Manhattan (Opening)

Is this the best opening to a movie, ever?! I wish I lived in Woody Allen's Manhattan...

Pulp- Do you remember the first time? (Live at Reading 2011)

It was a toss-up between this and the glorious Common People. In the end I went for Do You Remember the First Time? because it seemed to fit the crowd better. Whilst for the majority of the weekend I felt at times - at the age of 20 - like I had sneaked into the best school holiday ever, during Pulp's set, I was surrounded by people in their thirties. It seemed as though the majority of the crowd had seen the band before and were taking this as an opportunity to relive their teenage years.

What also struck me about the show was the energy on the stage, due mainly to (extraordinarily flexible!) frontman Jarvis Cocker. Rather than stand motionless on the stage like many of his peers (yes, Liam Gallagher, I'm looking at you), Jarvis refuses to grow old gracefully and during parts of the set you would see him writhing around on the amps in his tradmark dandy fashion. Surprisingly, it works. What I liked most about this show was that the band weren't taking this for granted - they were loving every minute of it, and so too did the fans.

My only criticism would be that they weren't headlining the Saturday night (although I know that this wasn't the case in Leeds). I love The Strokes as much as the next person but the incredible energy that Sheffield's finest built up was lost a little during the New Yorkers' set.

Right, I've spoken enough; get watching this masterclass in showmanship. I also recommend watching Common People, purely for the lovely speech Jarvis gives about it beforehand.

Elbow - One day like this (Reading 2011)

Elbow were definitely one of my favourite acts of the weekend. A major crowd-pleaser and One Day Like This is such a sing-a-long. The lyrics are so uplifting and really resonated with me for that weekend. Being part of a crowd whilst we all sang along to this was special and for this reason I would definitely recommend seeing them live. My brother, who is a massive music snob and has waxed lyrical in the past about how boring he finds Elbow, even enjoyed this one.

Reading 2011

I realised that whilst I haven't blogged for a while, I have actually been up to some blog-worthy stuff recently! Normally my summer is spent lounging on the sofa watching E4 alone at 2 in the afternoon whist slowly sinking into a state of depression, but this year I got my arse into gear (and had some ERASMUS grant left over) and so the self-hating sofa time was kept to a minimum. The highlight for me was definitely Reading festival.

This was the first festival that I'd ever been to (I know, at 20, this is embarrassing, particularly considering I was clearly one of the oldest there). I went with my brother who is a Reading-appropriate 17 years old and if you think that I am sad for doing that, believe me it gets worse, as on the Thursday morning the plan was that I was going to be going with my mother. This was due to my brother's admission the night before that he was going to spend the whole weekend with his friends and I was to be left alone in the tent. Luckily, we managed to sort things out and we turned out to have one of THE best weekends.

I am at the best of times a little uptight - more so when I have to spend the whole weekend looking after my little brother who doesn't know his elbow from his arse and has never cooked himself a piece of toast, never mind a bowl of pasta. So I was a little anxious as to what the weekend held in store. As it happened, it was brilliant. I discovered so many new bands as well as seeing some of my all time favourite acts, the best of which was definitely Pete Doherty (made better by the fact that the only people at his gig were the ones that really wanted to be there - Muse were playing on the main stage at the same time). I'm going to include a few videos (all nabbed off YouTube: I hate videoing gigs) of my favourites now.

Yes, yes, I know, I haven't blogged for months. A sign of a bad blogger is that all of their posts seem to be apologies for not updating their blog, so I guess that makes me a pretty bad blogger. What's more, I am now back at uni and have forgotten my camera, so I can't even do a lazy blog post of "The view from outside my window", "A picture of a trendy student". I will be going home next week though so I can hopefully find my camera and take some pictures for inspiration! I'm also going to Dublin to celebrate my friend's birthday next weekend so I will definitely find something to photograph there (providing that the floods stop - otherwise it will just be snaps of a grey and rainy Dub, I'm afraid).