MossY
07-10-2007, 11:33 PM
Firstly for those of you not in the know- which will probably be the majority of people outside of Ireland and the UK, maybe even just Ireland- Oxegen is a pretty big music festival in Ireland. By Irish standards it is gigantic, by global standards just pretty big, 80,000 or so. Anyhow, it is at this festival I spent the last weekend, and now I intend to review said weekend.
Of Ireland's two big festivals, Electric Picnic and Oxegen, I have always thought Electric Picnic was better for more discerning music fans, and as a general rule this still stands. On this year however, I think I have to say that Oxegen really does possess a superior line-up. You had Arcade Fire, the Killers, Snow Patrol, Razorlight, Muse, Daft Punk, Bright Eyes, the Bravery, Interpol, Rufus Wainwright, the Fratellis, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Brian Wilson, Queens of the Stone Age, the Wu Tang Clan, Bloc Party Avril Lavigne, Scissor Sisters, Kings of Leon, the Kooks, the View, Maximo Park, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Sinead O'Connor, Editors, James Morrision and My Chemical Romance, not that I went to see, or would even have liked to see, all those bands' sets, but it shows the impressive variety and big names the festival was able to draw this year. For the full line-up, Wiki knows better than me, so this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxegen_2007#2007_Line-up) will be useful for those interested.
The whole process started at 6 on Friday morning when I had to get up, eat breakfast and drive out to my friend's house from which we would have to walk about another mile to get a bus at 8. The journey, which normally would have only taken about 3 hours, lasted for close to 8 with complete gridlock for about 40 miles as you approached the festival. Not that the journey was all bad, just mostly. Everyone was crazy excited about getting there and pitching up camp and all so the drawn out journey just seemed to sap everyone�s' excitement and patience. There was one highlight of the journey however, and a contender for Moment of the Weekend also. About 2 hours after we stopped for breakfast at McDonalds and we were stuck in traffic, three guys got out to piss on the side of the road. I was very nearly among them but am extremely thankful that I decided to wait it out instead. Even though we were stuck in traffic we would consistently rumble on another tiny bit at a time. By the time they had done their business, they were already a good hundred metres behind the bus and some frantic running up a motorway ensued. Then a gardai car seen them and pulled the coach over and we were stuck for twenty minutes, as whatever could have been wrong with the coach was wrong. It had no fire extinguisher, no first aid kit, the emergency exit was covered with bags piled to the ceiling and the tacograph machine wasn't working. They were not best happy and most of us thought that the coach would actually be impounded and that would be that, no festival for us. Eventually though they did let us go, not that I have much idea why since they had assembled such a litany of reasons why the coach was simply not fit for purpose. Turns out though, the guys on my bus were the lucky ones, we passed at least two sets of guys who weren't so lucky as to have the gardai pull their coaches over and they were left stranded 30 miles from the festival with none of their stuff. To be honest, coach drivers are dicks for not pulling over in that situation.
Entry into the festival was worse than the actual journey and involved 4 hours of standing in torrential rain no moving in a queue of thousands of people. There some relief however when we discovered that the sum total of their ID checking to stop under 17 year olds getting in, was a girl at a gate shouting "Any under seventeen year olds with a dodgy fake ID?� The prospect of not getting in because I was only 16 had been a genuine worry up until that point. When we did get in, we decided to head for the red campsite rather than the significantly shorter walk to the blue one. It was a divisive decision given just how bad the weather was and involved me and another guy physically having to lift a trolley full of alcohol because it was impossible to wheel it. Turned out to be the right call though and we ended up with a really nice spacious campsite for the ten of us with a front lawn and everything. By Sunday every blade of grass and every piece of ground had turned to mud with the sole exception of our front lawn.
It wasn't until Friday night when we were all able to sit about and have a really mellow time together that it was actually worth it, worth the ticket price, worth the journey, worth the weather, worth the mud. By the Sunday though, the whole thing had paid for itself a hundred times over. Four of us even ventured out to the funfair and went up on the Ferris wheel on Friday night. The other three guys rolled a joint and smoked it before the Ferris wheel had completed its cycle which was pretty impressive, to be fair. I tried weed over the course of the weekend and can't say it did much for me. We got back to the tents and kicked back with a couple of drinks and just sat about talking, though a few dickheads from Dublin came asking if they could join our tent and much leeching off f our supplies followed with nothing being put forward in return until we more or less told them to fuck off.
