Slam Dunk Festival

Went to Leeds Millenium square on Saturday, for a 'Punk Rock' all-dayer on a grand scale.

Many bands played:

HelloGoodbye - Standard lightweight fayre on Vagrant so no surprises, except for the highly entertaining finale of a pastiche eurodance song; with dancing sharks and bananas taking over the stage.

The Hush Sound - Indie pop fronted by a girl. How is this punk? Really no place at the event so far as I could see, OK but out of place.

Capdown - British Skacore; first "fu*k" of the day, finally kicked some life into the crowd.

Hundred Reasons - Who I'd been wanting to see for some years now. Really got the crowd going, playing all their first album hits, and a selection of their new album. First "mother****er" of the day, which I'm sure irked the many parents there escort their teenybobbers who'd come for the headliners. Put on a hell of a show, and should've been higher up the bill.

Only 'good' picture I got was of them:

Thursday - US Screamo with a little rock edge, pretty good I thought.

The Academy Is - sounded almost exactly like the headliners, only not as good.

Fall Out Boy - THE reason why there were 5000 people crammed into the square, and me and Sue were probibly in the top 1% age wise (excepting parental escorts). Played an absolute blinder of a set however, with something for everyone, radio friendly punk rock, with an intelligent edge to the lyrics and some killer melodies. I like.

The vast crowd of kids and clueless parents; who'd obviously not been to a gig in their lives before made for bedlam in the crowd, and the overpriced bar and general shortage of seating or food were somewhat annoying; but overall a pretty great day.

Hopefully this'll become an annual event too.