Carling Leeds Festival 2006

Carling Leeds Festival 2006
Originally uploaded by Ian Wilson.

Yay! So Nat and I are back in London after a manic weekend up in Leeds at the Carling Weekend.

It was a fantastic three days spent camping, drinking beer (from 10am), and watching the biggest and best bands put on their biggest and best performances. Highlights included: Pearl Jam's first festival performance for 6 years following the death of 10 people in a crowd rush in Denmark; Boy Kill Boy's accoustic set in the Nokia tent; Duels in the NME tent; Dashboard Confessional; Panic! At the Disco; Kaiser Chiefs; Franz Ferdinand; Wolfmothers' Zeppelin goodness; Feeder; The Streets; Arctic Monkeys; and finally Muse in the pouring rain.

With no Glastonbury this year the festival offered an even richer choice of bands and artists and I managed to get around to almost every one that I wanted to see. In fact, looking back I only missed two bands that I wish I could have watched: The Kooks (missed while picking Nat up from the station on Friday evening) and The Fratellis (who played at the same time as Arctic Monkeys on Sunday).

Between my cameraphone and my trusty Cybershot S85 I managed to get some decent photo's through the weekend. They're all up on Flickr right now. Shortly after publishing them I became the next person in the growing mass who have been recruited by Now Public to contribute photo's. They're up here.

We discovered the day before we left for Leeds that the tent I was given two years ago (and had never used before) was in fact a 'play' tent. So when the heavens opened on Sunday night during the Muse set (the very last set of the weekend) Nat and I made the executive decision to leave slightly early, head back to the camp, fold the tent up (contents included), dump everything in the boot of the car, and hot foot it back to London. The result was a rather surreal four hour drive through the early hours of the morning, loading up on coffee, Red Bull, Lucozade, and chocolate to stay awake all the way back to London.

Good times!

All I want now is a new digital SLR.


** Update: Seems the Leeds pics are proving quite popular. Huntfordecentmusic have also requested in on the action.