Reading Festival 2003
Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th August 2003Richfield Avenue, Reading, Berkshire, England MAP
£95 for weekend (SOLD OUT), £40 any day
Daily capacity: 55,000
She strode out all pompous punkette and vampish seducer. In a tight blue number with a pint of champagne and the rest of the bottle. She snaked to the front, drew us in wrapped her fingers around the microphone and punks first angel blew our hearts and heads with lust, desire and the feeling we'd been away from rumpled silk sheets and a sweat drenched lover for far too long.
She writhed, she licked, she lapped us up and she hadn't even started the first tune. She drawled whispering and shouting at the same time. She screamed, she threw herself to the floor, on her knees on her back! Oh to be in the photo pit as she gets down and naughty.
The champagne bottle's poured tauntingly over the crowd, our tongues are out as she dribbles it over our faces. Then she tosses the spent bottle under the drummer, and continues to blast us with Rich!
The boys in the band fill in the sound, Brian Chase thumps skins better n'most, while Nick Zinner's big, roller coasting judders fill the Radio One tent. It's a magic performance, Maps and Pin and the EP stuff still sounds so much better tonight than the album. It's battering, brutal, hard, knee grazing stuff. The music dominates us and Karen forces us all into submission.
Okay it's more about the cabaret that is Karen O. But you have to see them and tonight they really played a set too. Sometimes I'm so caught up in the temptress on stage I forget just how hugely accomplished musicians the blokes are. Thank you Reading for giving me the opportunity to see them live. This is real punk, it works, Karen's picked the audience's cherry and I leave spent, stunned and blissful.
review by: Scott Williams
photos by: Karen Williams