The second day started for me at about 8.30 since sleeping was basically impossible and I had managed about 6 or 7 half hour naps during the night and hearing some of the other guys up just decided to get up too. For breakfast I had a truly revolting egg and sausage burger. I can't really imagine who thought up that combo but he is not very good at his job, THAT IS CERTAIN. I headed out on my own on the first day to see the Bravery at 5 or something since everyone else is an idiot and is too silly to like them. I was able to force my way through to pretty close to the front and they put on a really good show, nothing spectacular, but definitely worth heading to. An Honest Mistake was pretty great. After that I considered going to Tokyo Police Club but didn't want to go to another show on my own so I made the long journey back to camp and, although 4 of them had headed to Tokyo Police Club, the other 6 of us headed out and caught the last twenty minutes or so of the Fratellis, which was okay.
I ended up in the Laughter Lounge and Dance Arena after that to kill time up until 10 when I was going to head over to Stage 2 for Interpol. The Dance Arena is a mad, mad place; basically everyone is crazy on Es. I don't like dance music, but when it's live like that you just sort of get caught up in it and there was an amazing remix of Killing in the Name by Dr. Lektroluv, it has to be said. The Laughter Lounge was a truly unfunny place to be with some indescribably bad comedians. In the two days, anytime I would call in I could pretty much be sure that no one was going to be laughing. There was one good comedian I seen, but I don't even know who he was. Some girl comedian had a guitar and she was like "Should I sing another song" and she got a few half-hearted "yeahs" and this one guy at the back shouted "No, you're fucking shit". That was the height of comedy inside the Laughter Lounge.
Anyhow, I was able to force my way up really close to the front for Interpol, about 10 metres from the stage, and though I went to see them simply because I was a fan and not because I expected much form a live performance, I was actually stunned. They done a great lights show and played a nice spread of material from their 3 albums with Evil in particular really getting the crowd psyched up. This set was to be the first part to the losing of my voice. I came away from their show really impressed and though it was completely blown away by both Muse and later Daft Punk's sets, for about an hour it was the best set I had seen at Oxegen.
After Interpol I had about half an hour before Muse who were my big act of the weekend. However, because Snow Patrol decided they'd do a couple of encores because "They were back home in wee Ireland" or whatever this forced Muse back an extra half hour. This had initially been okay with me and I forced my way up close to the stage again but as time dragged on and when they had went 40 minutes overdue I was starting to get pretty angry about the whole thing. Then, OUT OF NOWHERE, a red mist started to emerge from the stage and the opening of Take a Bow was blasting out and Matt Bellamy, barely visible through the mist, was standing there. Instantly any reservations I had, any problems I had with the tardiness evaporated. This was Muse live and this truly was spectacular. They played Feeling Good half way through their set, and though I sang along to everything anyway, that got everyone singing and the huge screens they had set up had videos of bees collecting pollen and strawberries growing and all that sort of stuff, not very apt given that we were standing in a muddy field, but the crowd just ate it up and to be standing amongst all that was akin to a religious experience. Muse were just incredible from start to finish, huge screens of robots marching along during Time is Running out, lights going insane fro the duration, the chorus of Knights of Cydonia displayed so everyone could sing along to it. I hear it was pretty similar to their indoor tour of the UK at the end of 2006 and I remember people posting about that on here, so, I hear it was pretty similar to that you guys. By the time it was over, my feet were stuck in the muddy ground, I had lost all ability to speak but my spirit was floating free. Back at the camp we just sat around talking about how good Muse had been. Three of the guys had went to see Rodrigo y Gabriella instead and were adamant that they had been spectacular also, but I can only assume that this is because they weren't able to compare it to Muse. All in all, a great end to Saturday's music.
After about three hours sleep, it was another early start on Sunday. Actually attempting to sleep when surrounded by thousands of drunk people is an exercise in futility and you may as well just get up whenever you have slept just enough so that the tiredness won't be of paralytic proportions. I can't really remember what I did during the morning, it's a bit hazy, but in the afternoon four of us headed over to Calvin Harris. Normally, his music would do absolutely nothing for me but yeah, it's the whole live dance thing again. Better still, he was in the Green Room which is a giant marquee and equivalent to the third stage, and during his set the roof of the tent burst from the sheer volume of rain that had fallen on it (the middle was not the highest point but was instead a depression between four other points so I assume many thousands of litres of water had fallen into this depression until the roof just tore open). The reaction to the waterfall that had spontaneously emerged in the middle of his set was incredible with people surging toward it just to get soaked, not that there wasn't plenty of water outside anyway. It was a cool moment though.
