LEEDS!!!!!!! the first

Here be my first part of my Leeds posting part 2 coming soonish.

Friday

The Walkmen - 7 - Solid start to my three days of music. 'Paul Maroon ' guitar work is so different from anyone else and even thou 'Hamilton Leithauser ' had an illness he still hit the high vocal notes.

The Futureheads - 8 - First time I’ve seen these live and it was a treat. Good interaction with the crowd and a short but sweet set.

Hadouken - 1 - Oh dear these where horrible. My mate likes one song so I thought I would them a go and after this I won’t be 'going' anywhere there playing again. The lead singer was a chore to listen to.

Kids In Glass Houses - 6 - Not as good as previous gigs I seen them at but they did a stern job of picking people up after the awful Hadouken!

Frank Turner - 10 - Friday was my 'up in the air' meaning there where hours where I had no fixed band to see. I decided to sit on the grass (it was grass at this point) and listen to the softer sound of the ex 'Million Dead' singer. I used to work who raved on about Mr Turner so I thought I would give him a turn to impress me. He was a revelation he had the crowd in his hand the whole time. Each song impressed me and I will be certainly reaching out to hear his records in the future - you should too.

Zebrahead - 6 - Again my mate wanted to see this band so I headed to my first and only visit to the Lock - Up stage (the line up was mostly crap) to check out a couple of bands. Zebrahead had good energy and the crowd doing circle aplenty but in terms of songs they all sounded far too samey to spark a interest.

Cancer Bats - 9 - Very good, I got my rock on for these. Doing the Beastie Boys cover was immense scream rapping was the name of the game here. Heaviest band I saw all weekend and I received a sore neck from all the head banging!

Enter Shikari - 7 - Only caught a couple of songs as I wanted a good standing position for Arcade Fire. They played my favourite Shikari songs from the two records "Mothership' and 'Solidarity' so I left happy.

Arcade Fire - 10 - Possibly the best act of the three days. Eight genuine talented musicians who played their collective socks off. I didn’t hear the new album before I left for Leeds but it didn’t matter all the new tracks made me want go home and listen to it time and time again. The crowd was small but everyone that was there got a treat instead of the people they went to see - Pendulum - no contest.

Saturday

Thrice - 6 - An ok start to the second day thou Thrice are more suited to smaller stages. Thou they did enough to make them above average and ' Of Dust And Nations' still sounds ace live.

All Time Low - 1 - DEAR LORD!!! I disliked them before Leeds and now I can happily say I hate All Time Low. I'm convinced this band are in the music business just to get laid. Annoying songs even more banter with the crowds, just plain wrong.

Youmeatsix - 4 - I'm not sure if the band have come from a long world tour or where just tired, but Youmeatsix where terrible. They did their best with getting the crowd to mosh and crowdsurf and that's what the marks are for because the songs just didn’t match up. Thou I seen them plenty of times previous so at least I know they can do better.

Limp Bizkit - 9 - My guilty secret of the weekend Limp Bizkit where the first heavy band I was into and I used to play 'My Way' way too much. After I moved on to other, better bands I still managed to rock out to the Bizkit most weeks at my local rock club (The Krazyhouse). So I was looking most forward to seeing them for the first time. Well I wasn’t disappointed. The only gripe was that weren’t on long enough. On a funny note Fred Durst had the exact same gear he had on in 1999 ha-ha.

Kele - 7 - One of the good things about the weekend was I able to catch a few other acts that I originally thought I would miss. So I raced to the NME tent to the Bloc Party frontman. For what I saw it was pretty good Kele played some Bloc Party songs which got the crowd into a frenzy especially 'Flux' which suits Kele new direction in sound.

Cypress Hill - 5 - Literally caught the end of this and what I saw most people didn’t know what to make of them. The two or three songs I saw didn’t annoy me so they get average marks for me.

Weezer - 10 - Weezer where another band I was looking forward to but I weren’t sure how many of the old songs they would play with a new album to promote. Well they only played one track from the new album and played a greatest hits set with a few surprising covers. A small part of Van Halen's 'Hot For Teacher' was :0 enough but then a MGMT (Kids)/Lady Gaga (Poker Face) was surprisingly good. The set was littered with classic songs from the extensive back catalogue such as 'Beverly Hills' (such a cool song) and 'Buddy Holly'. The best part was Rivers (lead singer) who made the show memorable with his antics. Climbing on everything he possibly could and at one point running away from the stage (to the bemusement of the stage guys) and doing a small set in the corner of the field while everyone chased him.

