Reading Festival vs. Pukkelpop
With similar line-ups and just a week apart, both are loveable and fabulous in their own right, but this year Felix went the whole hog and bowled into Europe just in time for one of Belgium’s largest music festivals, Pukkelpop, and then ambled back in time for British summer’s last hurrah at Reading Festival. You could be forgiven for thinking of Pukkelpop as Reading and Leeds’ younger though physically bigger cousin, but I have a feeling if you scaled Reading Festival up the same capacity many might not survive to tell the tale! Reading held 80,000 people where Pukkelpop had 130,000 and 194 bands! Yet there is something about the sloping intimacy of the Reading site that makes it seem absolutely overflowing with people as well as bigger than it actually is while somehow though larger, the layout of the Pukkelpop site was such that it did not seem the 10 acres bigger and the stages always seemed moderately packed but not rammed.
For those of you who do not know anything about Pukkelpop, the Belgian festival began life with one stage hosting seven bands and just three thousand people on a football pitch in 1985. From humble beginnings to having seen almost all major names in alternative rock of the past twenty years, the festival has been going from strength to strength with a burgeoning dance presence in the last decade. This year of 2007 saw The Smashing Pumpkins reunite to headline almost all major summer festivals worldwide, making their third appearance at Pukkelpop since 1993.
The main site of the Festival is pretty huge and very heavily sponsored. Mobile phone banners and Coca Cola emblems are everywhere but at least it is on the whole tastefully done. A lot of time, money and effort has obviously gone into not only the organization but also the construction of the site. The stages are huge and the tents are enormous and boast sound quality you can only dream of experiencing back home. The Dance tent was the most awe inspiring thing, as big as an actual club back home in London and fully fitted with screens at intervals that dropped down along the ceiling and the most incredible scalectrix track of moving green LED lights above you this was perfectly designed and certainly the most ubertastic dance tent I have ever been in at a festival. The second dance arena was almost as big, an actual tent with funnelled tops and an impressively and decorated inside with enormous glass baulbauls splattered with random coloured paint markings and balloons hanging form the top.
The attention given to the dance areas clearly mimics the popularity of dance music and I have to admit it seemed if not the most popular genre, as popular as the rock music side of things. It makes Reading’s dance stage look like a muddy tent in someone’s back garden by comparison and really made me think how shameful it is that after all this time Reading and Leeds have not revamped their tents, or at least invested in some really well laid ones with decent flooring which could transform the atmosphere entirely.
The Campsite was situated on a massive area of fields that had been transformed, for the duration of the festival, into sea of tents. You had to physically leave the festival site and cross a busy main road to get there, but Police were on hand at all times to halt traffic at intervals allowing a safe passage to and from your tent. This minor inconvenience was soon forgotten once inside the camping area however. Ample space was kept ordered with many a steward directing campers into spots so that the site would fill evenly and leaving clear pathways for access to the well thought out cleaning areas and well as slightly less frequently placed toilets. There was a large shower facility, with even larger queues, and on the opposite side an area designated for hanging out and cooking.
The fields were in better condition generally than those at Reading, with good drainage, and much more thought had been given to the welfare of campers in terms of how easy it was to keep clean, access chill out areas and cooking facilities.
Although we did not have photo clearance for Pukkelpop, we were able to use the media facilities and the press area was pretty full although seemingly pretty lackluster.
Like other European festivals the site runs on a token system for food and drink and prices, although reasonable, were in no way cheap. The token system meant that service was fast but I didn’t find the choice inspired nor particularly appetizing on the whole, believe it or not British festival fare, especially at Reading, has become increasingly specialized and gourmet over the years. That said, you would not starve: watery burgers with onions, hot dogs, chips, Vietnamese spring rolls and big pitta kebabs abounded, but it wasn’t the home made burgers and hog roasts or Thai chicken curry chips I had been used to at Reading.
There was also no area of stalls like at Reading, although really apart form general mementos and knickknacks I doubt you are missing much but most of Camden’s rejects and old army surplus or hippie tie dye anyway.
