Melvin Benn on this year's headliners...

[calumtom19]

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=120...p;tb=1&pb=1

[destroythearchetype]

arcade fire long awaited? he "thinks they've played before quite low down" wtf? why doesn't he know they played second 2 years ago? makes you wonder how he makes any decent desisions lol

[small]

some of the comments there from what i assume are nme fans are simply amazing...

all of them hating the lineup and loving last years, when this lineup is 10 times better.

my favourite was someone who said gnr and BLINK are download bands and shouldnt be headlining reading... i literally spat my drink all over my keyboard. would seem a few poor indie filled lineups especially from last year have got nme fans thinking reading is an indie festival and blink 182 (of all bands) are too heavy to play

oh, and someone who said v was the new reading and reading the new download this year... haha im so glad we have a decent lineup and most of these idiots hate it enough to not of bought a ticket! well, they probably all bought day tickets for saturday (my weekest day by far) but 2/3 days without 95% of the crowd going through the motions until KOL come on would be a start

[moff]

The beauty of it is that all the KOL/Killers/etc bashers seem to have all been drawn off to T or V this year. Hopefully we'll get line ups in this vein for the next few years

[k1n60fthew0rld]

It interests me this "NME reader bashing". I'm an NME subscriber, and have been for years, I have a broad music choice, but am rarely outspoken enough to criticise bands on here. Yet all I see is constant critcism towards people who like bands featured in NME, who feature in most big UK festivals, and get massive crowds at Leeds. Are the people on here really the minorities then? Surely it doesn't add up that so many people criticised Arctic Monkeys and KoL last year, yet at Leeds, both drew larger crowds than Radiohead who are the type of band not normally featured in NME? Speak up.

FYI, looking at this years initial to last years initial, I prefer this years.

[sjp_121]

LOL

The comments were brilliant.

[sjp_121]

Also...

"Arcade Fire have played... fairly low down I believe"

2nd in 2007 underneath Chilis.

Hmm....

What has Melvin been on?

[saskofreak]

that was the best laugh i have had in ages.

[YumYum]

someone complaind the lineup is too similar to 2008, n'uff said

[moff]

It interests me this "NME reader bashing". I'm an NME subscriber, and have been for years, I have a broad music choice, but am rarely outspoken enough to criticise bands on here. Yet all I see is constant critcism towards people who like bands featured in NME, who feature in most big UK festivals, and get massive crowds at Leeds. Are the people on here really the minorities then? Surely it doesn't add up that so many people criticised Arctic Monkeys and KoL last year, yet at Leeds, both drew larger crowds than Radiohead who are the type of band not normally featured in NME? Speak up.

FYI, looking at this years initial to last years initial, I prefer this years.

[paulomas]

whats wrong with his right eye? silly bastard i want his job

[VCK]

On Blink:

"Nobody actually thought they'd ever play any of the UK festivals"

Well actually, a few of us had them down as this year's headliners even before the 2009 fest.

[small]

It interests me this "NME reader bashing". I'm an NME subscriber, and have been for years, I have a broad music choice, but am rarely outspoken enough to criticise bands on here. Yet all I see is constant critcism towards people who like bands featured in NME, who feature in most big UK festivals, and get massive crowds at Leeds. Are the people on here really the minorities then? Surely it doesn't add up that so many people criticised Arctic Monkeys and KoL last year, yet at Leeds, both drew larger crowds than Radiohead who are the type of band not normally featured in NME? Speak up.

FYI, looking at this years initial to last years initial, I prefer this years.

[readfestlover]

The comments were awesomely funny!! Hopefully this year will see more tradiotional festival goers returning to reading and making it a more enjoyable experience all round!!

[Smithster]

whats wrong with his right eye? silly bastard i want his job

[paulomas]

its his left eye...but i did wonder

[Lithium05]

"Reading is the new Download, TITP is the new Reading, and Download is the Camden Crawl"

Da f*ck?!

[ArcadianDreamer]

and if you are reffering to me, i dont have anything against nme readers specifically. nme readers can be fans of music and of broad genres like yourself.

its just as someone else said, a lot of them tend to see nme AS music, and not nme as a magazine for one type of music. nme is massively indie orientated and thats fine, yet that doesnt make anything the nme arnt bigging up and therefore not inde, crap, as it always comes across from a lot of nme readers.

pretty much summed up by one reader claiming blink were too heavy to headline reading and should be at download. either they have never heard blink, or are under the impression reading = nme, which last year it certainly did... a lot!

i used to love kings of leon, there first few albums were amazing. saw them in 07 and thought they were fairly good. got massively famous in part because of the nme and radio one and their single, and suddenly they have an entire new set of fans, these people were never fans before, yet when the nme took them under their wing, suddenly every nme reader seemingly fell in love with them and they got huge. reading 09 im not sure ive ever seen a worse performance as headliner... they were right up there with rhcp and the crowd sucked!

and i think in answer to your last bit, there is a real sense on the forums, and on the official forums, that reading festival is being taken over. Seems like a disproportional amount of forum members are fans of perhaps, older, non indie, non nme bands, and in 09 these people were definitely not represented in the lineup, this year they are much more.

it always amazes me as well when im actually at a festival, especially reading, after reading the forums (as it seems like everyone is against these bands etc) how much we are in the minority at the actual festival! people increasingly are going to reading as its 'cool' and 'hip' and these are also disproportionally nme readers!

[Lithium05]

Why are so many people banging on about Kasabien headlining and keep calling Libertines the greatest band of all time?

[small]

KoL were amazing at Leeds.

Erm... that's it.

Edited March 31, 2010 by small

[jaab]

i really don't see how anyone can justify saying that last year's lineup was better. To be honest, anyone who knows anything about music knows that's not the case. Nice to see us getting a varied luneup without all of the boring indie BS. And for the record, anyone who thinks Blink should be at Download hasn't been there. Bottled to death after one song if they went there. I mean I like them, but they wouldn't go down well at Donington.

[Lithium05]

And for the record, anyone who thinks Blink should be at Download hasn't been there. Bottled to death after one song if they went there. I mean I like them, but they wouldn't go down well at Donington.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Lithium05

[jammy2211]

What a load of shite! MCR headlined Download and played their full set, there were a couple of bottles, but it wasn't the torrent people seem to think it was - I should know, I was there.

Blink are well liked in the rock community and would not get a bad reception, in fact they were booked to headline in 2005 but split before they were announced!.

[j...rox]

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Who-Are-Arca...109657762391544

Why does this group even exist? Facebook idiots.

[small]

What a load of shite! MCR headlined Download and played their full set, there were a couple of bottles, but it wasn't the torrent people seem to think it was - I should know, I was there.

Blink are well liked in the rock community and would not get a bad reception, in fact they were booked to headline in 2005 but split before they were announced!.