It's easy to see that pulling their album has made Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong somewhat uneasy about showing their faces in public again. Joe apologises and thanks the audience for turning up repeatedly, trying to get them to come and talk to them afterwards. The real problem with postponing an album is that no one actually knows your stuff, so there were a lot of blank faces, with a bit of dancing to Lucio Starts Fires. But this band do small venue performances - and it doesn't quite fill a festival.
Editors know what they're doing with a festival performance. The entire set, but one song, is comprised of singles. It's difficult to be an active crowd when it comes to seeing someone like Editors in the middle of the day, but it definitely went down well.
Even the bouncers enjoyed Editors:
Los Campesinos! appear to have discretely hit the big time. They got a bigger reaction than pretty much anyone else playing so early on such a small stage. Their enthusiasm is clearly contagious, sparking of a fair bit of madness down the front.
We Are Scientist are always crowd pleasers. Alright songs and a sense of humour pull in a massive crowd (right). But we left half way through for...Foals were an interesting one. For a start there was a giant, I mean really giant, beach ball covered in mud being thrown around and hitting unsuspecting victims in the face to make-up devastating effect. The performance itself is all right - it kicks off for Cassius and stuff. But it's the end that's weird. Yannis starts wandering about down the front in amongst the crowd. He gets back onstage and fiddles with something, and all of a sudden jumps up and attempts to knock an amp over before trashing the rest of the gear. The video at BBC.co.uk/readingandleeds/2008/artists/foals/ was up on the Leeds Festival site last week, but has since been taken down from there. It's unclear which site this is from to be honest.
Pits at Bloc Party. This is new. A little group of blue people down the front decided to kick things off, leaving pretty much everyone else looking confused. Aside from the flag-holders, who were having their own wars - trying to knock the flags, or clothes, or litter, off eachother's poles. The controversial Mercury is actually a lot better live, but it's not quite Banquet. Kele announces that the band want to headline next year, and claims to be defying the man in his ear by staying on stage. Bloc Party said "We just got back from playing Reading and Leeds Festivals this weekend. Both were amazing, so thank you to everyone who came to see us."Casual fans don't like unfamiliar songs. Something lost on The Killers, who are relentless in their second album promotion, to the annoyance of thousands of people who obviously haven't bothered with it. Everyone loves these singles - they are huge - but Brandon Flowers' announcement of 'We're going to play a new song now' is greeted with 'Boo! I got soul, but I'm not a soldier...' They walk off stage at 10.30, with no All These Things I've Done, to even more confusion and annoyance. But eventually, they return to do a couple of the best known songs of the decade, and end with an explosion of confetti and the song we've been after. And by the sound of things, that's enough to be forgiven.
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