WHY GENERATION?

Reading Festival, 3 days of non-stop music, giving a platform to some of the best musicians around now. As the festival returned for the first time in 2 years, the expectations and pressure were riding high. This had to be a pretty spectacular weekend. And let us tell you, it 100% was. 

So here is our roundup of the stand out performances from the weekend. Hopefully, we’ll see you there next year. 

Isle of Wight Festival 1970. A remarkable event that to this day people still rave about, kids tell their friends they wish they had been there, the lineup was impeccable, it was a perfect festival. Except for one thing…  it wasn’t.

It was an operation, organisation mess. Yet it still went down in history as an iconic festival. 

There have been different things said about the lead up to ALT LDN, a brand new day festival for alternative rock and hip-hop. Acts confirmed to play and then pulled out much to ticket buyers dismay, (but believe it or not, even festival organisers can’t control covid-19). 

Last Sunday we took to the streets and showed the government what music means to us. It’s not just a hobby or a pass-time, to thousands of people including myself, it’s our livelihood.

During a difficult Christmas period, at the end of a very strange year comes a beacon of light, in the form of Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett who on 17th December presented fans with a captivating live stream titled “From Where I’m Standing”.

Fewer bands have been through a transition as profound as DIIV over the last 4 years. Zachary Cole Smith’s recovery from the addictions that shaped their first two albums was evident as soon as the band put out the lead single from their third album Deceiver, Skin Game, and didn’t so much hint as scream the fact that Smith was over the worst, slowing his life down and becoming a more reflective artist/human being.

5 piece Irish Post-Punk band, Fontaines D.C. have quickly built up a reputation as a live presence, and their performance at Brixton Academy did not disappoint, with an eclectic mix of ages, and people, crammed into the iconic Brixton venue. Performing a sold-out show at Brixton is a feat in itself, and you could tell this meant a lot to the boys from Dublin, with the occasional smile and wave from the captivating, Grian Chatten.

Following a sold-out run of dates with Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes and Ho99o9, Cleopatrick hit the London stage once again at Electrowerkz with the support of their friends in Ready The Prince and The Small Black Flowers. Hailing from the small town of Cobourg, Ontario, the Canadian outfit funnels the power of pure, unadulterated rock through a single guitar, a set of drums and one hell of a vocal.

Village Underground in Shoreditch is a venue concealing a fascinating and diverse history, having been active as the performance space it is now for 15 years. Prior to that, it was an empty, derelict warehouse, its role as a storage space for the railways of Victorian London forgotten with the coal-blackened hands of the workers who once occupied it.