Oxegen

First: go to Rick's blog for his Oxegen experience.

Second: go to State for comprehensive coverage.

Third: go to Lili for photees.

Fourth: go to 2fm's excellent YouTube channel for band interviews.

So: Oxegen was fun. After a slow, kinda weird start on Friday, things picked up on Saturday and yesterday, with, of course, the lovely weather helping. I had a few interviews scattered through Saturday which went well. We checked out the Ting Tings first. Could barely get into the tent. They rammed it! 'Great DJ' sounded good though. After that it was Holy Fuck, who were really great. I expected them to get a bigger crowd, though. They told me they'd be back playing in Dublin in October, but not sure what venue. Lovely guys though, had some vodka and Red Bulls with them and they were very chirpy. Then, Amy Winehouse, who held it together far better than she did at Glasto. She was clearly coked off her bin to start, and her voice and memory slipped as she guzzled red wine throughout the gig. But hey, another day and she's still alive. I guess people are starting to see that as some kind of achievement in itself.

REM were the best I've ever seen them play. More energy than ever, fun visuals, and they sounded great. Hot Chip turned out to be one of the highlights of the weekend for me. Twas great fun dancing on stage with everyone to 'Over and Over'. Then chilled for a while and had a gawk at The Prodigy with their hilarious cartoon 'live' show, which was great fun. Key to writing a Prodigy song? Just put the word 'fire' in somewhere, scream, be aggressive, loadsa lights, 'ave it. Caught the last twenty minutes of Justice and was quite disappointed, although, I wasn't really in the dance arena zone, so couldn't really connect with it.

Yesterday we had a bit of a lie in and didn't end up catching as many bands as we had over the previous days, but still had the most fun. Me, YoCo, FionnTimes and Lili bussed it in and caught Delorentos first, who got a great crowd, and played a new song 'Hallucinations' which is AWESOME. After that, I butted into the State podcast, and then went to MGMT with Nialler. We couldn't get into the tent, so we went backstage to try and get on the side of the stage, but it was full. EVERYONE wanted to see MGMT. Then things went crazy; people were climbing up the big steel poles that hold the tents up and at one point a girl disappeared right up the top. The band was pulled of stage and all the artists and co who were watching from the side of the stage (including Delorentos, Stereophonics, The Feeling, Band of Horses and more) were all booted off and the stage was locked down. Ten or fifteen minutes later, they were back on. Crazy stuff.

This pretty much sums it up@


Then we caught Fight Like Apes and were able to watch them from stage, which was just as well because they packed the tent full (at least twenty times more people than White Denim got) and totally rocked it. It was cool to hear 'Something Global' for the first time live. I guess it was another landmark gig for them. They keep crossing huge gig events of their list like this with ease, it's a very exciting time for them. Then we went backstage to discover that Fight Like Apes do indeed fight like apes. And I have the brusies to prove it. Fun times though. Such a lovely bunch of people. It's fun to be around a band that it's really happening for at the moment, there is almost an audible buzz around them.

That was it really for me. I didn't really want to go see anyone else after that, because it was just a quality set and I wanted to end the weekend on a high note. Went back to the press area and had a few beers with Kieron Delo and a few other heads before wrapping things up and heading home. All in all, a great weekend. When we were on the bus home last night, we all kind of wanted to be heading down again this morning. Festivals are just so fucking addictive.

(I'll have some photees up soon.)