After killing a couple of house back at the tent, me and two guys went over to see Arcade Fire. Much is written about Arcade Fire's energetic and gripping live performances, but after seeing them I think that their reputation is exaggerated. Certainly, the band members act like they live for performing but some guy with drumsticks climbing 1 metre up some scaffolding doesn�t really compare to a good lights show. Not bad, but disappointing. If it wasn't for the fact I fell in with some cool people in the crowd I may have even left. One thing that I did like about their set though was that from just before they started until just after they had finished it was incredibly sunny, like they personally had been able to keep the rain at bay for an hour.
After that I went to see Rufus Wainwright and was even able to catch the end of Bright Eyes' set. Having never actually listened to Bright Eyes I was just moderately impressed, but their fans definitely were loving it. I forced my way right up to the front for Rufus Wainwrigt and before he came out they had put up a disco ball and the stage was just a vast collection of various musical instruments. It all looked great. Then he started performing. It wasn't Rufus's fault I don't think, the soundman just had done a crappy job. There was an absolutely horrible amount of feedback, the instruments drowned the vocals out, it was just horrible to listen to. Rufus was definitely a cool guy though and cracked jokes between songs and such, vastly better than the jokes being cracked over in the Laughter Lounge, but once he finished his Judy Garland covers I decided enough was enough and left.
It was at this point I had to face a decision I had done my best to avoid: who was I going to see as the last act of the festival? On Stage 1 the Killers were playing who I think are okay, but from previous discussions most of my friends had said they were going to it and before the show had agreed to meet up at this big tripod thing so that we could all go together. On the other hand there was Daft Punk on Stage 2 who I was certain would put on the better show, absolutely sure, but I didn't want to end the festival going to a band on my own. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and go to Daft Punk; I'd already been to see a few bands on my own over the course of the weekend and you always inevitably fall in with some drunk people in the crowd anyway.
Because I had left Rufus Wainwright so prematurely I was able to force right up through the crowd and ended up about 15 or 20 metres from the stage, across which a huge black curtain had been pulled. I ended up talking to some pretty girl about Daft Punk and she was saying she couldn't wait and had seen them live twice before and all. That conversation might even have taken place after Arcade Fire and not before Daft Punk because I remember had let her look at my little showtime necklace thing. IT TOOK PLACE SOMETIME DURING SUNDAY EVENING, THAT'S FOR SURE. Things started working out even better though when I got slapped around the back of the head and turned around expecting some drunk guy and the exchange of harsh words but instead found two of my friends in a spectacular stroke of good luck. Out of all the tens of thousands of people who had started to gather, to meet up like that is probably about the same as finding a needle in a haystack. Daft Punk are true geniuses at working the crowd and ten minutes before their set started they started blasting some video about some rubbish on Bluetooth on the two big screens that flanked the stage. The video itself was just a shitty advertisement but the effect was to have everyone piss their pants in anticipation. Sporadically fireworks were going off, I'm not sure if this was part of the show or just people in the crowd but it was all working towards cranking up the tension bit by bit. Even though I was completely sober I felt like I needed to puke or something, this was Daft Punk on the last night of Oxegen. Then, at 11.30pm sharp, STRANGE ELECTRONIC NOISES began emerging from the stage. Slowly the curtain drew back and revealed two masked men standing within a pyramid and surrounded by this web-like framework. Everyone was just mental at this stage and me and my two friends put our arms around each other to make sure we didn't lose each other in the surge because surely, we would never see each other again if we did not. The show had a mesmeric, europhoric feel about it. I don't even particularly like Daft Punk, this wasn't like Muse the night before when I was a huge fan anyway, this was something else, some arcane magic that Daft Punk were casting over not just me, but everyone. They played their huge tracks like Around the World and One More Time and any number of others that I don't even know. They played three encores. They played the best show I have ever seen.
When the three of us were back at camp that night waiting for the rest to get back from the Killers we couldn't even accurately convey how good Daft Punk had been. When the rest did get back we mocked them for choosing the Killers over Daft Punk and they were insistent that the Killers had been amazing. They can lead happy, ignorant existences thinking they made the right choice, but everyone who went to Daft Punk that night knows that the people who picked the Killers have missed something magical.
