R&L Bands AT R1BW

[mrtourette]

The Joy Formidable - really good although almost no crowd interest. Glad that they didn't tighten up and still had half a set of feedback and jingly-jangly shoegaze noise, hopefully it's the same when they play the main stage.

Cage The Elephant - very good and actually seemed to have some crowd participation at the end.

Panic! At The Disco - wasn't familiar with these guys and they sound like Fallout Boy. Won't be seeing them at R&L.

The Vaccines - good, but they always seem to be holding a steady course. Never bad but never amazing.

Pulled Apart By Horses - first time I've made an effort to listen to them and was impressed. I'll go and see them if I can motivate myself to get to the arena by midday.

Friendly Fires - just not my cup of tea, but not offensive. Nothing more to say really.

MCR - struggled a bit vocally but showed they have some riffs and tunes. I still cringe whenever he starts one of his speeches about being forced to change and staying true to who you are.

The Strokes - sounded better than I expected, and that's coming from someone looking forward to seeing them. Odd choice of songs to play from new album but they sounded better than on record.

[rexclark]

Only saw a bit of The Strokes and can't say I was too impressed. They just don't seem to cut it live anymore which is a shame as they used to be amazing.

[Azzy G]

Watched a bit of it just for Foo Fighters, dear god that crowd was awful

[PurpleFire]

MCR were very good... suprised and new album is very good too...

Strokes just seem to play the songs nothing in the performance!

[Englishdragon]

I though Foo Fighters were very poor compared to other gigs and tbh after watching it Im glad R&L didnt go for them this year.

Panic at the disco sounded ok from what I saw, Ill go have a watch

Ive not seen it yet but a lot of people ive spoke to said the Strokes performance was terrible

[mrtourette]

The Strokes never put anything into their performance, I thought they sounded good but maybe that's just a sign of how bad I was expecting them to be.

[jump]

I though Foo Fighters were very poor compared to other gigs and tbh after watching it Im glad R&L didnt go for them this year.

Panic at the disco sounded ok from what I saw, Ill go have a watch

Ive not seen it yet but a lot of people ive spoke to said the Strokes performance was terrible

[kev1664]

I thought the Foo's performance was good. The only thing that let it down was the poor crowd that were there to see them. I'm quite looking forward to the MKB gigs I liked the set list and White Limo is even better live than on record.

[mrtourette]

I've seen Foos a few times and I thought they were very good at the weekend.

[iPaulo xD]

Strokes were boring

Vaccines and Friendly Fires were very good

Panic! is one of my favourite bands and it was a poor set and crowd

MCR Gave me some competition not to see Beady eye with that set also.

[Buko]

MCR were pretty good, Friendly Fires & The Strokes were pretty poor but I've seen much better live videos of them.

Panic! weren't too bad. Two Door Cinema Club were quite good. Nero were good apart from that girl they have singing with them which is kinda pointless. The Joy Formidable weren't bad either. Just watching Arctic Monkeys now, they look damn awful thank god we dont have them at R/L again.

Edited May 16, 2011 by Buko

[Joseph92]

MCR were pretty good, Friendly Fires & The Strokes were pretty poor but I've seen much better live videos of them.

Panic! weren't too bad. Two Door Cinema Club were quite good. Nero were good apart from that girl they have singing with them which is kinda pointless. The Joy Formidable weren't bad either. Just watching Arctic Monkeys now, they look damn awful thank god we dont have them at R/L again.

[Buko]

I'll be honest, I thought Arctic Monkeys set was really good! They've moved on from their mellow Humbug image from before and I think their set was really good. Liking the new tunes too. So actually, I would much prefer Arctics to MCR.

[Andy0808 v3.0]

crowds were awful for most bands the whole weekend, therefore its gonna put the bands on a downer. Casablancas looked like he couldnt be f**ked after about 4 songs

[Bisque]

Friendly Fires were great, perhaps a few more gigs to tighten up the new material & they should be good for R+L.

Nero tore it down but the girl singer wasn't good. Liked the new DJ booth.

The Strokes were ok, Julian's voice wasn't good.

MCR were all right.

Devlin was good (Yasmin is a bonafide hottie).

About to watch 2DCC now.

