Drowned in Reading Festival: A Greatest Hits Mixtape

'Ding! 'Ding! As part of DiS' Reading Festival preview, we've made a mixtape of the festival's greatest hits but first, a little prologue from DiS' editor....

The August bank holiday signals the time of year when all my greatest festival moments and all my broken teenage dreams come flooding back to haunt me. Memories of Rage Against the Machine circle pits and Symposium trashing everything on the main stage whilst covering 'Hard Day's Night'. For me, these memories are triggered by the smell of burning plastic mixing with half-cooked cows ass, which you can usually sniff in the breeze as the train pulls in to Reading. For others it's probably the first time you see one of those bright yellow adverts with the line-up in your music magazine of choice. Whatever it is, Reading lives in a very special place in my heart and having gone every year since picking up my GCSE's in 1998, I've seen some phenomenal live-changing shows. It's quite fair to say that Reading isn't just the exclamation mark at the end of each summer but it's the backbone of DiS, as not only the festival that we love the most but also where many of our founding staff members first met and decided to try to start a website.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention Reading (AND LEEDS!!!) Festival takes place this weekend. If you have no idea what I'm blathering on about, it's a festival, featuring primarily rock music, that's so entwined with rock history that it's woven together like a woollen hoodie for a be-horned Siamese twin. Many of the greatest bands in rock, from Nirvana, Muse and Slipknot to At the Drive-in, The Strokes and Queens of the Stone Age, have solidified their place in the history books at Reading Festival either by wowing audiences or playing their first big shows. It's a festival that has a heritage going right back to 1961 when it was a Jazz festival, which with the birth of prog morphed into Reading Rock Festival, which slowly got more metal as the years went by. The festival became more of a global phenomenon around the time of grunge and over the past 15 years has begun to straddle other popular rock sub-genres like brit-pop, skate punk, nu metal but also smatterings of hip-hop, dance and grime.

Anyway, you probably know all of this, so I'll shut up and share our self-indulgent playlist now. Basically, DiS got lost for a few hours making a mixtape of the songs which remind us of some of the finest moments of Reading Festival. The performance of many of the below tracks went down in (British) rock history and has informed and inspired many of the acts playing at this year's festival (actually, some of them are back this year) and given the festival its reputation as one of the most important festivals in the world.

If nothing else, we hope this 50-song mixtape (well, Spotify Playlist) gets you in the mood for the weekend's festivities. We'll see you in the pit at the bar.

Greatest Hits of Reading Festival by Drowned in Sound

Black Sabbath 'Paranoid'
Nirvana 'Breed'
At the Drive-In 'One Armed Scissor'
Queens Of The Stone Age 'Feel Good Hit of the Summer'
The Strokes 'New York City Cops'
Foo Fighters 'Monkey Wrench'
Placebo 'Bruise Pristine'
The Cooper Temple Clause 'Been Training Dogs'
PJ Harvey 'This Wicked Tongue'
Faith No More 'We Care a Lot'
Rage Against The Machine 'Bullet In The Head'
Beastie Boys 'Fight for Your Right'
Jurassic 5 'Quality Control'
Eminem 'Lose Yourself'
The Roots 'Rock You'
Primal Scream 'Kill All Hippies'
Prodigy 'No Good (Start The Dance) (Remastered)'
Garbage 'Stupid Girl'
The Breeders 'Cannonball'
The Darkness 'Get Your Hands Off My Woman'
Hole 'Celebrity Skin'
Green Day 'My Generation'
blink-182 'Dammit'
The Offspring 'The Kids Aren't Alright'
Jimmy Eat World 'Sweetness'
NOFX 'It's My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite'
My Vitriol 'Losing Touch (Live at the Academy)'
Manic Street Preachers 'Slash 'n' Burn'
Radiohead 'Anyone Can Play Guitar'
The Smashing Pumpkins 'Fuck You (An Ode to No One)'
The Jesus Lizard 'Thumper'
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster 'Psychosis Safari'
Marilyn Manson 'The Beautiful People'
System Of A Down 'Suite-Pee - Live'
Deftones 'Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)'
Slipknot 'Wait And Bleed'
Gallows 'In The Belly Of A Shark'
Iron Maiden 'The Number of the Beast'
Machine Head 'Message in a Bottle'
My Chemical Romance 'Welcome To The Black Parade'
Panic! At the Disco 'I Write Sins Not Tragedies'
Muse 'Butterflies and Hurricanes'
A Perfect Circle 'Rose'
Silverchair 'Freak'
The White Stripes 'The Hardest Button to Button'
Status Quo 'Down Down'
Arcade Fire 'No Cars Go'
The Lemonheads 'My Drug Buddy'
Ozric Tentacles 'Dots Thots (Reading Sept '85)'
Daphne & Celeste 'Ooh Stick You - Radio Edit'

Listen: Greatest Hits of Reading Festival by Drowned in Sound, Spotify Playlist

DiScuss: What's missing? What's on your Greatest Hits playlist? Any tracks you massively agree or disagree with?