We all vowed to stay up all night that final night, in the actual event only four of us managed it. At 3am we all drank tea to keep the biting cold away. At 4 we set up our chairs on the walkway between campsite red and blue and formed a sort of checkpoint where we could chat to all the passers-by. At 5 we took the poles out of 2 of our friends' tent, both of them had been sleeping. At 6 we burned our tents until the warden quashed the fire with a bottle of Fanta orange and began to dress for the journey home, everyone having set aside something clean for Monday so that on the bus we could look like we were impervious to the mud's grip. At 7 we set off on the hour-long trudge to the bus with heavy bags dragging us down and crushing our shoulders. There was no joking around anymore, everyone too tired, too hungover, too sad tube leaving, too absorbed with the weight they had to carry, to care much for drinking. We got on the bus at 8. We left at 9. We sat in traffic until 11. Then we were home at 1.30. And that was it, the end of the best weekend of my life.
Oxegen is not a pleasant place to be, surrounded by ankle deep mud and the stench of urine and faeces, sleeping in half hour chunks and having to sit on disgusting portaloo seats when you needed to crap. On the other hand, looking back on it I am filled with huge regret now it's over and can barely wait for next July to roll around because I know where I'm going to head to for a weekend. Anyway, here are some videos so you can rue what you missed out on:
around (first segement was part of my daily trek). (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATeNhfPvCI">General</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh4vMVlgjCA">messing</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUKsnAsIRnc)
The Bravery playing An Honest Mistake. Video does it no justice unfortunately. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3-A4ITllas)
PDA, fairly sure this was the last of Interpol's songs, not so sure if it was an encore. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXkgPtavL2M)
Muse's opening. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8REBX92Hsw4)
Muse's exit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK7dfxI_y5U)
Calvin Harris. This is slightly ahead of where the tent leak occurs, but when he starts screaming something indecipherable, that is the moment the tent bursts open. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Ud3dOX8YQ)
Wake up by Arcade Fire. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDULS4Ds_88)
Just listen to how bad that sounds. Real shame, I was looking forward to Rufus Wainwright (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBoiSfh0Hg0)
Daft Punk as they open up their set. You can hear one guy saying "It's like Marlay Park" too, which is funny. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fusNUbjpj2E)
Around the World. This guy is stood almost exactly where I was. THIS IS MOSSY IN FIRST PERSON (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqs3DrUG1oY)
More Daft Punk to finish off and an angry man saying "Get out of the fucking way." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umjwIP6AIyA)
Of Ireland's two big festivals, Electric Picnic and Oxegen, I have always thought Electric Picnic was better for more discerning music fans, and as a general rule this still stands. On this year however, I think I have to say that Oxegen really does possess a superior line-up. You had Arcade Fire, the Killers, Snow Patrol, Razorlight, Muse, Daft Punk, Bright Eyes, the Bravery, Interpol, Rufus Wainwright, the Fratellis, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Brian Wilson, Queens of the Stone Age, the Wu Tang Clan, Bloc Party Avril Lavigne, Scissor Sisters, Kings of Leon, the Kooks, the View, Maximo Park, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Sinead O'Connor, Editors, James Morrision and My Chemical Romance, not that I went to see, or would even have liked to see, all those bands' sets, but it shows the impressive variety and big names the festival was able to draw this year. For the full line-up, Wiki knows better than me, so this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxegen_2007#2007_Line-up) will be useful for those interested.
The whole process started at 6 on Friday morning when I had to get up, eat breakfast and drive out to my friend's house from which we would have to walk about another mile to get a bus at 8. The journey, which normally would have only taken about 3 hours, lasted for close to 8 with complete gridlock for about 40 miles as you approached the festival. Not that the journey was all bad, just mostly. Everyone was crazy excited about getting there and pitching up camp and all so the drawn out journey just seemed to sap everyone�s' excitement and patience. There was one highlight of the journey however, and a contender for Moment of the Weekend also. About 2 hours after we stopped for breakfast at McDonalds and we were stuck in traffic, three guys got out to piss on the side of the road. I was very nearly among them but am extremely thankful that I decided to wait it out instead. Even though we were stuck in traffic we would consistently rumble on another tiny bit at a time. By the time they had done their business, they were already a good hundred metres behind the bus and some frantic running up a motorway ensued. Then a gardai car seen them and pulled the coach over and we were stuck for twenty minutes, as whatever could have been wrong with the coach was wrong. It had no fire extinguisher, no first aid kit, the emergency exit was covered with bags piled to the ceiling and the tacograph machine wasn't working. They were not best happy and most of us thought that the coach would actually be impounded and that would be that, no festival for us. Eventually though they did let us go, not that I have much idea why since they had assembled such a litany of reasons why the coach was simply not fit for purpose. Turns out though, the guys on my bus were the lucky ones, we passed at least two sets of guys who weren't so lucky as to have the gardai pull their coaches over and they were left stranded 30 miles from the festival with none of their stuff. To be honest, coach drivers are dicks for not pulling over in that situation.
