Carling Weekend Main Stage: Reading (Sun) Leeds (Fri)

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Sunday morning is a spiritual experience. Having wandered the other stages during the early hours and watched the sunrise on a few bails of hay, VF makes it into the arena to the sound of Minus. It's not a pleasant experience. Famous for taking more drugs than the whole of their habitual Iceland put together (and then going on stage), Minus' metal scrawl is for only the very hardest of ears. We can't decipher any tune or talent beneath it, but hey, we're still away in fairyland.

Thrice is a little more interesting. Never the most visually exciting of bands onstage but hardcore masterpieces, as epic in their sweep as Beethoven on a Harley, have never needed catsuits or tickertape parades to announce their greatness. The fashioncore contingent are out in force, and the masses greet the more obscure 'Deadbolt' with the same rabid enthusiasm as more recent offerings such as 'Under A Killing Moon'. Thrice may not be headlining stages just yet, but not even The Darkness can claim such devotion.

It's not until The Rasmus arrive that Bottling Day really starts to blast off. The crowd do themselves proud and The Rasmus promptly leave the stage after just one song. Sod off back to your shadows.

Like Flogging Molly before them, Dropkick Murphys are keen to play on the 'Irish' appeal despite being from New York. It's awful. Fake Irish accents abound, and trying to copy Shane McGowan is insane. The real one is tuneless enough, a third rate one even worse. If you like The Pogues, see how bad their music could have been.

Thank all that's holy then for The Streets. The world's greatest urban poet returns to his spiritual home - the Carling Festival! And it's sludgy but amazing. Despite the crap sound, enough fans already know the words to the point where it goes from being a rap show as far removed from what will happen to 'Fiddy' Cent as could be, to some kind of mutated 'speakers corner' with Skinner in the corner. It's a cult like ritual of tracksuited pill culture, as so perfectly encapsulated in next single 'Blinded By The Light', and we can't get enough. 'Dry Your Eyes' ironically has everyone wiping their's, during a spine-tingling moment that will undoubtedly have some recounting to their grandkids one day. "They don't make festival pant-wetting moments like they did in my day, sonny".