Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Festival Republic gets new website

Festival Republic (formerly Mean Fiddler) have a brand new website (http://festivalrepublic.com/home/) with a competition to win a "Golden Ticket" giving access to all next summer's major festivals plus two tickets a month to the Astoria and Astoria 2. Be warned, though that the website is extremely slow and clunky to use!

Sex Pistols for Isle of Wight?

Sex Pistols, who recently played seven UK dates (five nights at Brixton Academy, one in Manchester and one in Glasgow) are tipped to headline the Saturday night (14th June) at next year's Isle of Wight Festival. The band are also rumoured to be headlining the Peace & Love Festival in Borlänge, Sweden in June next year. However, this is all news to John Lydon, who says that talks are "underway" but that nothing is, as yet, confirmed. Watch this space. Maybe Reading/Leeds would be a possibility?

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Maiden NOT playing festival dates?

Iron Maiden have announced the dates on their epic "Somewhere Back In Time World Tour 2008". Despite stating at Donington earlier in 2007 that they would be back in England next summer "in a field with pyramids" the band have announced just one show - at the home of English rugby, Twickenham Stadium, on Saturday 5th July. Tickets are on sale now, and range in price from £37.50 - £50.00.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Police to headline Isle of Wight 2008

The recently reformed Police will close next summer's Isle of Wight Festival, which runs from 13th to 15th June. It will be the band's only UK festival appearance, and indicates that their reunion will last longer than the current world tour, which has seen them play to over 1.5 million people. Tickets for the festival go on sale at 9am on 10th December.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Beer runs out for Carling Weekend

The Reading and Leeds Festivals will no longer be known as The Carling Weekend following the end of the brewing giant's sponsorship deal after nine years. This means that Carling will no longer be the official beer of the festival, so there might be some halfway decent booze on offer from next year! Bring back the Burrow Hill cider! Expect details of a new sponsor in due course.

Friday, November 23, 2007

2008 Carling Weekend rumours

As ever, artists are being rumoured for next year's festival. Candidates so far include Kasabian, The Verve, Rage Against The Machine and My Chemical Romance. I suspect The Verve are extremely likely to play, given the success of their reunion shows. Kasabian and MCR would also seem like near-certainties. Official announcements will appear when the first tickets go on sale in the spring - usually early April.
For a reminder of The Verve at Reading in their heyday (1997), click here and download part of their set that year.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

More Reading live sets online

Over at the Indieglo blog, there are a whole load more Reading Festival highlight sets online in both audio and video form, including:
And also:
Phew, should keep you busy downloading for a while! They're mostly not complete sets, but it's great to hear half an hour each of those mighty performances from NIN and Dinosaur Jr again.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Post-festival facts and figures

Ever wondered what the after-festival clean-up operation involves? Here's the facts:
  • 16 tonnes of rubbish were collected
  • That's 5000 sacks
  • The clean-up took 600 man-hours
The charity collection for Give Me Shelter yielded:
  • 3000 tents
  • 2000 air beds and camping mats
  • 1800 sleeping bags
  • 1800 camping chairs
  • 1000 'soft items' (presumably pillows, etc)

Reading Festival safe

The future of the Reading Festival appears safe after organisers Festival Republic bought 65-acres of the site. This brings Festival Republic's land ownership of the site to 191 acres. The rest belongs to Reading Borough Council. Festival Republic boss Melvin Benn said "This is a very important piece of land and acquiring it was essential to the continuation of the Reading Festival." 
Let's hope they improve the quality of the facilities now they own the site - and build a bridge across the river to the car park!

Reading Festival: The Book

Okay, this has been out since just before this year's festival, but I've had time to read it, and it's excellent. Packed with anecdotes from artists, festival-goers and the organisers, as well as masses of pics to bring memories flooding back (or show you what you missed through drunkenness or absence). The only thing it's missing is the line-ups from each year. Apart from that, it's a corker! Get it from Amazon here.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

'NME' tent on ebay


A tent featured in the NME's Reading Festival review is up for sale on ebay. The tent was awarded the "Most graffitied tent" award, though the seller states that the NME completely made up the story (hey, what's new there!). Bidding starts at £2.00 (postage is £9.95). To see details, click here.

Festival highlights on TV

Channel 4 is showing some festival highlights over the next couple of weekends...
Saturday 15 September, 12.15am : Bestival, including The Beastie Boys, Madness, Primal Scream and The Gossip (repeated on Sunday night at 12.10am).
Saturday 15 September, 1.00am: Snow Patrol from the Isle of Wight Festival.
Saturday 22 September, 11.25pm: Foo Fighters at V 2007.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Festival sets to download

A selection of Reading 2007 sets (or partial sets at least) are available to download via the Inieglo blog. The files are linked to Rapidshare, so be quick. There are about ten sets to download, including Ash, Kings of Leon, Razorlight, Maximo Park and The Gossip.
See the Indieglo Reading 2007 downloads blog, click here

Pumpkins' Reading set online

Smashing Pumpkins' Reading Festival 2007 set is available for download at the Internet Archive. It appears to be in two parts (one audience, one from a webcast) and is missing the last song.
For part one, go here
For part two go here

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Check out the BBC's Reading coverage

BBC Online has masses of Reading coverage, including interviews, photo galleries and 360° panoramas of the festival... wonder where they got THAT idea from? Relive it all here

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Nirvana's 1992 Reading show on DVD

The final UK appearance by Nirvana - at the 1992 Reading Festival is set for release on DVD on September 24. You can pre-order from play.com - click HERE to see details. I don't know yet if this is the full show, or what extras (if any) the DVD will contain.

2007 festival poll in this week's NME

The latest issue of the NME has the results of a reader poll to discover such things as the best festival band of 2007, the longest toilet queue etc. On sale now for £2.10 - the poll can't be any worse than last week's shoddy review of Reading, which (in typical NME style) majored on the sort of over-hyped here-today-gone-tomorrow bands the rag is so keen on. Nine Inch Nails (the band of the weekend) only got a tiny mention.

Reading 2007 from the air

It all looks so pleasant from a thousand feet up...

fatreg.com news now in blog form

OK, in an attempt to at least try and keep the site up-to-date, the news will now appear in the form of this blog. Let me know (once I've found some news to post) whether you like it or not!

Reading 2008 tickets sold out!

The advance sale tickets for Reading/Leeds 2008 have sold out in under a week. Don't panic - as usual there'll be another "release" when the main bands are announced next April, and more in early summer.