Entry into the festival was worse than the actual journey and involved 4 hours of standing in torrential rain no moving in a queue of thousands of people. There some relief however when we discovered that the sum total of their ID checking to stop under 17 year olds getting in, was a girl at a gate shouting "Any under seventeen year olds with a dodgy fake ID?� The prospect of not getting in because I was only 16 had been a genuine worry up until that point. When we did get in, we decided to head for the red campsite rather than the significantly shorter walk to the blue one. It was a divisive decision given just how bad the weather was and involved me and another guy physically having to lift a trolley full of alcohol because it was impossible to wheel it. Turned out to be the right call though and we ended up with a really nice spacious campsite for the ten of us with a front lawn and everything. By Sunday every blade of grass and every piece of ground had turned to mud with the sole exception of our front lawn.
It wasn't until Friday night when we were all able to sit about and have a really mellow time together that it was actually worth it, worth the ticket price, worth the journey, worth the weather, worth the mud. By the Sunday though, the whole thing had paid for itself a hundred times over. Four of us even ventured out to the funfair and went up on the Ferris wheel on Friday night. The other three guys rolled a joint and smoked it before the Ferris wheel had completed its cycle which was pretty impressive, to be fair. I tried weed over the course of the weekend and can't say it did much for me. We got back to the tents and kicked back with a couple of drinks and just sat about talking, though a few dickheads from Dublin came asking if they could join our tent and much leeching off f our supplies followed with nothing being put forward in return until we more or less told them to fuck off.
The second day started for me at about 8.30 since sleeping was basically impossible and I had managed about 6 or 7 half hour naps during the night and hearing some of the other guys up just decided to get up too. For breakfast I had a truly revolting egg and sausage burger. I can't really imagine who thought up that combo but he is not very good at his job, THAT IS CERTAIN. I headed out on my own on the first day to see the Bravery at 5 or something since everyone else is an idiot and is too silly to like them. I was able to force my way through to pretty close to the front and they put on a really good show, nothing spectacular, but definitely worth heading to. An Honest Mistake was pretty great. After that I considered going to Tokyo Police Club but didn't want to go to another show on my own so I made the long journey back to camp and, although 4 of them had headed to Tokyo Police Club, the other 6 of us headed out and caught the last twenty minutes or so of the Fratellis, which was okay.
I ended up in the Laughter Lounge and Dance Arena after that to kill time up until 10 when I was going to head over to Stage 2 for Interpol. The Dance Arena is a mad, mad place; basically everyone is crazy on Es. I don't like dance music, but when it's live like that you just sort of get caught up in it and there was an amazing remix of Killing in the Name by Dr. Lektroluv, it has to be said. The Laughter Lounge was a truly unfunny place to be with some indescribably bad comedians. In the two days, anytime I would call in I could pretty much be sure that no one was going to be laughing. There was one good comedian I seen, but I don't even know who he was. Some girl comedian had a guitar and she was like "Should I sing another song" and she got a few half-hearted "yeahs" and this one guy at the back shouted "No, you're fucking shit". That was the height of comedy inside the Laughter Lounge.
Anyhow, I was able to force my way up really close to the front for Interpol, about 10 metres from the stage, and though I went to see them simply because I was a fan and not because I expected much form a live performance, I was actually stunned. They done a great lights show and played a nice spread of material from their 3 albums with Evil in particular really getting the crowd psyched up. This set was to be the first part to the losing of my voice. I came away from their show really impressed and though it was completely blown away by both Muse and later Daft Punk's sets, for about an hour it was the best set I had seen at Oxegen.
