Sunday 13 July 2008

Oxegen 2008


I dropped my son off to go for his traditional Irish teenage right of passage stay at Oxegen. He was telling me all the great bands that were on and they sounded so enticing, myself and himself went home and booked a last minute day ticket for the Saturday. Yes, I know. Us and a load of young, fun loving, music loving, loving loving people. I didn't tell my son (the shame of it, your own parents hanging out in wellies at Oxegen) But it was great. See the piccies from my new phone. I'm still getting the hang of it.

And by the way, what's happened to festival? It wasn't like this in my day.

No queues to get in.
No queue for the loo. We had to queue at Bruce Springsteen.
The portaloos were OK. I did bring my own tissues and hand cleanser.
No queues for food.
And the food selection was great. Not just burgers or chips or burger and chips. Food for all tastes. We had yummy noodles.
No queue for the bus and on time and all that. Park and ride so it didn't take 3 hours to get out of the car park. 2 minutes is all
No fights (that I saw)
No vomiting (that I saw) although I did see someone peeing under the wheelchair users podium.
Lots of mad clothing - Power Rangers anyone?
And all those stages to choose from.
Terrifically well organised. Kudos to the management and security and first aid especially.
All the bands played on time, even Amy Winehouse. Most strange.

I don't know. Youngsters these days don't know how well off they are.



We saw
some of Counting Crows - not very impressed,
Holy Fuck - excellent Canadian band, watch out for them,
Vampire Weekend - awesome New York boys, get their CD. Check them out on YouTube.
Amy Winehouse - phew, she made it, excellent set, belted out the songs Stereophonics - We love you Kelly, so did the crowd
The Zutons - tail end only, looked great,
REM - Great classics but I was not familiar with the new stuff, the crowd talked a lot, lovely moment when everyone raised their mobile phones and they turned the camera on the crowd. It looked like a swarm of fireflies,
The Verve - same as REM really
and bits of other bands who I don't know the names of and varied from OK to really loud and posey to God awful

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, all very entertaining (and yes, I will admit that I'm a little envious, since there's no prospect of going anywhere like that with six (OMG, can you imagine?)), but you haven't answered the most pressing question that your readers simply must know - did you wear pink wellies or green ones? ;)

Emerging Writer said...

Dear readers - I had black wellies with white spots, the theory being they go with everything. My feet ached at the end of the day from standing up for so long. Maybe I'll buy insoles or something for the next time. I wore a long green/pink skirt and didn't get cold at all.
A great experience. Son has survived, arrived home early this morning.

Unknown said...

LOL! I saw a few oxegen survivors outside the local shopping centre yesterday. You could tell, they had muck patches on their skirts, and a line around their tights below which there was no muck - wellie line.

BTW, black with white spots - you could be a trend setter there!

Fionnuala said...

Am blog surfing today and came across your site - would you mind if I put a link up on mine? As an aspiring writer, think I must too be emerging? From what Chrsit only knows.....Fionnuala

Emerging Writer said...

Hi Barbara - B&Q best, my wellies
Hi Fionnula - always glad to have links. Feel free. Thanks for stopping by. And it's probably not what you're emerging from but what you're emerging into!

B said...

I understand there was only 75% of the total amount of tickets actually used across the weekend.

Counting Crows: christ why'd you go? Clashed with Paul Heaton AND British Sea Power!
Holy Fuck: The amount of people talking about them during the weekend was hilarious, best attention seeking name ever!
Vampire Weekend: All the cool people went to the other african-y brooklyn band of the moment Yeasayer(sorta the Peter Gabriel to Vampire Weekend's Paul Simon)... all six of us unfortunately.
Stereophonics: Is it odd that I know only about one of their songs? It looked like a great show but I didn't know any of it and everyone else clearly did.
REM: Glorious set, they played Drive! Luckily I was drunk enough to not be annoyed by everyone wanting the Moon Song and nothing else... Stipe is a fantastic frontman.
The Verve: Clashed with The National and The Manics.