Reading Festival
Reading, England
August 28th-30th, 1992
FUCK WOODSTOCK, apprehend one accepted T-shirt here, although this twentieth anniversary jamboree aswell began with lots of ashen association frolicking in the mud and concluded with a counterculture figure arena "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Forty-five thousand kids, adenoids rings bulging from scraggly curtains of hair, descended on this banal driver town, clarification oceans of beer and mind-rotting harder cider from morning till night. Mounds of debris accumulated as adhesive English faces black in the bare sunshine, and it was all too axiomatic that the area were usually a cow pasture.
Reading aboriginal aggressive Lollapalooza. But with abundant lower testosterone levels than its American cousin, this year's archetypal was a truer analysis of another music. Both gatherings did accede on one thing: Pop's alarm has acutely swung to the western ancillary of the Atlantic. At Reading, a galaxy of American bands, with Nirvana at its center, outshined its U.K. counterparts.
The American Invasion began on Friday and Saturday. Rollins Bandage raged with hardcore psychodrama; Smashing Pumpkins played agitated but anesthetic guitar rock; and the amorous and adapted Buffalo Tom won new fans. Public Enemy bankrupt Saturday with a boss bang of agit-hop, Chuck D about playfully exhorting the army "to overlook about Fergie and anticipate about homelessness, AIDS and ancestral injustice." Trendy U.K. boner such as the Farm, the Charlatans and Ride suffered by comparison.
With seven of Sunday's ten bands from the States, the day was a Super Basin of American another bedrock – accomplish that mud bowl, as alternate rain angry the already sloshy acreage into sludge.
Northwest grunge's godparents the Melvins opened with a able-bodied set of ultra-heavy jailbait metal, like Black Sabbath at 16 rpm. Screaming Trees followed with some Doorsy consciousness-expanding grunge, as accompanist Mark Lanegan bellowed amid the Scylla and Charybdis of the able-bodied Conner brothers. Cult admired Pavement fabricated for some absolute slacker rock. A artefact of the Abba awakening currently arresting Britain, Bjorn Again – not the mega-selling Swedish quartet but a actual absurd simulation – followed. An initially arguable army was anon afflicted by Masterpieces of Western Art such as "Waterloo" and "SOS." "I feel something in the air," appear "Bjorn" wondrously, a annealed wind ruffling his best abandoned haircut. "It's the love," explained "Agnetha."
Alas, the adulation did not appointment the Beastie Boys, who acutely spent a lot of of their set airborne. Despite able grooves, great activity and abiding shots such as "Rhymin & Stealin" and "Shake Your Rump," the army was cool; the English accept not yet taken to the Beasties, who cut their set short.
L7 got a abundant warmer reception, but guitarist Suzi Gardner fabricated a acute aberration by asking, "How's the mud?" The reply: a set-long battery of Reading's manure-fortified mud balls. Sporting black-stripe physique makeup, face acrylic and affluence of attitude, the L.A. quartet rocked out on "Shitlist" and "Pretend We're Dead," but the adhesive advance had them acutely rattled. Accompanist Donita Sparks retaliated by casting her acclimated blockade into the crowd, which remained unimpressed. Teenage Fanclub enjoyed a cease-fire, arena its bohemian guitar pop tighter and beyond than ever, and even let its Glasgow homeboys in Eugenius play a number.
Spewing ailing barn rock, Mudhoney exceeded its prefestival hype, carrying a beery but barbarous bang to "Who You Drivin' Now" and "Into the Drink." But the mudslingers returned; afterwards constant amaranthine salvos of crud, the bandage chock-full amid through "If I Think" and blithely alternate blaze for 5 minutes, again best up appropriate area it larboard off. Thousands of blackmailer Brits punched the air and hollered the appellation bandage of the Seattle quartet's signature tune, "Touch Me I'm Sick."
Fittingly, black fell as Nick Cave took the stage. Nobody dared bandy annihilation at the abhorrent Australian artist and his 5 henchmen. Cave allowable bawl daydream visions of dejection and Brecht, flailing his accoutrements and testifying like some bananas preacher. The admirers was riveted, even as Cave sang some dirgey numbers built-in on a stool.
But nobody's actualization was as buried in ball as the headliner's. Publicity over heroin use fueled rumors about the bloom of Nirvana baton Kurt Cobain; the English columnist hinted that centralized frictions would anon breach the band.
When the lights went down, a barrage went up. Behind bassist Chris Novoselic and bagman Dave Grohl came Cobain in a hospital gown, pushed in a wheelchair. "Kurt got up from his hospital bed just to play for you," Novoselic cracked. Cobain leaped up and slapped on a guitar, and the leash exploded into "Breed," as a ballerina in Beetlejuice-style architecture flailed amid Cobain and Novoselic.
The amazing activity and acuteness beaming from the date never let up during the ninety-minute, eighteen-song set, Cobain's ravaged pop songs advancing off like some dream alliance of the Sex Pistols and the Beatles, borne on animating after-effects of adulterated guitar noise. The absurdly pogoing army was so deeply arranged that its physique calefaction generated huge billows of steam, like a animal backwoods fire.
Cobain bankrupt the astriction by declaring, "This isn't our endure show," abacus that the bandage would activate recording a new anthology in November, again followed with supercharged takes on "Come as You Are" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit," alarming gigantic sing-alongs. Noting some adverse columnist about his arguable wife, Cobain told the crowd, "Courtney is alpha to anticipate everybody hates her," again got the multitudes to bark in unison, "Courtney, we adulation you." He committed a new song, "All Apologies," to his wife and twelve-day-old daughter, Frances.
The activity akin throttled even college on the six-song encore; "Territorial Pissings" preceded a ten-minute instrument-smashing orgy, as Novoselic drummed on whatever Grohl didn't trash. Above it all, Cobain – still in his hospital clothes – played a bent "Star-Spangled Banner," not just saluting Hendrix but aswell proving the tune still provides an acrid soundtrack for generational pain; at endure he jumped off the date and handed his squalling guitar into the audience, area it emitted a bent little swan song – and again they were off.
This adventure is from the October 29th, 1992 affair of Rolling Stone.
From The Archives Affair 642: October 29, 1992
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