Lineup 2018

[Guest]

Just now, Chinaski_ said:

Nah I'm just saying it's pretty sexist to say women can only be inspired by other women.

No one has said that.

[moams]

1 minute ago, R Shah said:

The plain truth is that there is an overwhelming majority of males in rock bands compared to females in rock bands. The reasons why that is the case don't matter. because there's clearly more men in rock bands therefore there's always going to be a lot more males than females at r+l. 

Simple conclusion : if there's a higher percentage of men in rock overall , there will be higher percentage of male acts at r+l. 

There are some good female artists as many of you have listed but there also many more good male artists because there are more male artists involved on the whole . Irrespective of everything and any stereotypes or reasons why there are more men, the probability of booking a male artist is considerably higher . It doesn't matter whether theyre male or female as long as they're good when FR are booking them.

Why have I run out of up votes. Completely agree the thing is though if it was the other way round and the line-ups were female dominant you wouldn't get a single person complaining.

[Hawky]

11 minutes ago, Gucci Piggy said:

Reading 1999 - The Charlatans, Blur, RHCP

Reading 1998 - Page and Plant, The Beastie Boys, Garbage

Reading 1997 - Suede, Manic Street Preachers, Metallica

Reading 1996 - RATM, Black Grape, The Stone Roses

Reading 1995 - The Smashing Pumpkins, Björk, Neil Young

Reading 1994 - Cyrpress Hill, Primal Scream, RHCP

Reading 1993 - Porno For Pyros, The The, New Order

Reading 1992 - The Wonderstuff, Public Enemy, Nirvana

Reading 1991 - Iggy Pop, James, The Sisters of Mercy

Out of the 30 headliners in the 1990s, there were 5 female band members. Those were the Wonderstuff violinist, New Order keyboardist, Björk, Smashing Pumpkins bassist, Garbage singer.

If the average band had 4 members in it (complete guess), that would mean 5 out of 120 people involved in Reading headline slots in the 1990s were female.

If that's not an issue to you, and counts as there being loads of female acts, then well...

Erica didn't join The Wonder Stuff until 2005 

[Chinaski_]

7 minutes ago, Gucci Piggy said:

But even when there were this alternative culture you speak of, female musicians still weren't making it to the heights of headlining Reading festival, which is a related problem.

Still better than it is today though. What would you class as being unpromblematic? 

[Guest]

I can't even believe some of the points that are being discussed. This is such a stereotypical lad on lad debate it's actually cringe worthy.

Even the suggestion that a push for more female representation at the festival is at all an 'attempt to ruin music' is fucking mental. Actually dissect that for a minute, think of the undertones of what that is alluding to.

[Hawky]

[Bisque]

I bet hardly any of you on here have a girlfriend or are married. These threads moves so fast when we get talking about the opposite sex

[Guest]

Just now, Bisque said:

I bet hardly any of you on here have a girlfriend or are married. These threads moves so fast when we get talking about the opposite sex

Ngl I've been masturbating throughout this whole debate.

[moams]

2 minutes ago, Bisque said:

I bet hardly any of you on here have a girlfriend or are married. These threads moves so fast when we get talking about the opposite sex

I like men

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, moams said:

Why have I run out of up votes. Completely agree the thing is though if it was the other way round and the line-ups were female dominant you wouldn't get a single person complaining.

If the same disparity was reversed and had been the case for the entire history of the festival, then yes, you'd get just as many people complaining.

[Gucci Piggy]

8 minutes ago, Chinaski_ said:

Again, I don't see why women can only be inspired by other women to form a band. L7 were influenced by Motorhead and Black Flag for example. 

They can be. But if you're a female starting out playing the guitar or drums and you dream of becoming a world famous rockstar, seeing that almost everyone who's made it to status is male is hardly going to feel encouraging.

7 minutes ago, R Shah said:

The plain truth is that there is an overwhelming majority of males in rock bands compared to females in rock bands. The reasons why that is the case don't matter. because there's clearly more men in rock bands therefore there's always going to be a lot more males than females at r+l. 

Simple conclusion : if there's a higher percentage of men in rock overall , there will be higher percentage of male acts at r+l. 

There are some good female artists as many of you have listed but there also many more good male artists because there are more male artists involved on the whole . Irrespective of everything and any stereotypes or reasons why there are more men, the probability of booking a male artist is considerably higher . It doesn't matter whether theyre male or female as long as they're good when FR are booking them.

But the point is that's not going to change until someone actively tries to change it. Major festival organisers are some of the best placed people to push this and there are a lot of acts who could be booked over male counterparts and not have any negative effect on the lineups.

2 minutes ago, Chinaski_ said:

Still better than it is today though. What would you class as being unpromblematic? 

Yeah, but neither are good enough. It being that way in the 90s is part of the reason it is like it is today. If more female acts are actively booked in the upper reaches of lineups for the next decade, I bet in fifteen years time you'd see things increase more naturally, because the stereotype that headlining rock music festivals is a man's game will start to break down.

Unproblematic would be a fairly even split, but I know that will be way off. So for now, an active push towards that would be good.

[Gucci Piggy]

9 minutes ago, Hawky said:

Erica didn't join The Wonder Stuff until 2005 

Even worse then. 4 people out of 30 headliners.

5 minutes ago, Bisque said:

I bet hardly any of you on here have a girlfriend or are married. These threads moves so fast when we get talking about the opposite sex

It's an online forum for festivals what do you expect?

[Chinaski_]

It's funny as the bands everyone has listed in this thread get booked to play Reading anyway, so not sure what the complaint is supposed to be. Unless you want the same bands every year, would be pretty boring though no? Then again Shikari and Frank Turner get booked every year and no one complains. 

[Hawky]

7 minutes ago, Bisque said:

I bet hardly any of you on here have a girlfriend or are married. These threads moves so fast when we get talking about the opposite sex

Hahaha. 

 

Wait.

 

What?

[moams]

5 minutes ago, SomeoneListeningIn said:

If the same disparity was reversed and had been the case for the entire history of the festival, then yes, you'd get just as many people complaining.

But would they???? I wouldn't complain personally. Yes there may have been a problem in the past but not now. If the line-up got announced tomorrow and it was predominantly female then I'd still be going regardless if I liked their music.

[Hawky]

3 minutes ago, Gucci Piggy said:

Even worse then. 4 people out of 30 headliners.

And Gillian from New Order left after the reading show... 

[Chinaski_]

2 minutes ago, Gucci Piggy said:

They can be. But if you're a female starting out playing the guitar or drums and you dream of becoming a world famous rockstar, seeing that almost everyone who's made it to status is male is hardly going to feel encouraging.

But the point is that's not going to change until someone actively tries to change it. Major festival organisers are some of the best placed people to push this and there are a lot of acts who could be booked over male counterparts and not have any negative effect on the lineups.

Yeah, but neither are good enough. It being that way in the 90s is part of the reason it is like it is today. If more female acts are actively booked in the upper reaches of lineups for the next decade, I bet in fifteen years time you'd see things increase more naturally, because the stereotype that headlining rock music festivals is a man's game will start to break down.

Unproblematic would be a fairly even split, but I know that will be way off. So for now, an active push towards that would be good.

Not necessarily, Joan Jett, Courtney Love, Siouxsie Sioux, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith for example are well known female rock stars. 

But if we're excluding bands like Arcade Fire, who have headlined before, then saying there aren't any bands beyond Florence and Paramore who can headline, then what can they do? 

[Alex DeLarge]

1 minute ago, Chinaski_ said:

Shikari and Frank Turner get booked every year and no one complains. 

Yep, you're so right about forum favourites Enter Shikari and Frank Turner.

[Hawky]

But Paramore are terrible now 

[Guest]

Just now, Chinaski_ said:

It's funny as the bands everyone has listed in this thread get booked to play Reading anyway, so not sure what the complaint is supposed to be. Unless you want the same bands every year, would be pretty boring though no? Then again Shikari and Frank Turner get booked every year and no one complains. 

They're the ones that have been quoted because they're the ones that easily come to mind, since they are clearly suitable for the festival. When you look at the Main/NME stage I'd say at least 80-90% of the acts will have played the festival before anyway, so the point is kinda redundant - that's clearly not an issue for the festival.

Even still, isn't this the whole point? New up and coming female acts should be actively booked, acts that people don't know to be given lower slots with the hope they will gain popularity and return over the next year. If we started quoting female acts that you'd never heard of then you'd complain that they shouldn't book them because they're not popular enough.

They go through the same process every year (booking up and coming acts that they hope will gain momentum and return in the future), but the majority of those acts are all male. The change has got to be actively and consciously acted upon. You can't just hope that in the future more female acts will appear out of no where so for now the festival should remain 90% male.

[Gucci Piggy]

5 minutes ago, Chinaski_ said:

Not necessarily, Joan Jett, Courtney Love, Siouxsie Sioux, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith for example are well known female rock stars. 

But if we're excluding bands like Arcade Fire, who have headlined before, then saying there aren't any bands beyond Florence and Paramore who can headline, then what can they do? 

We're saying that through the whole lineup, in all positions, they should actively try to book more female acts than they currently do. In some slots there may not be any suitable female acts, in some cases there will be exciting all-male bands that should still be booked, but half the undercard at R&L every year could easily be swapped out for a load of similarly-sized acts and it'd make no difference. It can't be that hard for them to actively get more females on the whole lineup without decimating the quality of it.

Edit: And yes those are famous female rockstars, but there are a shit ton more males who are of the same status, and all the "elite" rock icons are male.

Edited January 24, 2018 by Gucci Piggy

[Chinaski_]

1 minute ago, SomeoneListeningIn said:

If we started quoting female acts that you'd never heard of then you'd complain that they shouldn't book them because they're not popular enough.

Yeah because that sounds like me and my musical tastes 

There's no reason why they can't book some more alternative stuff on the NME/FR. Getting tired of being told they don't appeal to 16 year olds, when they won't be watching every band on the line up.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, moams said:

But would they???? I wouldn't complain personally. Yes there may have been a problem in the past but not now. If the line-up got announced tomorrow and it was predominantly female then I'd still be going regardless if I liked their music.

This whole debate started with the suggestion that female acts shouldn't be actively imposed on the lineup. So if the lineup came out tomorrow and was 90% female, I'd say yes, there'd be a fair bit of uproar.

But even still, that would be 1 year out of the entire history of the festival. I've not fact checked this but I can pretty confidently say that there has never been a year where there has been anything remotely close to a 50/50 split of male/female acts on the R&L lineup.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Hawky said:

But Paramore are terrible now 

u kidding m8, After Laughter is the best thing they've ever released

[UndergroundSound]

Just now, SomeoneListeningIn said:

u kidding m8, After Laughter is the best thing they've ever released

it's been said many times but its so true, after laughter is packed full of bangers.