[Vieuphoria]

Proof! If ever it were needed that you HAVE to go and see Jane's Addiction on Saturday.

I only watched 2 acts from Big weekend. Noah 7 The Whale, who were good... not as good as Reading 09 though. Also watched Lady Gag, who won me over tenfold. I'm not a Gaga fan... who knew?

[Mariner]

I was there both days.

I was one of the 3 crowdsurfers during the whole of the Foo's set, and I feel like a bit of a div since I probably landed on an 80 year old womans head, or maybe she was 8, or maybe it was a fat necked chav. Who knows? The crowd was poor, but it was poor all weekend for the rock acts apart from Cage the Elephant where we managed to get a bit of pogoing happening. You've got to remember it was a free concert, postcode lottery, and they went out to the general public. So you had a wide array of people. I've never in my life been to a big gig and been able to stand still in the pit!

I thought the Foos were probably the best act there. Here's my breakdown (kinda in order)...

Foo Fighters - Great performance. Wrong crowd.

Cage The Elephant - First time I'd seen them live. Excellent and crowd got into it at the end. Can't wait to see them at Reading.

The Joy Formidable - I saw them at Reading last year but wasn't really amazed but I changed my mind big-style when I saw them on Saturday. They are most certainly criminally underrated. I'll definately be watching them down the front at Reading this year.

Magnetic Man - Sounded heavy live and they probably had the most crowd participation (for a non-mainstream act). Guest appearances made the set shine.

Two Door Cinema Club - A set full of indie hits. Very enjoyable.

Pulled Apart By Horses - Rocked out hard. Walking up to the event on Sunday early afternoon I could hear heavy guitars and screams coming from the INMWT stage. I started to jog to get there. Judging by the appreciative crowd reaction, they should've been billed later on.

The Vaccines - Not usually my cuppa but they got an excellent reaction from the crowd and I thought they sounded almost Ramones-like live.

Noah & the Whale - Nice tunes, kind of mediocre.

Panic at the Disco - The singer has a great voice and he was funny but the music was luke warm. Everybody was waiting for 'I write Sins...'.

Devlin - I was anticipating this to be a good opportunity to finally see him with a tiny crowd, but alas quite a few people obviously know his stuff and he had a decent turnout. Tbh I was a little dissapointed. His whole schtick doesn't do it for me live I'm afraid.

Chase and Status - Crowd was probably the most energetic for them. I saw about the last minute of their set. It sounded noisy lol.

Arctic Monkeys - Surprise act. Quite uninspiring for me. They sounded good though.

Everything Everything - Weak as pish.

The Strokes - O lawd. How overrated is this band... still? I gave up my previous judgements and made my way to the front for this and was nearly bored to tears. I left to see Gaga's entrance half way through. I don't understand what people like about this band. I honestly can't believe they are headlining R&L. No wonder the tickets haven't sold out.

Scream & Benga also played a DJ set on the outdoor stage while Gaga was on which went down a treat.

I only managed to catch a few acts on the introducing stage, but one of them was Linc, who I thoroughly enjoyed.

Edited May 17, 2011 by Mariner

[mooseman]

I've only watched the videos, but the crowd did look terrible. Will be seeing cage the elephant after their performance but I was going to see them anyway. The strokes did look like they didn't want to be there, but with a better crowd and a headlining performance I think they will be better, and I've not heard great things about jane's addiction live.

[cheeseisamazing]

just watching Mcrs set.

musically sounding great me thinks, they've also editid some of there old hits which is quite surprising.

thought they masivly fell down vocaly with the two backing singers, frank & ray, just took the edge off it and sounded a bit terrible.

[onemangang]

the foos were really good, the crowd were awful tho. it seemed they were made up of mainly young teenagers so maybe they didn't no what to make of them, an possibly for a lot of them it might of been there first gig so whatever.

the strokes seemed/sounded like they'd had a flipping stroke no movement, no passion, no life, the only glimmer of hope... i saw them on jules a few day later an they sounded pretty good so maybe they just weren't that up for it, witch wouldn't really surprise me it being Carlisle. the home of the big whopper

[RDCL]

saw nero last night at some rave, they were amazing, have really high hopes for them to perform well at reading