The Domestic Terrorist - Reading 2001

Reading Festival - Reading, Berkshire - August 2001

Sometimes, just sometimes I think of human beings as having evolved. Though today, I doubt it. I've had a glass bottle thrown at me by three drunken idiots simply because I was walking past them. I've seen a barmaid covered in blood whilst some drunken idiot tries to start a fight. I've almost been run over by a woman in a car who decided to drive on the pavement without looking where she was going, and I've had a troop of stupid lads throw something out of a van at me because I just happened to be walking past them.

Normally I try to look for the best in human beings, but it seems at least some human beings are just plain and country simple members of the Shit Family.

And so, Reading 2001, whose most distinguishing fact in the press is a gang-rape in a tent by some idiotic moron. Forget the fact that The Manics played on of their best shows in years. Forget that Iggy Pop played with more gusto that people half his age. Forget the fact that Travis bored for England. (I just did)

First band, main stage, are the notorious Donnas. Young dumb twentysomethings full of youthful punky spunk. Their entire set seems to consist of about thirty one minute songs called "I hate My Ex-Boyfriend". It's about as enjoyable and meaningful how I imagine a quick hand job in an alley might be. Ie. Sometimes quite thrilling, and not very.

The next band I see, is Run DMC. They come on early, and seem to get a massive cheer for doing no more than walking on stage and lifting their posse hands in the air. For a band who are lauded as almost-groundbreaking , their live show is staid and boring. Everybody wave their hands in the air, evcerybody say yeah! I've seen it done before in panto.

The Strokes. Somebody please tell me what the big deal is. Please. They look like a cross between Supergrass and Menswear and sound like very very average US rock. Their lyrics are empty vaccous nonsense, and they add nothing, nothing to the overcrowded palette of boring US rock. The only thing going for them is the fact that the NME and Radio One love them. I saw this lot ten years ago, and they were called Mudhoney then, I'm sure of it. Except now they have no tunes and even less imagination or vision.

Eels start with erm,. GetYerFreakOn, in a set that tumbles and dips before finally disappearing in a fog of mediocrity, boredom, and awful, awful beards. They are the weakest link.

Iggy Pop is an absolute, cast-in-stone, 100% living breathing rock god trapped in the body of a genius. He is the geometry of contempt. This is Not because everyone reckons he is great. It is because he is great and beats the living shit out of every other band on that stage all day by simple virtue of his complete and utter belief in the redeeming, cleansing powers of Rock, and the fact that the gig looks like an exorcism. He has more energy belief and wit than anyone else all day. OK, he plays the Passenger. I Wanna Be Your Dog, Search & Destroy. Name a piece of rock genius from 1969, and he probably plays with lyrics incisive and sharper than a knife. And he changes the chorus of The Passenger to "Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah.."

Gary Numan is an contradiction. His set - on the dance stage - is nearer to the Nine Inch Nails who he loves, and who love him., with big smoke, screeching guitars, keyboardists wearing welding goggles, you name it. And, to coin a word, the tent is, erm, oversubscribed. Which is a nice way of saying he should've been on the main stage.

PJ Harvey is next, clad in bra and black fishnet something or others, she seems to use her sex and her sexuality as a weapon, a defence posture, even though the songs she sings are gentle, tender, and fierce at the same time. There's no denying her talent and ability, and insight into the human condition, is superior than anyone else bar Iggy that day. Her songs mean something, to most of the audience, and to herself. And increasingly rare feat in a world where alternative has become synonymous with the phrase "nonboyband".

And onto the absolute drivel that is Green Day. I haven't missed them - if they split up tommorrow it'll be far far too late. They think they're some kind of punk alternative when all they are are uneducated idiots peddling meaningless songs for teenagers to jump around to. Complete, vaccous, meaningless shit.

And Evan Dando, who oddly enough, despite splitting the Lemonheads (who only ever had one member anyway), returns with a backing band and seems to pay nothing apart from note-perfect lovely, silly Lemonheads songs. I have no idea what songs he plays, or when, or anything, but the woefully empty tent looks sad and unloved. Seems kids would rather jump around to Green Day than appreciate talent.

Ash are next, with their hardcore threeboy-onegirl post punk action. They are a flurry of arms, legs, jumping up and down, raccous activity, and demented breakneck indie-punk stuff. You know Ash - does exactly what it says on the tin and it's not a bad thing at all.

Finally then, to Travis. Grey Grey Grey. Boring. Dull Dull Dull. Absolute crap, dull, tedious, blokerock. The anonymous, visionless shape of the rock future, that makes even The Orb look thrilling. The sound of exhausted apathy, in dull, vaguely miserable, cant-be-bothered-to-be-angry, stadium rock. At least when the Manics did apathetic back in 1998, they put decent lyrics in.

Saturday is national Manics Day. Their fans though are stuck forever, frozen in amber, in a year called 1992, with their homemade shitty shirts, angel wings, eyeliner, and most of them aren't old enough to even remember the time when Richey was in the band. I think I should make a homemade shirt with "I WISH I LIKED THEM IN 1991 BUT I WAS SIX THEN" on it.

Today's bands, bar the Manics show just how sickly modern music is. And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead is just plain oldfashioned unimaginative rock played by long hairs, and everybody who still believes the N*E thinks they're brilliant, where they're just the latest in a long line of pale imitators.

Frank Black is unexceptional at best, but dispatches some stunning Pixies tunes, whilst neglecting the best Pixies-song-that-never-was, the amazing Men In Black. What he does show is that The Pixies were great.

We walk out of Rancid. Yet more American brainless cartoon punk for angry teenagers with mohawks.

Teenage Fanclub are, or were, really good but play a set that just isn't as good as they used to be. They are good, but not as good as they used to be. There really isn't much more to add to it, except they play far too much off their most recent, less tuneful albums, and nowhere enough from the genius that is Bandwagonesque.

Supergrass - I've seen this lot of dozens of times and I've never ever paid, or even wanted to. They've always been in the way, like a fly buzzing around my head. Nuff said.

Feeder have a song about a car called a Jaguar that will go far with a CD player. Is this the kind of crap, brainless drivel we want from our rock stars?

Manic Street Preachers are easily the sexiest, funniest, smartest band on the stage the whole weekend, and they are great. It's like they've reinvented themselves again, and every time they move further and further from the dull, boring Manicslite that characterised their 1998 nadir. Tonight, for the first time since 1992, the start with the incendary, spit-in-your-face taunt of You Love Us, before running through a radically revamped set for the new look Manics. Out goes the big gestures and predictable set lists. In comes the not-played-in-a-decade It's So Easy, the sharp bile of Archives Of Pain, the antique glory of Little Baby Nothing, the pointed Royal Correspondent with a dedication to the imminent demise of the parasite Queen Mother.

And of course, they look fabulous, Sean is all shaved heads and Berets, Nicky is in combats. With The Manics what they wear is never, NEVER, just what they wear. It's also a statement of intent. And tonight, Matthew they are War. Louder Than War in fact, according to the shirts. Behind them screens shimmer and sway, with images thought provoking and violent. Masses Against The Classes revolves around imagery of insects, worms, plant life, and fauna. At the time it meant something "little people - in little houses - like maggots - small - blind - and worthless", maybe?

It's easily one of the best Manics shows I have seen, of the 30 or so I have been to. Even the short version, note perfect of Van Halen's JUMP - "I Get Up. and NOTHING Gets Me Down!" is hilarious, before it segues into should-have-been- the-national-anthem, of Motown Junk. There are still the odd moments of boredom, the tired If You Tolerate This, the played-out albatross that is Design For Life, but the Manics - welcome back. You went away, but now you're back.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws