Bottled-Off: the Rowdy History of the Reading Music Festival

The rowdy history of the Reading Music Festival had a curiously quiet beginning in 1961 as the National Jazz Festival, long before the mass participation bottle and can fights of the 1970's and 1980's led to unpopular bands being 'bottled-off' the stage.

The Rowdy History Begins

Harold Pendleton conceived the original National Jazz Festival in the early '60's but had to move it around from site to site, never quite settling until finding its permanent home in Reading. As the venues changed there came an evolution in the style, tending to the popular music of the time. Blues and Rock along with Heavy Metal were featured through the 1970's. With the turn of another decade came different music styles and the show promoters began the festival with Punk and New Wave bands, ending it with the usual Rock and Heavy Metal.

Banned by Conservatives

The local Reading Council was made up of mostly Conservative Party members at this time and what with the rowdy crowds, and bottle fights common among them, the Reading Music Festival was banned in 1984 and '85, when the festival site was "reclaimed for development". The Labor Party regained their council seats soon after and in 1986 the festivities were resumed. This hiatus, a power struggle in 1988 when Harold Pendleton lost control to the Mean Fiddler Music Group and an abrupt switch to Goth and Indy music brought a sharp decline in attendance.

Bottled-Off

In the early 1980's the crowds stopped throwing bottles at each other and began to vote down unpopular music groups by showering the performers with an avalanche of bottles and cans. "Steel Pulse", a reggae band performing in 1983 had the misfortune to be scheduled before "The Stranglers" and got the most aggressive bottle-off in the already rowdy history of the Reading Music Festival, the band was so intimidated they didn't even play one song. It was in 1988 that Bonnie Taylor made her brave stand on stage, finishing her set amidst a deluge of cans and bottles while later that day Meatloaf retreated after only twenty minutes of his set, as did the rapper 50 Cent in 2004.

"Panic at the Disco" was an appropriate name for the group whose lead singer, Brandon Urie, was nailed with a direct hit and knocked unconscious in 2006. After the injury was treated the band gamely returned, taking up where they left off and completing their set. Later that day, during the performance of "Fall Out Boy", a reference was made on stage to the Urie incident and a bottle fight broke out, this time among the crowd itself.

Reading Music Festival Expansion

This increasingly popular music celebration took over the nearby Leeds Music Festival which was then moved to Bramham, north east of Leeds, to accommodate its rapid growth. So much interest was being expressed in new bands on the fringe of the music scene that the Reading Fringe Festival was formed in 2005 to spotlight them.

New licensing laws in 2006 allowed the Mean Fiddler Music Group to extend the late night festival hours with the Aftershock Tent, Oxfam Tent and the Silent Disco, to accommodate the overflow of attendees.

Ticket Shortage

Ticket sales have been exponential since the August 2007 performances sold out just hours after becoming available and the 2008 ticket release on March 31 sold out in less than two hours. Demand for at-the-door ticket sales in 2008 created such a troubled situation that management has decided there will be none at all in 2009. Since the pre-sale tickets sold out in only hours for this autumn festival another ticket release is planned for March 2009. Should there be another shortage then, the ticket sellers themselves may be bottled-off, continuing the rowdy history of the Reading Music Festival.

Reference:
Wikipedia