It took me 3 hours to make and upload this video of the amazing time I had at Reading Festival 2008 and it was good; until YouTube mangled the fuck out of it and made it all blurry. A shame, cos I had some really good footage of the HADOUKEN!, Black Tide and Bring Me The Horizon pits.

Bring Me The Horizon did brilliantly for a band who were booked last minute to replace SlipKnot, Black Tide were incredible and HADOUKEN!, well… HADOUKEN! ruled!

The phrase butt scratcher was endlessly bounced around Reading Festival 2008. This is reference to Family Guy’s 5th season episode ‘No Chris Left Behind‘ in which Peter takes on a second job selling butt scratchers at baseball games.

Butt Scratcher!

HADOUKEN! are a 5 piece band from Leeds that formed in 2006. HADOUKEN!’s have been classified as Grime, Grindie, New Rave, Dance-punk and just general Electronica. But personally I consider HADOUKEN! to be Nintendocore. Nintendocore, or NEScore as its sometimes called, is anything inspired by or featuring 8-bit video game soundtracks, mainly Nintendo titles; HADOUKEN! was my first experience of Nintendocore and I really like it now.

HADOUKEN!’s debut album is called ‘Music for an Accelerated Culture‘. The title is a reference to Douglas Coupland’s ground-breaking book ‘Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture‘ which bought about a new era of transgressional fiction.

HADOUKEN! first came to my attention when I was at a mate’s house and distinctly heard Nintendo-esque noises coming from his stereo but with a Lethal Bizzle or Dizzee Rascal edge to it.

Their name is from fireball attack called ‘Hadouken‘ in the Street Fighter video game series. HADOUKEN! sing mainly about drinking, relationship issues and youth culture.

HADOUKEN! were amazing when I saw them at the KoKo on Mornington Crescent, London on July 3rd as part of the iTunes festival. they covered a Prodigy’s Breathe, it was awesome!

I’m seeing HADOUKEN! at Global Gathering 2008 and at Reading 2008. Anyone going to any of those?

Wow, I’ve been to my first real gig of 2008, astonishingly I havent been to anything this year. I’ve normally clocked up a dozen or so and the Download Festival by now.

A friend of Mish’s won tickets in an iTunes competition to see HADOUKEN! and as we werent able to go to the Brighton gig in the end, see invited me!

The last time I had that much fun at a gig was at Enter Shikari in Brighton in November. That was when I was still with Rozie and a few other relationships that have since crumbled were still going strong. Tonight I felt like everything was back on track and I was having good ol’fashioned mosh-pit fun again.

The crowd were pretty much all 16-19, I felt quite old at first, most of them were just rocking like penguins. I got in there and pushed a few of them around, opened up some space and threw down the hardcore gauntlet; almost everyone picked it up. They were a great bunch.

Reminds me of Billy Talent, Hammersmith 2006 when Chris, Rozie and I taught an entire crowd of softies how to mosh and mercilessly ignored the feeble cries of “Stop pushing, errrrrrrrr! Stop it.” - What utter fannies.

The support band were called ‘Does It Offend You, Yeah?‘ which made me think of Nathan Barley (the character Jonatton Yeah?), but apparently it’s a quote from The Office. They were kinda cool but to be honest I was discussing Reading Festival plans with Mish, a few of their songs caught my attention however, worth checking out, what did anyone else think?

I was pleased Mish came down into the crowd, otherwise I would’ve had to split my time between the balcony and the floor.

HADOUKEN! first came to my attention when I was at a mate’s house and distinctly heard Nintendo-esque noises coming from his stereo.

Nintendocore, or NEScore as its sometimes called, is anything inspired by or featuring 8-bit video game soundtracks; HADOUKEN! was my first experience of Nintendocore and I really like it now.

HADOUKEN! were great, they covered a Prodigy’s Breathe, it was awesome.

I’m seeing HADOUKEN! at Global Gathering next month and at Reading in August. Anyone going to any of those?