Reading Festival 2012 Line Up and News

Reading Festival Tickets

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Once again some of the biggest bands on the planet will be performing at Richfield Avenue in Reading over the weekend of the 24th, 25th and 26th of August.

Reading festival never dissapoints with a diverse line up ranging from punk and metal, through rock, alternative and indie to dance and nu rave. Music fans have fan a chance to see hot new acts and local bands in the smaller tents as well as the more established ones on the main stage. There are also great comedy acts in the alternative tent for when you need a rest from the mosh pit!

Reading Festival Lineup

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Reading Festival News

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Location of Reading Festival

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History of Reading Festival

The Reading and Leeds Festivals originates from the National Jazz Festival, which was conceived by Harold Pendleton (founder of the Marquee Club in London) and was first held at Richmond Athletic Ground in 1961. This festival, in turn, took inspiration from events held in America. Throughout its first decade the festival changed names and moved around sites several times, being held at Windsor Racecourse, Kempton Park and Plumpton, before reaching its permanent home at Reading in 1971.

The line-up settled into a pattern of progressive rock, blues and heavy metal during the 1970s. It did dabble with punk rock in 1978 when The Jam, Sham 69 and Penetration played.The festival attempted to provide both traditional rock acts and new punk bands, leading to clashes between the two sets of fans. Although The Ramones played the following year, the festival gradually became known for focusing on heavy metal and rock acts.

1988 saw a disastrous attempt to take the festival in a mainstream commercial pop direction, dominated by the likes of Starship, Squeeze, Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf (who was \\\"bottled\\\" off stage), and the ensuing recriminations eventually saw the ousting of original festival promoter Harold Pendleton by the Mean Fiddler Music Group organisation.

In 1991, Nirvana played the first of their two appearances at Reading, midway down the bill. This is also the year the first britpop bands such as Suede and Blur started to show themselves on the festival circuit.

Over the next few years the festival continued to grow as the popularity of outdoor festivals increased. Britpop and indie continued to dominate along with rock. Notably, rap acts such as Ice Cube began to appear regularly on the main stage to mixed receptions.

The first few years of the 2000s saw a varied but predominantly rock line-up, however as the decade has progressed the Main Stage and Radio 1 Stage line-up has followed music trends and featured more and more indie artists, that have become very popular in the British music mainstream.
Since then it has been getting bigger and better, with tickets selling out in just a couple of hours...

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