Media City Photo

Courtesy of EG Focus on Flickr.

Here comes the Summer...

The other week, I was one of 70,000 or so people who parted with £180 for a ticket to the Leeds music festival. A lot of money, but it's the main event of my Summer sorted out. Though it seems ridiculous to have a ticket for an event that's - at the time of writing - 129 days away, I suppose I can at least be grateful that Britain's major festivals aren't now, in the midst of the Eyjafjallajokull (a good word for Scrabble) ash cloud troubles.
So, anyway, the big news for Leeds festival is that The Libertines are reuniting to play it, and I have to join all the people who are proclaiming what a brilliant event this is. Obviously I'm too young to have properly appreciated them the first time round, but I've followed all members' separate projects, and have wanted it to happen for so long. It's a shame it has to happen on such a big stage, where the crowd is so far away from the band that there's not much of a connection, but I suppose that's the way it was always going to be - a band with as big a following as The Libertines would never be able to just play the tiny, illegal shows that they were known for back in the day. Though saying that, it's really not that long since they split up, and that's perhaps why it can work - it's long enough after the fall out for the hard feelings to dissipate, but close enough to it for the band to still be relevant.