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BRMC Salute White Stripes At U.K.'s Reading Festival
08/25/2003 3:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker
(8/25/03, 3 p.m. ET) -- This past Saturday (August 23) at the Carling Weekend Reading Festival--one of Britain's top live music events, running August 22-24 at the Rivermead Center in Reading, England--Los Angeles's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club paid tribute to the White Stripes by performing an extremely crowd-pleasing, bass-included version of the Stripes' latest single, "The Hardest Button To Button." BRMC were a last-minute addition to the Reading bill, replacing the White Stripes, who had to cancel their scheduled Main Stage appearance after Stripes frontman/guitarist Jack White injured his hand in a July 9 auto accident.
Although BRMC ably filled the White Stripes' red-and-white shoes, the Detroit duo of Jack and Meg White was still sorely missed at Reading. Several other artists on the Saturday bill, including English rapper Mike Skinner of the Streets, used their time onstage to mention their disappointment over the Stripes' no-show, and when the Belgian dance outfit 2 Many DJ's worked a snippet of the Stripes' hit "Seven Nation Army" into their Saturday headlining set in the Dance Arena, the crowd went absolutely ballistic. However, compensating for the absence of the White siblings/ex-spouses were 140-plus artists, ranging from hard rock (Metallica, Linkin Park, System Of A Down) to punk-pop (Sum 41, Blink 182, Good Charlotte, Bowling For Soup) to garage rock (Australia's Jet, Norway's Turbonegro, New Zealand's Datsuns, Denmark's Raveonettes, U.S./U.K. duo the Kills, New York's Yeah Yeah Yeahs) to ethereal Manchester moodiness (Doves, Elbow, Longview) to the downright unexplainable (porno shock-popper Har Mar Superstar, psychedelic choir the Polyphonic Spree).
Along with BRMC, several other L.A. acts made quite an impression on Reading spectators this year. The always-entertaining Beck rocked the Main Stage with a high-energy tour de force of superfreaky old hits like "New Pollution," "Where It's At," "Mixed Bizness," and "Sexx Laws," not to mention a raucous cover of Nelly's "Hot In Herre." Meanwhile, Ima Robot, a new electro-rock outfit featuring former Beck sidemen Joey Waronker and Justin Meldal-Johnsen, turned out to be one of the surprise highlights of the entire festival, with lead singer Alex Ebert--a mulletheaded, shirtless wraith who bears an uncanny resemblance to an Idiot-era Iggy Pop--putting in a potent, punky performance (imagine the Cars on PCP) that rendered everyone in the Carling Stage tent speechless and breathless. And finally, the poor man's Beck, Minneapolis-L.A. transplant Har Mar Superstar (aka Sean Tillman), transformed the Carling Stage into something resembling the set of an '80s Hustler photo shoot: Stripping down from a hot pink mylar cape down to skintight skivvies while flanked by lingerie-clad, squirtgun-brandishing cheerleaders and singing in a faux-Stevie Wonder falsetto to a backing tape of what sounded like lo-fi outtakes from Prince's Controversy album, he proved that even a short, squat, balding Ron Jeremy lookalike can become a bona fide rock star if he sets his mind to it. The Carling tent was so crowded with adoring fans that the man of the hour boldly declared, "I don't think this tent's big enough for me!"; he also repeatedly announced that he was "f--king awesome," and judging from the thunderous applause, it seemed the audience agreed. At one point he even asked the crowd, "Who wants to f--k me?," and when nearly everyone in the tent whooped affirmatively, he shrugged and said slyly, "Yeah, I thought so!" Mr. Superstar's highly entertaining set climaxed, so to speak, with dozens
of fans--including Jack Osbourne (who had guest-DJ'd backstage the night before) and Used singer Bert McCracken--jumping onstage for a giant, gleeful, sexed-up dance-a-thon.
Osbourne and McCracken weren't the only special guests to bum-rush the stage at Reading this year. Har Mar Superstar himself joined tribal-disco New Yorkers Radio 4 on bongos during their Saturday set in the BBC Radio 1 tent, while Placebo were joined by ex-Pixie Frank Black during their cover of the Pixies tune "Where Is My Mind?" And one of the all-around highlights of the festival came Saturday night when headliners Blur ended their thrilling two-hour set (featuring suit-clad singer Damon Albarn looking and sounding better than he has in years while crooning old-school hits like "Song 2," "The Universal," "Tender," "This Is A Low," and "End Of The Century") with an unannounced cameo by Quadrophenia movie actor Phil Daniels. As the crowd of thousands roared, Daniels performed a yet-unreleased, experimental spoken-word collaboration with the band, then reprised his classic guest performance of the title track from Blur's 1994 breakthrough album Parklife.
Along with shout-outs to the White Stripes and onstage celebrity sightings, another noticeable trend at Reading was the slagging of hoary Sunday headliners Metallica, who attracted huge crowds but nevertheless didn't seem to be everyone's cup of tea. Bobby Gillespie of Main Stage act Primal Scream, who also played Sunday, went out of his way to offend the countless Metallica fans in attendance by hissing in between songs, "You're all just a bunch of f--king slaves, here to see Metallica and all this shite!" Har Mar treated the subject a little more humorously during his set by quipping, "That Metallica video from 1992 ain't cutting it anymore…I mean, that was cool when I was in, like, eighth grade"; he then indulged in a few disco-fied bars of Metallica's hit "Enter Sandman."
Although such anti-Metallica comments didn't dampen the overall mood of the festival, there were a couple other disappointments besides the White Stripes' cancellation. For instance, rumors that the Libertines' Pete Doherty--who was recently ousted from the band due to his "health problems" and was subsequently arrested for burglarizing Libertine guitarist Carl Barat's home--would rejoin his estranged bandmates for their Saturday Main Stage afternoon performance turned out to be unfounded--and the band just wasn't the same with Barat having to take over all of Doherty's distinctively gruff, Joe Strummer-esque lead vocals. And speaking of gruff vocals, Mike Skinner of the Streets seemed to be suffering from a sore throat that rendered his normally clever and incisive observations of British working-class life practically unintelligible.
But there were plenty of other fantastic moments during the Reading Festival's three packed days. Dynamite Danish duo Junior Senior really got the party started with their early Saturday noon set of fun, frivolous, fluffy pop, their massive dance hit "Move Your Feet" getting the audience to do just that (an impromptu conga line even broke out at one point). And some newcomers that turned out to be surprise discoveries of the weekend included East London no-wavers Razorlight; organ-and-theremin-enhanced Australian fuzz-rawkers Rocket Science; psychobilly-metallers the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster (imagine Elvis Presley fronting prime-era Guns N' Roses with Johnny Ramone on guitar); and '80s hair-metal revivalists the Darkness, whose ballsy frontman Justin Hawkins was a sight to behold with his striped Freddie Mercury/harlequin unitard and Ted Nugent-like lion's mane of curly locks. These bands have yet to make much of an impression on this side of the Atlantic so far, but by summer 2004, they just may be headlining some American music festivals as well.
-- Lyndsey Parker, Los Angeles
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