but this weekend's Reading Festival sounds a lot like the bad old days of Glastonbury's lawless years.

Yes, there are those drug arrests - a big hand to Thames Valley Police for arresting 65 people where "quantities recovered have mainly been very small for personal use"; unfortunately, while they've been shaking down teenagers with tiny pieces of dope, 265 proper crimes have been taking place - including at least fifty thefts - and people turning up with forged wristbands, in such numbers as to cause concern amongst both the cops and security guys.

In Reading-Leeds Music news: The Charlatans whacked out a nice set balancing old stuff and new stuff (although, having said that they did do some stuff off the underwhelming last album); the NME is describing Black Francis and Kim Deal hugging as them 'burying the hatchet', although they do seem to have been getting on well for the last twelve months to us.

We could get to see all this for ourselves, but ITV (despite its many channels) can't be arsed to do any coverage until Monday, when we get an hour of music, and then an hour of comedy. And the commercial channels complain about the BBC's exclusive access to Glastonbury - at least they put it on the television.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I get the feeling that the NME would utterly love the Pixies to break up again. The whole Kim/Charles tension has been grossly overplayed anyway. It's fabulous that the band are back playing the best shows of their career, but that's clearly not enough for the NME. As for 'new songs', the rumour sprang from an NME hack misquoting Frank Black in the first place.

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