TMJ

Yeah, they do. I got some friends going up tomorrow and buying on the box office.

My ticket was delivered today, via a relatively narked Royal Mail guy who seemed in no mood to care about my overwhelming joy as he gave me the envelope. So stoked now. In two days, I'll be sat in a field in Reading with friends and family. In three days, I'll be off my tits and rocking to Rage Against The Machine. And since Rage are the only band of two that I care about needing to see that I haven't seen before (the other being AC/DC), I am not missing it short of death. Not to curse me or anything

Timetable wise, I'm thinking...

Friday

A quick look around (and will probably go see who the special guests are in the BBC Introducing tent. Then...

2:35 - Dizzee Rascal

3:40 - Serj Tankian

4:30 - Stephen Lynch, and then catch the end of Biffy Clyro

5:55 - The Enemy

7:05 - The Fratellis (eh, it'll be a sing-a-long, so I'm all for it)

8:20 - QOTSA

10:00 - Rage Against The Piss-Eating Motherfucking Bush Hating Machine

Saturday

Roam day. Only really care about seeing

7:05 - The Raconteurs

Although I might go out of my way to see

2:50 "Special Guests"

3:10 - Robin Ince

4:45 - The Ting Tings

8:05 - Justice (don't know much about them, bar it's dancey. Never ever seen a dance act and since I might have to miss Pendulum (fucking annoying, but we'll see), this will do)

9:15 - Bullet For My Valentine

10:00 - The Killers

Sunday

12:00 - Mindless Self Indulgence (who are fantastic live)

1:45 - Henry Rollins

4:15 - Avenged Sevenfold

EITHER 6:35 - Pendulum, OR 6:40 - Slipknot

7:55 - Tenacious D

9:30 - Metallica

And if you see someone who is in a "I Support Single Mums" t-shirt, baggy jeans and long black hair with a bandana or beanie on, that'll be a whole number of people, probably. But this is me:

So if that image engraves in your mind and you spot me, shout "Oi, gayboy, I know you from the internet." And then I'll know it's one of you and we can all share our witty stories once we return.

Hey Stevie, received this?:

Dear Customer,

Due to a technical error all Reading Festival Bookings have not been processed.

NO CREDIT CARDS HAVE BEEN CHARGED.

We do apologies for any inconvenience caused.

AceTickets.co.uk

Management

Got down to HMV this morning... all sold out.

But have just ordered off Acetickets though, so im going

Be careful. Haven't heard good things about them...

I saw half of Feeder at Download 2005. Seemed ok, but nothing special. Metallica in 2006 were so much better by a country mile.

There's certainly a place for Feeder (preferably a stage where I don't have to waste time watching them) but it's just the style clash of Feeder and Slipknot (who will be the best visual of the weekend - always a great experience to watch) being next to each other. Surely they suit the Friday more. Feeder under Rage'd work, and they'd be a pretty good lead-in to the band of the weekend.

Saying that, Incubus were under Iron Maiden in 2005, so who knows...

Main staging the entire Friday. If Dizzie, QOTSA, Fratellis, Serj and Clyro weren't enough, I'm only going for Rage anyway, so I'm not missing them for the world.

Saturday will be my exploration day I think. Might go see Bullet and then catch The Killers.

Sunday, main stage all day. Whoever has put Feeder between A7X and Slipknot is begging for a stoning, but the more i think about Tenacious D between Slipknot and Metallica, the more it just... works. Full excitement overload.

Got the site confirmation - just awaiting my e-mail comfirmation. God, if I put in the wrong details now, I'll be pissed.

Otherwise, relieved isn't the word. Reading, here I come.

I'm only trying to get one ticket and it's nothing but "We couldn't find tickets that matched your request."

DAMMIT RAGE, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO PLAY WITHOUT ME!

£155 without P&P/etc

That was fucking stupid. Just sat there like a lemon whilst Ticketmaster kicked me off each time.

Uh, frustrating... sick of this try again page.

www.punktastic.com

It's been super-slow all day though due to the traffic of Reading/Leeds fans.

Also, listen to Radio One from 4pm. Zane Lowe will be on to announce the line-up.

More updates:

Punktastic.com can reveal Saturday at Reading / Sunday at Leeds - The Killers headline the main stage, ably backed up by Bloc Party, The Raconteurs, Editors, We Are Scientists, Dirty Pretty Things and The Subways. Manic Street Preachers headline the Radio 1/NME tent with Bullet For My Valentine, Justice and Foals also confirmed. More at 3pm...

The NME can exclusively reveal...absolutely nothing about Reading/Leeds. Punktastic, however, can tell you that on Sunday at Reading / Friday at Leeds Metallica will headline the main stage with Tenacious D, Slipknot and Feeder also confirmed. The Cribs headline the Radio 1/NME tent and Pendulum are also confirmed to play.

Why would The Verve headline? It's an all-American headline cast.

Speaking of...

ORIGINAL: Boss of Punktastic

OK, 'cos I'm nice this is FRi at Reading, SAT at Leeds so far. This is on the basis you tell friends to com back at 2pm and check out more announcements

THE MAIN STAGE

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE

THE FRATELLIS

THE ENEMY

BIFFY CLYRO

SERJ TANKIAN

DIZZEE RASCAL

TAKING BACK SUNDAY

GET CAPE, WEAR CAPE, FLY

ANTI-FLAG

The RADIO ONE / NME STAGE

BABYSHAMBLES

THE WOMBATS

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

MGMT

Rage Against The MOTHERFUCKING CAN'T PISSING WAIT MARKING OUT LIKE A BITCH RIGHT NOW Machine~!

Nice to know that I was right and the Download threaders were wrong.

Jo Whiley has just confirmed The Killers.

I heard Scott Mills will be announcing the headliners on his show, but I'm also sure that his show is on right now, which'd make no sense.

MTV2 ran a show yesterday dedicated the "the acts playing at Reading and Leeds this year". The bands played were Metallica, Killers, Bloc Party, Queens Of The Stone Age, Slipknot and Paramore.

Also, make sure you get to the site for 6.30ish. If you have FireFox, install FasterFox. You'll pretty much get a ticket guaranteed if you're on time, but there's also a phone number that you'd be best to have on you.

Phew, no more Dragsy whining about hijacking the oh-so-important Download forum.

Reading website updated: http://readingfestival.com/home/

I'm excited for the announcements.

The only shows I go out of my way to listen to are Howard Stern, Chris Moyles and Iain Lee. Otherwise, I listen in and out to different stations to see what is going on with different DJs and criticise everything they do.

I listened to the song on their website and it sounded... just the same as every other Disturbed song.

Not impressed.

Pendulum? YES!

Forget Leeds, Download it is.

Sorry to divert again, but since there is no other festival thread, Pendulum are "to be confirmed" for Leeds too - according to Efestivals. Metallica and RATM are going to be confirmed for Reading/Leeds on Monday. Metallica have self-announced a "huge tour announcement" for around the same time that the Reading announcement is made, Rage are a guarentee, and Daily Star, Efestivals, and Punktastic (I know, reliable...) have stated that Killers are making their only festival appearance in the UK at R&L. DigitalSpy are running with all three headlining.

As for Download, AurA, Romeo Must Die, Fall Out Boy, Rose Tattoo, DevilDriver, Fear Factory, Lordi and Henry Rollins are all rumoured on Efest to be announced soon. Oddly, so is Ace Frehley...

VR and Axl should all just suck up their issues and think of the money from a reunion tour.

I'm in a state of confusion, Download is my first choice, but it's really soon & I'm poor.

Leeds is looking good on the rumours, but apparently it sells out within hours & I'm poor.

How much do Leeds tickets go up to on ebay?

Do they sell more tickets at a later date?

On the 'strength' of the supposed headliners, I doubt it will sell out within hours this year. I think Metallica and Rage at an indie-heavy (ish) festival will cause an effect like Jay Z at Glastonbury. They will still sell quickly, just not V-Festival 90 minutes quickly.

On the contrary, I think Rage will lead to a huge sell-out. As far as I've seen through friends and all the forums, they're the make-or-break band of the line-up.

The Korn cover of Word Up is great. So happy/catchy.

And from Gun to Guns N'Roses, the talk of Audioslave doing Rage songs reminded me of Velvet Revolver doing GnR songs and having seen both VR in 05 and 07 and GnR in 06, a bold statement maybe, but I think that Axl's band does their songs far better than VR do, as a whole. You'd think that the VR sound would be better because of Slash and co, but they seem not to actually give a toss, whilst Axl was having fun and his band seemed to love being up there with him. So add VR's cover of their own GnR songs up there, not helped by Weiland sounding like Axl-Lite.

Doesn't matter if it was GnR with or without Slash, Duff, etc. Axl on his own is a HUGE name (despite the lack of credit he gets), no smaller than Metallica are. If anything, Axl is even harder to get because his tours are so rare. And of course people cared about them. I knew loads of people gonig solely for GnR/Axl Solo. I nearly went solely for Axl, but my Mom wanted to see Metallica and Korn, so we did that day instead.

As for Rage, I'd argue they're not bigger than Foos. Back in 2005, they may have been about equal, although Foos were still more well known. Today, Foos are so much bigger in this country that they might as well just eliminate all rock bands and rename the rock genre "Grohl". So yeah, again, I can see Reading and Leeds approaching both bands. 'Tallica have said they're playing European festivals and England treats them too well not to play, and Rage are Melvin Benn (the organiser)'s favourite ever band to have performed there and has wanted them there since at least 2004. Depends how far he is willing to go to get them.

I sound like a Reading sycophant which is weird because I usually condemn them to hell and head down to Download, but pretty much everyone on the Reading boards are in agreement of Killers/Metallica/Rage, more confident than the Downloaders usually are. And it makes the most sense for Tallica and Rage to play (Killers, give or take, don't really care) given the timing.

All we know for sure though is that it's an All-American headliner.

Also, stolen from a Reading forum, self-confirmations:

Frank Turner

The Blackout

Laura Marling

Parka

British Sea Power

The Paddingtons

Less Then Jake

Serj Tankian

Blood Red Shoes

The Grit

Goldfinger

Hadouken!

Manic Street Preachers

The Cribs

Modest Mouse

This Et Al

iLiKETRAiNS

Dizzee Rascal

Foals

Gallows

Set Your Goals

You're right, it is more indie, but Download has the rock market corners so it makes sense to diversify things more, even if I don't like/know half the bands listed there.

-----------------------------------

EDIT: Just found this on a respectable news site:

The names are likely to be revealed in March when tickets go on sale, and names put forward for this year range from Rage Against the Machine, Green Day and Metallica to Snoop Dogg, R.E.M and possibly Aerosmith.

Green Day, I can't see. There has to be at least one indie day, and THAT would be overload since GD are huge right now. Aerosmith... would only play if Metallica don't, but that'd be quite cool. REM are playing other festivals but again, it's stacking the headliners. And is Snoop even allowed in the UK yet?

Whilst true, I'm using previous UK festivals as precedent. Metallica and Guns N' Roses at Download in 2006. Foo Fighters and Iron Maiden headlining Carling in 2005. I could very easily see it happening, and not just because I would jump up and down like a little girl in excitement over knowing I'm going to see it.

Plus, who else will they stick on the Sunday (at Reading)? It's always been the rock day and Slipknot won't headline it, nor can I see a bunch of rumoured bands like Slipknot, A7X and Machine Head opening for Rage, who I would still bank the house on playing AND headlining.

Then again, look at the Download rumours on the first page compared to what the announcements ended up being. For all I know, we could end up with Kanye, MCR and K-Fed. But I'm only going if Rage are announced, and I've got my £200 ready to go.

Bullet For My Valentine played both in 2005. It's possible.