Friday 24/08/07 Day One @ Leeds Festival, Bramham Park, West Yorkshire

Wading through the swarms of neon soldiers, hot panted welly booted honeys and over-styled emo kids, Leeds Festival 2007 started off in the best possible way – blazing sunshine and sore heads from last night’s Welcome To Leeds party. Today’s line up splits the weekenders in two camps, and welcomes a mixed bag of day-trippers with its rawk versus new rave bill. The main stage is boasting of The Smashing Pumpkins return alongside Nine Inch Nails and The Lost Prophets, while the Radio One tent is providing a luminous alternative in the shape of Klaxons, CSS and LCD Soundsystem.

The queue to get in the arena is massive. The first timers clearly haven’t got into the habit of the festival breakfast of an 11am can of Strongbow, half a spliff and greasy bacon sarnies round a tent that will be ritually burned on Monday morning. The toilets aren’t too bad yet. The girls are still looking pretty and the boys aren’t stinking yet - it’s going well. Spirits are high, there’s not a patch of mud anywhere – a real rarity for this year’s drenched festival season.

However, we still stomp around in our Hunters regardless, as if putting flip-flops on might tempt the already volatile weather to take a turn for the worse. Just a week or so ago they were pumping water out of the Reading site, so we’re all feeling fairly smug that the North has the upper hand already and with the stellar line up before us, this could be the only festival (joint with Reading) on the crowded summer calendar that comes anywhere close to Glastonbury.

So we wander around. New additions include a Jack Daniels Saloon serving over-priced cowboy tucker in a fancy wooden ranch, a Silent Disco and we also hear Piccadilly Circus in the centre of the main campsite has acquired a real disco that boasts of glitter balls and all manners of music courtesy of Beef Warehouse to satisfy those wandering sleepless souls after hours. Other than that, it’s the same old Leeds we know and love. As The Used take to the Main Stage, those in the ‘pit’ do some weird running in a circle to Burt McCracken’s sketchy chords, making us question whether teens and cider in the midday sun is really a good idea. Keeps them off the streets, we suppose.

Thankfully, they hadn’t worn themselves out for Funeral For A Friend, who dip in and out of quality old material from Between Order and Model and not so good new stuff. But it’s Fall Out Boy that truly steal the show this afternoon. At one point, the line “Nobody wanna see us together,” has everyone looking at each other for a clue of what they’re starting up. It’s Akon! Blending into lines from R.Kelly’s ‘Ignition’, everyone laughs, but everyone honestly seems to be enjoying it. After all, it’s that point of the day when everyone is pissed and wants to hear something they know, regardless how cheesy it may be. Covers of power ballad ‘Power Of Love’ and Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ proceed to follow in between the emo anthems that have made them into an act some love to hate.