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The Reading and Leeds Festivals, officially called the Carling Weekend, are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England. The events both happen on the bank holiday weekend in August (on Friday, Saturday, Sunday), and share the same bill (usually with one or two exceptions.)

They used to be strongly folk-oriented festivals, now more alternative/indie/punk/metal. The festival will typically have the following stages:-

  • Main stage - major rock/indie/rap acts
  • NME/Radio 1 stage - less well known and breakthrough acts
  • Carling stage - emerging acts
  • Radio 1 Lock Up Stage - underground punk/hardcore acts. Due to demand, this will take up 2 days in 2006, as opposed to 1 day in previous years.
  • Dance tent - dance music acts, on the day that the above stage does not run
  • Comedy tent - comedy and cabaret acts

The festivals are run by Mean Fiddler Music Group and are currently sponsored by Carling. For promotional purposes they are known as the Carling Weekend Reading and the Carling Weekend Leeds.

In 2005 the capacity of the Reading site was 66,500 and the Leeds site was 57,500 but this year both sites have had increases in capacity with Reading now being at 80,000 and Leeds at 67,500. The Reading festival is held at Little John's Farm on Richfield Avenue in central Reading, near the Caversham Bridge. The Leeds event is held in Bramham Park, the grounds of a historic house. Campsites are available at both sites, weekend tickets include camping. Day tickets are also sold.

The line-up for the 2006 festivals was officially announced on BBC Radio 1 on 3 April 2006, with tickets going on sale on this date. Headliners are Muse, Franz Ferdinand, and Pearl Jam.

Early history

The Reading Festival originates from the National Jazz Festival, which was conceived by Harold Pendleton (founder of the Marquee Club in London) and was first held at Richmond Athletic Ground in 1961. This festival, in turn, took inspiration from events held in America. Throughout the years, the festival changed names and moved around sites a few times, being held at Windsor Racecourse, Kempton Park and Plumpton, before finally reaching Reading in 1971.

1970s

The line-up settled into a pattern of prog rock and heavy metal during the 1970s. It did dabble with punk rock in 1978 when The Jam, Sham 69 & Penetration played. The festival attempted to provide both traditional rock acts and new punk bands, leading to clashes between the two sets of fans. Although The Ramones played the following year, the festival gradually became known for focusing on heavy metal and rock acts.

1980s

During this decade the festival followed a similar format to that established in the late 1970s. In 1984 and 1985, the local council reclaimed the festival site for development, and no festival was held. A proposed move to Northamptonshire failed, and a Labour Party council election win in 1986 saw the festival restored to fields adjacent to its original site. By the late eighties, however, the festival was seen as "out of touch" with the new British music scene. In 1987 although the first goth acts appeared on the bill (e.g. The Mission and The Bolshoi), the likes of Status Quo still appeared. In 1988, the festival hit its lowest point with the likes of Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler being bottled off the stage. The festival was declared a disaster and its future was under threat. Things were due to change for the better though.

1990s

In 1989, Mean Fiddler Music Group got involved for the first time. The festival started to change, leading towards its re-establishment in the 1990s as one of the UK's biggest music festivals. Notably, the new indie music of this decade started to appear on the bill and the future of the festival became more secure.

In 1991 Nirvana played the first of their two appearances to a massive crowd. This is also the year the first britpop bands such as Suede and Blur started to show themselves on the festival circuit.

The next year was one of the most famous in the festival history. Nirvana did their last presentation ever in Reading (and also in the UK) and what later became in one of their best concerts. The band's frontman, Kurt Cobain entered in a wheelchair, parodying the speculations about his mental health. Then he got up and joined the rest of the band in tearing through an assortment of old and new material. At one point in the show, Cobain revealed to the crowd the recent birth of his daughter Frances Bean, and succeeded in having the crowd chant "We love you, Courtney!" (referring to Cobain's wife, Courtney Love) in unison.

Over the next few years the festival continued to grow as the popularity of outdoor festivals increased. Britpop and indie continued to dominate along with rock. Notably, rap acts such as Ice Cube began to appear regularly on the main stage.

In 1998 it absorbed the failed Phoenix Festival. This resulted in the infamous on-stage spat between The Beastie Boys and The Prodigy over the song 'Smack My Bitch Up'.

In 1999 the festival gained another leg at Temple Newsam in Leeds, when it was clear that the Reading site was far too small to deal with the demand. Though the 1999 Leeds Festival ran a day behind the Reading leg, a system where the line up of Reading play Leeds the following day, with the bands from Leeds' opening day playing the final day in Reading, soon developed.

2000s

After a successful first year in Leeds, a continued resurgence in the popularity of outdoor music festivals led to the Reading festival selling out more and more quickly every year. The Leeds leg, however, was plagued by riots and violence which led to problems in retaining its licence. Mean Fiddler moved the festival to Bramham Park, near Wetherby to the east of Leeds in 2003. Since then, security at both sites has increased and problems appear to have been quelled. However, this has also lead to an increase in demand. In 2006, Reading sold out in an hour, with only a 'handful' of tickets left for Leeds 12 hours after the sales started *. The lack of a Glastonbury Festival in this year also fuelled the demand for Reading and Leeds tickets.

Musically, the festival has seen a return to its heavy metal roots, though it has retained a large indie, rap and punk influence. The "tradition" of unpopular bands being bottled off (being forced off stage by a barrage of audience-thrown plastic bottles, sometimes filled with urine) has continued; famously, Daphne and Celeste suffered this ignominy in 2000, with Good Charlotte unluckily experiencing this growing trend in 2003. They remained onstage and even encouraged the crowd to throw more. In 2004 The Rasmus were bottled off at Reading and 50 Cent (with urine, fireworks, mud, pieces of furniture and generally anything people could throw) in Reading only. Some question the wisdom of organisers placing 50 Cent, a rap/urban act, in between Placebo and Green Day, both rock acts (although The Streets, a rap act like 50 Cent, played earlier in the day with little or no incident). Mr. Cent lasted nearly 20 minutes at Reading, throwing his microphone into the crowd in anger after a deck chair was thrown onstage. In 2005, Fightstar, despite suffering a barrage themselves, remained playing throughout their entire set as the audience's bottle supply was quickly exhausted. This has given the band, featuring Charlie Simpson an ex-member of pop group Busted, a strike of admiration and praise for being able to remain onstage throughout the incident.

The Arctic Monkeys famously filled the Carling Tents at both festivals in 2005 despite having not officially released any material to the general public at this point. Many remarked they had never seen the Carling Tent so packed - people were standing outside up to twelve metres away, and more and more joined the crowd as the band played. In 2006 it was announced that they would be the second headliners of that year's festival - a remarkable jump up the bill.

The announcement of the lineup and ticket release for the 2006 festival saw weekend tickets sell out in a matter of hours, breaking all records so far, and emphasising the growing desire for live music because of the "rock revival" of the past few years. Weekend Tickets went on sale again recently and went in 26 minutes. Day tickets are also sold out now.

List of Headliners

For a more complete list of recent bills, see Reading and Leeds Festivals line-ups.

See also

External links

Festivals in England | Culture in Berkshire | Leeds | Music festivals | Reading, Berkshire | Rock festivals

Festivales de Reading y Leeds | Reading and Leeds Festivals | קרלינג ויקנד | Festivais de Reading e Leeds

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Reading and Leeds Festivals".

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