Bank Holiday Weekend
Aug. 23rd, 2002 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burntcopperIt's officially started. Go outside and you can hear the bands from the main stage at Reading Festival in the distance.
I always get quite confused and amused by this. Reading is not a famous, landmark mecca town, like Manchester or London or Liverpool or Brighton. You don't go on holiday or there for a mad weekend of clubbing or shopping. We're a town where people raise their children and work. The only famous things we've got going for us are the fact we have the first written piece of music on the wall of the Abbey and the fact that we incarcerated Oscar Wilde. Seriously. That's it. It's one of those places people come from. But once a year, every August Bank Holiday, thousands of people head to Reading with camping gear on their backs to go to the Festival on the Rivermead site. It's the longest running music festival in the UK, dating back to the fifties when it was the Blues festival and a tad more sedate. It doesn't have the mythos of Glastonbury, but it's there. It survives. It's supported by the local community and is one of the few where the local food shops and camping shops benefits. yep, it's unashamedly commercial, but there's never been an overreaching ethos like Glastonbury and it's never pretended to be anything it isn't. It's massive amounts of music and three days in a tent, and great fun the years I've been.
I always get quite confused and amused by this. Reading is not a famous, landmark mecca town, like Manchester or London or Liverpool or Brighton. You don't go on holiday or there for a mad weekend of clubbing or shopping. We're a town where people raise their children and work. The only famous things we've got going for us are the fact we have the first written piece of music on the wall of the Abbey and the fact that we incarcerated Oscar Wilde. Seriously. That's it. It's one of those places people come from. But once a year, every August Bank Holiday, thousands of people head to Reading with camping gear on their backs to go to the Festival on the Rivermead site. It's the longest running music festival in the UK, dating back to the fifties when it was the Blues festival and a tad more sedate. It doesn't have the mythos of Glastonbury, but it's there. It survives. It's supported by the local community and is one of the few where the local food shops and camping shops benefits. yep, it's unashamedly commercial, but there's never been an overreaching ethos like Glastonbury and it's never pretended to be anything it isn't. It's massive amounts of music and three days in a tent, and great fun the years I've been.