After Interpol I had about half an hour before Muse who were my big act of the weekend. However, because Snow Patrol decided they'd do a couple of encores because "They were back home in wee Ireland" or whatever this forced Muse back an extra half hour. This had initially been okay with me and I forced my way up close to the stage again but as time dragged on and when they had went 40 minutes overdue I was starting to get pretty angry about the whole thing. Then, OUT OF NOWHERE, a red mist started to emerge from the stage and the opening of Take a Bow was blasting out and Matt Bellamy, barely visible through the mist, was standing there. Instantly any reservations I had, any problems I had with the tardiness evaporated. This was Muse live and this truly was spectacular. They played Feeling Good half way through their set, and though I sang along to everything anyway, that got everyone singing and the huge screens they had set up had videos of bees collecting pollen and strawberries growing and all that sort of stuff, not very apt given that we were standing in a muddy field, but the crowd just ate it up and to be standing amongst all that was akin to a religious experience. Muse were just incredible from start to finish, huge screens of robots marching along during Time is Running out, lights going insane fro the duration, the chorus of Knights of Cydonia displayed so everyone could sing along to it. I hear it was pretty similar to their indoor tour of the UK at the end of 2006 and I remember people posting about that on here, so, I hear it was pretty similar to that you guys. By the time it was over, my feet were stuck in the muddy ground, I had lost all ability to speak but my spirit was floating free. Back at the camp we just sat around talking about how good Muse had been. Three of the guys had went to see Rodrigo y Gabriella instead and were adamant that they had been spectacular also, but I can only assume that this is because they weren't able to compare it to Muse. All in all, a great end to Saturday's music.
After about three hours sleep, it was another early start on Sunday. Actually attempting to sleep when surrounded by thousands of drunk people is an exercise in futility and you may as well just get up whenever you have slept just enough so that the tiredness won't be of paralytic proportions. I can't really remember what I did during the morning, it's a bit hazy, but in the afternoon four of us headed over to Calvin Harris. Normally, his music would do absolutely nothing for me but yeah, it's the whole live dance thing again. Better still, he was in the Green Room which is a giant marquee and equivalent to the third stage, and during his set the roof of the tent burst from the sheer volume of rain that had fallen on it (the middle was not the highest point but was instead a depression between four other points so I assume many thousands of litres of water had fallen into this depression until the roof just tore open). The reaction to the waterfall that had spontaneously emerged in the middle of his set was incredible with people surging toward it just to get soaked, not that there wasn't plenty of water outside anyway. It was a cool moment though.
After killing a couple of house back at the tent, me and two guys went over to see Arcade Fire. Much is written about Arcade Fire's energetic and gripping live performances, but after seeing them I think that their reputation is exaggerated. Certainly, the band members act like they live for performing but some guy with drumsticks climbing 1 metre up some scaffolding doesn�t really compare to a good lights show. Not bad, but disappointing. If it wasn't for the fact I fell in with some cool people in the crowd I may have even left. One thing that I did like about their set though was that from just before they started until just after they had finished it was incredibly sunny, like they personally had been able to keep the rain at bay for an hour.
After that I went to see Rufus Wainwright and was even able to catch the end of Bright Eyes' set. Having never actually listened to Bright Eyes I was just moderately impressed, but their fans definitely were loving it. I forced my way right up to the front for Rufus Wainwrigt and before he came out they had put up a disco ball and the stage was just a vast collection of various musical instruments. It all looked great. Then he started performing. It wasn't Rufus's fault I don't think, the soundman just had done a crappy job. There was an absolutely horrible amount of feedback, the instruments drowned the vocals out, it was just horrible to listen to. Rufus was definitely a cool guy though and cracked jokes between songs and such, vastly better than the jokes being cracked over in the Laughter Lounge, but once he finished his Judy Garland covers I decided enough was enough and left.
It was at this point I had to face a decision I had done my best to avoid: who was I going to see as the last act of the festival? On Stage 1 the Killers were playing who I think are okay, but from previous discussions most of my friends had said they were going to it and before the show had agreed to meet up at this big tripod thing so that we could all go together. On the other hand there was Daft Punk on Stage 2 who I was certain would put on the better show, absolutely sure, but I didn't want to end the festival going to a band on my own. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and go to Daft Punk; I'd already been to see a few bands on my own over the course of the weekend and you always inevitably fall in with some drunk people in the crowd anyway.