Paramore - 4 - Paramore are a good live band let me put that out there first. Tonight thou they where horrid the sound was horrible as I couldn’t hear Hayley when she spoke and could barely hear the band when they played the songs. This was mostly a singles set, no songs from the first album and the new album played heavily which just showed clearly that Paramore should not of played ahead of Weezer. The new songs where dull live and it killed any buzz that Weezer had built up.

Blink 182 - 9 - Another of my early musical loves that I had not seen before. It was very cool to see Blink play a 90 minute set filled with every good song they have done. No one would be left disappointed unless you where my mates who were convinced that they never played 'Rock Show' even thou it was the third song. What was weird was Tom Delonge who was back to his antics of yesteryear with the penis jokes and just shouting babble. Very strange considering I’ve seen Angels And Airwaves and he was the complete opposite with his world peace speeches. He also missed guitar notes and some song lyrics but he did his best. The best bit was Travis on the drums, when Blink came back for a encore Travis did a 3-4 minute drum solo which included him flipping upsidedown whilst still drumming...WTF. Words never do events like that justice so check below to see what I mean.



Sunday
A Day To Remember - 7 - On my third day I was starting to feel the festival pains (bad back, sore legs etc) due to my sleeping arrangements which will touched upon more in the second part of my Leeds post! Anyway ADTR did a fine job of waking everyone up. Nothing too special as the screamo vocals weren’t nearly as good as they would of been on a smaller stage, but what they needed to do ADTR delivered.

Billy Talent - 8 - Solid performance, funny banter with the crowd. Exactly what I expected from Billy. They are incapable of putting on a bad show.

Two Door Cinema Club - 10 - I rushed to the NME once more to get a good standing place for Two Door. They were much better than I thought they would be. Again the problem was it ended so soon. With one album and average of 3.00 per song that was bound to happen.

The Big Pink - 2 - Erm....next? Felt like I was watching a band for people on the come down from drugs. Luckily I had the right mind to go check LP at the main stage...or did I? On a side note they were still better than All Time Low!

Lostprophets - 5 - Another band I accepted I was going to miss due to band clashes, but luckily I had enough time to catch all there set. The backdrop of MEGA LOLZ - which has to be the most stupid slogan to have on a t-shirt never mind as a backdrop for your set. The performance itself was way below what I’ve seen from LP in the past. Sound issues once again came into play as it was quite windy and I have heard that can affect the noise of the music. Still it wasn’t a joy to watch and it was only when 'Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja was played that I got involved to do my bit of headpounding.

Delphic - 9 - Back at the NME tent where possibly the best part of the weekend was about to be laid out upon me, starting off with Delphic. After a slow start Delphic kicked to another gear and a delivered a performance that shows backs up the potential this band has. It ended with the awesome 8 minute spectacle that is 'Acolyte' - I don’t think I stopped jumping throughout.

Mumford And Sons - 6 - A hard one to score this one because after Delphic me and my friend went to meet another friend who never turned up. While we were waiting the NME tent became packed, so packed that when Mumford And Sons came on we couldn’t get back in. We tried to enter through the side entrance with the problem hit us. Which meant we stuck outside watching them on the screen which wasn’t great as you could hear the crowd in the tent more than the speakers outside. So the score is based on what I saw and heard from the crowd more than the band itself.

Phoenix - 9 - With Mumford And Sons finished a new problem arose - trying to get to in the NME tent as virtually everyone was heading the opposite direction (was anyone else here to see Phoenix?). Luckily after 5 or 10 minutes of being in a pinball machine I reached my destination at the front of the tent. Now people may ask why are Phoenix above Mumford And Sons when they have less of a audience? Well it's simple I would rather see a band with 3 solid albums to their name than a band with 1 extremely popular flavour of the month band. Anyway Phoenix played a brilliant set with a dazzling light show to fully justify their high placement on the billing. The only thing that stopped me giving them a 10 was that there was no songs from their debut 'Alphabetical' which is a sin in my book.

LCD Soundsystem - 10 - I ended my first festival experience in suitable fashion not with Guns And Roses but with LCD - who are playing there last shows in the UK before 'James Murphy’' ends the band. 'Us vs. Them' Get Innocuous' 'All My Friends' this was AMAZING it got to a point where I couldn’t stand still or all the pain that I had gathered over the 3 days would hit me hard. So I just kept jumping and dancing and such silly stuff :D. No encore which was a shame but it was exactly 11pm and I think the cut off point was at that time unless your Axle Rose who got to play till half 11 grrrrr.

That was three days of Leeds. I would say possibly Sunday was my best day as I just had the most fun and overall the performances where better. Here is my best and worst.

Best Performance
1.Arcade Fire
2.Weezer
3.LCD Sound system

Worst Performance
1.All Time Low
2.Hadouken
3.Paramore

Most Surprising Performance
1.Frank Turner
2.Weezer
3.Phoenix