Who has the best Festival line-up this year?

So with the announcement of Reading and Leeds festivals on Monday, bar a few festivals, most of this summers line-ups have been announced. So who do I think has the best line-up this year and worth your hard earned cash?

I’ll start off bluntly, Sonisphere festival have a truly awful line-up. With headliners Kiss (Who must be about 400 years old by now) and Queen who have somehow convinced themselves that replacing Freddie Mercury with some reality TV runner up is a great idea. Sure the Sunday of the festival looks quite impressive with Faith No More and whole-album shows by Mastodon and Glassjaw, but compared to the powerhouse of the Big 4 and Slipknot last year, this year’s festival looks pretty terrible.

Download festival have stepped up the bar this year after last year’s disappointing line-up. Headlined by Metallica, Black Sabbath and Prodigy, with tonnes of bands like Soundgarden, Slash, and Tenacious D plus loads more, this summer’s festival looks like the best yet. However some pretty horrific clashes throughout the weekend and some questionable bookings like You Me at Six may put a damper on the overall impressive weekend.

V festival has the usual mix of impressive artists and contemporary tripe that the festival is famous for. In fact complaints have been made that Nicki Minaj should be headlining over the Stone Roses. That sentence should explain what kind of crowd you’re in for if you decide to venture to Chelmsford or Staffordshire.

Reading and Leeds festival this year is a similar story to that of V. Some really great bands like Foo Fighters, The Cure and At the Drive-In are however brought down by an overall quite disappointing line-up. Hopefully organisers will pull out some impressive bands later on at the Festival Republic and Lock-up stage similar to how they did last year.

Isle of Wight festival has Tom Petty, Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen...... That kicks ass!!

However my personal winner for best line-up so far is Bestival. The Isle of Wight based festival has such an awesome variety of band it appeals to literally everyone into music. The XX, New Order, Sigur Ros, Gallows, Rizzle Kicks and Orbital are amongst hundreds of bands playing the festival and they still haven’t announced all the headliners!! Bestival should become a great example to other festivals around the country. An unpredictable line-up can make a festival exciting and you may even find your next favourite band. 

Why I'll miss HMV, sort of...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or just completely oblivious to what is happening in the world, HMV are on the edge of collapse. The institution, which has been around since 1921, is going through very tough financial problems and is unlikely to see out the year.

I have quite mixed feelings to the thought of HMV going under. On one hand HMV are incredibly stupid with their prices. For example I saw Black Sabbaths Paranoid album in a store the other day still for £10. £10!! For an album released in 1971!! And then the company wonders why people are reverting to illegally downloading music instead of buying the album. HMV should have become far more competitive with their prices, especially with CD’s, because as sad as it sounds it’s become the last place on the high street to buy CDs.

Now I love downloading music from the internet and I love using download sites like Pirate Bay were I conveniently have to pay nothing for music. However I still enjoy picking up CDs, especially if they are from small bands who I feel guilty stealing from. HMV is the best place I go for CDs as they still stock CDs from all kinds of bands across genres and sadly I don’t live near any decent record stores.

So if HMV was to go, my CD buying days will no doubt come to an end. I don’t like ordering CD’s online because what is the point waiting 2 days for it to be delivered when you can simply log onto Pirate Bay and get it instantly. Even though I disagree with a lot of the pricing of HMV, it would be a real shame to see the British icon disappear forever.