Because I had left Rufus Wainwright so prematurely I was able to force right up through the crowd and ended up about 15 or 20 metres from the stage, across which a huge black curtain had been pulled. I ended up talking to some pretty girl about Daft Punk and she was saying she couldn't wait and had seen them live twice before and all. That conversation might even have taken place after Arcade Fire and not before Daft Punk because I remember had let her look at my little showtime necklace thing. IT TOOK PLACE SOMETIME DURING SUNDAY EVENING, THAT'S FOR SURE. Things started working out even better though when I got slapped around the back of the head and turned around expecting some drunk guy and the exchange of harsh words but instead found two of my friends in a spectacular stroke of good luck. Out of all the tens of thousands of people who had started to gather, to meet up like that is probably about the same as finding a needle in a haystack. Daft Punk are true geniuses at working the crowd and ten minutes before their set started they started blasting some video about some rubbish on Bluetooth on the two big screens that flanked the stage. The video itself was just a shitty advertisement but the effect was to have everyone piss their pants in anticipation. Sporadically fireworks were going off, I'm not sure if this was part of the show or just people in the crowd but it was all working towards cranking up the tension bit by bit. Even though I was completely sober I felt like I needed to puke or something, this was Daft Punk on the last night of Oxegen. Then, at 11.30pm sharp, STRANGE ELECTRONIC NOISES began emerging from the stage. Slowly the curtain drew back and revealed two masked men standing within a pyramid and surrounded by this web-like framework. Everyone was just mental at this stage and me and my two friends put our arms around each other to make sure we didn't lose each other in the surge because surely, we would never see each other again if we did not. The show had a mesmeric, europhoric feel about it. I don't even particularly like Daft Punk, this wasn't like Muse the night before when I was a huge fan anyway, this was something else, some arcane magic that Daft Punk were casting over not just me, but everyone. They played their huge tracks like Around the World and One More Time and any number of others that I don't even know. They played three encores. They played the best show I have ever seen.
When the three of us were back at camp that night waiting for the rest to get back from the Killers we couldn't even accurately convey how good Daft Punk had been. When the rest did get back we mocked them for choosing the Killers over Daft Punk and they were insistent that the Killers had been amazing. They can lead happy, ignorant existences thinking they made the right choice, but everyone who went to Daft Punk that night knows that the people who picked the Killers have missed something magical.
We all vowed to stay up all night that final night, in the actual event only four of us managed it. At 3am we all drank tea to keep the biting cold away. At 4 we set up our chairs on the walkway between campsite red and blue and formed a sort of checkpoint where we could chat to all the passers-by. At 5 we took the poles out of 2 of our friends' tent, both of them had been sleeping. At 6 we burned our tents until the warden quashed the fire with a bottle of Fanta orange and began to dress for the journey home, everyone having set aside something clean for Monday so that on the bus we could look like we were impervious to the mud's grip. At 7 we set off on the hour-long trudge to the bus with heavy bags dragging us down and crushing our shoulders. There was no joking around anymore, everyone too tired, too hungover, too sad tube leaving, too absorbed with the weight they had to carry, to care much for drinking. We got on the bus at 8. We left at 9. We sat in traffic until 11. Then we were home at 1.30. And that was it, the end of the best weekend of my life.
Oxegen is not a pleasant place to be, surrounded by ankle deep mud and the stench of urine and faeces, sleeping in half hour chunks and having to sit on disgusting portaloo seats when you needed to crap. On the other hand, looking back on it I am filled with huge regret now it's over and can barely wait for next July to roll around because I know where I'm going to head to for a weekend. Anyway, here are some videos so you can rue what you missed out on:
around (first segement was part of my daily trek). (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATeNhfPvCI">General</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh4vMVlgjCA">messing</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUKsnAsIRnc)
The Bravery playing An Honest Mistake. Video does it no justice unfortunately. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3-A4ITllas)
PDA, fairly sure this was the last of Interpol's songs, not so sure if it was an encore. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXkgPtavL2M)
Muse's opening. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8REBX92Hsw4)
Muse's exit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK7dfxI_y5U)
Calvin Harris. This is slightly ahead of where the tent leak occurs, but when he starts screaming something indecipherable, that is the moment the tent bursts open. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Ud3dOX8YQ)
Wake up by Arcade Fire. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDULS4Ds_88)
Just listen to how bad that sounds. Real shame, I was looking forward to Rufus Wainwright (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBoiSfh0Hg0)
Daft Punk as they open up their set. You can hear one guy saying "It's like Marlay Park" too, which is funny. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fusNUbjpj2E)
Around the World. This guy is stood almost exactly where I was. THIS IS MOSSY IN FIRST PERSON (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqs3DrUG1oY)
More Daft Punk to finish off and an angry man saying "Get out of the fucking way." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umjwIP6AIyA)