The Belgian’s are obviously a moderate and subdued bunch, probably a lot to do with the fact that their drinking culture is founded on sociability and based around half pints of readily available delicious beer you want to savour, not a Carling in sight, and glasses of generally fine standard French wine. There were no bars selling spirit drinks at the festival for example, and admittedly this meant festival goers were on the whole more sober, but I was irked as I can drink neither wine nor beer and feel that should I wish to drink spirits I am responsible enough to decide how much I can drink before becoming a threat to society. I also believe people should always be given a choice, as one can always use proportional pricing to guide buying toward the favoured option anyway. This particularly European attitude to sociable drinking translates to very amicable people and the crowds were enthused and happy enough, certainly polite and well spaced, with none of the moshing or crowd surfing you find at similar British festivals. If you want to get right to the front of any stage, it is as surprisingly easy as just weaving your way over there and people generally tended to move around a lot from stage to stage rather than camp out in one place to keep their spot or to see the whole line-up at one tent or stage. This fluidity was wonderful and meant you didn’t feel pressured to rush to each band if times clashed as you knew you would be able to view the bands as comfortably from the beginning as arriving mid way through.
Bands received attentive though underwhelming reactions from the crowd and it was somehow rather deflating to be around people who appear so utterly unfussy over what they are experiencing. Just one example would be watching The Kings Of Leon who were on at mid-afternoon at Pukkelpop and for whom there was a modest crowd who sang along and bopped a bit I the sunshine to their set. Cue reading, where they co-headlined the main stage to a packed and eager audience Pukkelpop I was able to get right to middle of the front barrier of the main stage for the Saturday night headliners The Smashing Pumpkins during the changeover from the previous band, something I could only dream of doing had I been glued there to the barrier staking out my space form about early afternoon at Reading.
The one thing I did find slightly bemusing and overall a tad exasperating was the lack of joy and excitement there was for the bands. For as annoying as being crushed to death at your favourite band is, or not being able to get within 50 yards of a stage or even inside a tent, it undeniably lends each experience with a feeling of passion and of uniqueness, of being present for a life changing event , something everybody around you is just as fired up and desperate for as you.
Less homogeneous and with far more hard core music fans, Reading’s punters can be in some way sorted into the pre-university set, the musos, the rockers and the festival diehards. Indeed, the festival was packed as ever and full of kids who don’t look old enough to get into most gigs, mostly just fresh form GCSEs or A-levels and absolutely ready for the action and the next big thing. Musically, this means they were all trying to get into the Carling Stage when Kate Nash played, and it was so full you could hardly see the stage, let alone get within 50 feet of the tent. Tea cloth scarf wearing boys swung from the tent ropes vying for a better look and groups of girls in threes giggled and waved the flags that had been strategically left around. The mood was happy and like most of her songs, triumphant. It’s a slice of ‘the kid’s’ world, but it was not thankfully, the main vibe and trend permeating the festival
Bands that had been good at Pukkelpop just blew your mind at Reading. Nine Inch Nails were tremendous and the Pumpkins set and light show was a real spectacle. The artists feed off the crowd and that in itself helps make the shows so good. This year Reading did it’s best to be as music forward as possible and featured a new stage, The Alternative Stage, which took over the Comedy Tent on the Saturday night from about 7pm. The Stage was curated by Transgressive Records, a small yet mighty force in new indie music right now. Bands from their label as well as peers in the audio visual world gave the modest but eager crowd who made it over a feast for the eyes and ears. Jeremy Warmsley, Battle and played with Three Caged Tigers being a top highlight of the evening. Reading Festival will always have a place in my heart as it took my festival virginity and has delivered me some of the most rocking moments in my band loving and gig watching life. Pukkelpop was a fantastic voyage into a world of super awesome festival sound and clean camping. But the dirt and the grime and the down right rock and roll wins every time... Long Live Reading!
