Are You Reading?

My arrival in Europe saw me going to England instantly to make it in time for Reading Festival. Already pretty exhausted from 6 weeks of travelling, I was nevertheless looking forward to see a performance of a very special kind: my most favourite group performing my most favourite album! But more on that later.

As some of you may know, the British are crazy about music. Not only "oh my gosh I love this band" crazy, more like an eager curiosity to explore new cool Indie bands and stick to them. The British youth has the finest taste in music, and judging from the what amazing tunes come from the UK, it's no wonder. Most of my favourite groups have their origin on the island.

Anyways, this small lecture on music should lead to one observation I made: because of exactly that reason, the music festivals in Great Britain don't have this loveable lawless freakshow image to it like our festivals back home. People in Austria and Germany go insane during those couple of days, whereas the people in England play it cool and sleep by 2am in order to be fit for the next day. To be honest, I was not entirely happy with that - I like the atmosphere on our festivals more. On the other hand, the British dedication to music is shown during concerts as well: you hear people singing along not only to groups, but also to playback music in between concerts. Many people know every word ever uttered by the Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and others. Impressive indeed.

Another group which could enjoy up to 50.000 supporting voices during their show was the one I didn't mention the name of before: MUSE. Headlining the first day of Leeds and the last day of Reading, they had in store a special treat for all their fans: as announced in March this year, they were playing their second album "Origin of Symmetry" (which for me is the best album ever made) in their entity. I was looking forward to hearing so many songs of this album, some of which haven't been played since the release in 2001. They indeed did exactly what I was hoping for: putting on an unbelievable show, playing the songs even better than on CD, all led by the insane guitar skills and incredible voice of Matthew Bellamy. Especially "Dark Shines" was a highlight for me: Matt's face during the solo (an expression full of pure joy and concentration) as well as the blasting beginning of the outro, backed by Dominic Howard's razor-sharp snare drum, was more than an eargasm. It was a feeling not be compared to any other, the feeling of one crowd joined together as one in music.

To conclude, I'd like to mention another small detail which goes hand in hand with my post "Coincidence Compilation" a couple of weeks ago: as I saw an Austrian flag waving in the crowd (please refer to 1:57-1:59 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE40EP7RIJg), I went there and started talking to the people who it belonged to. After a couple of minutes, one of them turned out to be the cousin of my colleague and another one to be studying the same major as me on the same university. In addition, they took the same Ryanair flight as us to Linz the next day. Again, what an amazing coincidence!

So long,
Martin
-Klagenfurt (for the first time since forever)