About The Festival

The Leeds festival is a rock festival that takes place every year on the august bank holiday weekend; Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Over 200 bands perform every year on these three days where personal hygiene is sacrificed in aid of having a good time. The festival is set across six stages, the main stage, radio one stage, Lock up stage, Carling Stage, Comedy Tent (this year called Alternate Stage) and the Topman stage for unsigned bands. Although most of the good bands reside on the first three you occasionally see great bands on the Carling Stage such as Kids in Glass Houses and The Academy Is... This page will fill you in on the best bits of the festival and also give you a bit of background knowledge at the end. Use the links <-- to navigate the page.










Friday

Golly Gosh!! Friday was an amazing day!! Although the day started on a low with Gym Class Heroes, it could only get better. For saying I only knew a few on HelloGoodbye's songs I thought they were ace, as did many of the people around me. But before I knew it they were over and Billy Talent was on the stage to really kick off the day! With an amazing set ending in Red Flag they were one of the best bands of the weekend. As the weekend was only just coming underway every one was bursting with energy so they crowd was really lively. Following this was another great set, this time by the used, they did play quite a bit of the new stuff which isnt quite as good as the older songs but they were still great. By far the best band of the weekend were up next, Funeral For A Friend! They all came on stage wearing Leeds festival shirts telling us how much more they like Leeds than reading (which is about the best way to get the crowd (a load of people chanting Yorkshire that have had way too much to drink and its only about 3pm) to be on your side. They played the best set I’ve ever seen them play, they play an awesome combination of the good songs off the new album with awesome older songs (they didn’t play bullet theory which just isn’t right). Following FFAF was the disgrace which is Pete Wentz and fall out boy. I can happily say that they were the worst band of the weekend, and playing covers of Akon and Michael Jackson songs really didn’t help them out. I was happy to see the back of them and the start of the lostprohets, who were great. Despite rumours of them only playing new songs they played classic songs such as Fake Sound of Progress. Songs such as make a move and Burn Burn really made there set one of the best I had hurd that day, but getting the crowd singing with Last Summer just perfected an already amazing set. The highlight was Ian Watkins abusing security staff (I won't go into detain, there quite a bit of security abuse coming up in the Saturday section. The next few hours were spent looking for food while the nine inch nails were on. To finish off a perfect day was New Found Glory on the Lock Up Stage. Nice, Loud, and Lively, perfect to finish off my day. The tent was packed with new found glory fans (and people looking to avoid the smashing pumpkins). Soooo....yeah......awesome first day!!!










Saturday

Saturday wasn’t quite as strong a line up as Friday but still was a pretty dam awesome day! Unlike Friday most of the action was on the Radio one Stage. As there was not a lot on in the early after noon I stayed in the tent until about 1pm. When I finally got into the arena I went to the Radio One tent for what was probably one of the liveliest acts of the weekend, Aiden. If I say the set ended with Will Francis (fount man) being taken away by security you can probably guess what it was like. After there first song Will produced a £10 note from his pocket and said for any one that can get on stage. Well the song kicked in (seem to remember it was Goodbye were falling fast) and people where climbing over the barrier, crowd surfing to the fount doing anything to get on stage. Security Guys were none stop pulling people out and kicking them out of the tent (they all came back in anyway). Later on in the set a backstage pass was revealed and again Will stated it was for anyone who could get on stage. This time about 10 times the amount of people that tried to get on stage last time were trying. The gap between the crowd and the stage was one big fight. Security had changed there tactics to throwing people to the floor, at this point the rather large guy next to me decided to step over the barrier and make his way the stage. The first security guy to approach him got hit straight in the face, knocked clean out. At this point three people had made it onto the stage, Will then got down into the crowd was mauled and had his shoes stolen, then was dragged away by security. Quiet a good set I have to say.

There was not allot else on for a while, kids in glass houses were about the best on until Jimmy Eat World who gave there all even though it was there first of two performance of the day. Enter Shikari had an amazing set, glow sticks and people raving everywhere. The human pyramids people started to build were a disgrace, mainly as a big guy knocked ours down. The only other band I had my mind set on seeing on Saturday were Brand New, one of the greatest bands ever. They played an awesome set, and as they don’t have many fans there was plenty of room for me to sit down for the entire 45 minuets (I was dead by this point). Instead of going to see Jimmy Eat World headline the Lock Up stage I took to lying on the grass watching razorlight, which I have to say wasn’t as bad as expected. So all in all a pretty good day.










Sunday

Although it was early on Paramore was defiantly the best band of the day, with an exciting set including there hits, Emergency and Misery Business. Besides this Sunday was a relatively slow day, the only other good performances of the day were off Biffy Clyro and Panic! at the Disco; who no matter what anyone says about they always give a great live show, I'm not there biggest fan, heck at one point I even hated them, but they did this year as always give an amazing performance, full of energy and songs with catchy lyrics. Angles and Airwaves as predicted gave there typical vain, Tom DeLonge hogging all the attention performance. As always with there shows Tom had to go on for a good 5minnets about how much he loves him self. The Academy is… was the only half good band on the smaller stages during the day. Red Hot Chilly peppers where a awesome choice to end the weekend, there 10minnet long instrumental sections ruined there set as ever but all there hits were still in there. So besides buying my new hat I would say that Paramore was my highlight of the day.










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