Reading Festival & Leeds Festival
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Reading & Leeds Festival crowd control barriers spark attendee backlash

Reading & Leeds, festivals that have featured headliners such as Nirvana, My Chemical Romance and Black Sabbath might be upsetting fans a bit this year.

The world’s oldest popular music festival has unveiled its new crowd control barriers and not everyone is happy.

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In an Instagram post from today, the iconic festivals showed off their newest crowd control safety measure.

“Reading & Leeds crew! Your safety is our number one priority, which is why we’ve introduced a new barrier system at the Main Stage” the post states. “The primary barrier is not a golden circle but will have a restricted capacity. You will be able to move in and out of the area between acts but please respect instructions from our security team when it is full.”

The full post can be viewed below.

The barriers look quite uncomfortable and restrictive. They’re almost like the annoying turnstiles at theme parks that you have to squeeze through. As stated, people are taking to social media to express their discontent.

Reading & Leeds
[Photo via Instagram
Reading & Leeds
[Photo via Instagram
The safety of both the crew and the crowd is a major concern, however. I guess we’ll find out how these barriers are in practice.

More Read & Leeds 

It looks like the Foo Fighters have something up their sleeve for their Reading & Leeds set this coming weekend.

Frontman Dave Grohl sat down with NME to tease the possibility of playing new music during the band’s headlining set.

Foo Fighters are set to headline the festival for the fourth time this weekend, with fans eager to know more about the band’s set.

Speaking with NME, Grohl discusses the possibility of playing new tracks including one that “would fucking destroy.”

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“There’s always something,” Grohl explains. “I’m constantly writing but not always seriously, then at some point they become a little more formed. When I feel like they’re ready, that’s when I bring them to the band.

“We’re not that far along in any kind of official process, but there’s always something. It’s happened before where we’ve written a song that afternoon and performed it. Never say never. There is one new song that would fucking destroy and I would love people to hear it. It’s written for a live performance, so we’ll see. I don’t know.”

The band plans on making their set a special one, but it looks like that’s going to be left as a surprise.

“At this point in our lifespan, there’s so much that we could do. We could bust out the same set that we played in 1995,” Grohl says.

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“We could come out on stage with new songs, we could come out on stage and do a chronological history of the band, in reverse. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to do it. That’s usually something that we figure out on the afternoon of the show.”

Foo Fighters will headline Leeds on Friday, Aug. 23 and Reading on Sunday, Aug. 25.

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