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Battle of the festivals
Oxegen, Electric Picnic and baby wipes.
So the festival time has arrived again. Facebook is now filled with statuses such as: “Which camp are you staying in?”, “I think I’ll relax this year, Oxegen is for teenagers anyway” and “Feck it, let’s go mad on a deer farm in Cork”. Many of you have also been posting frantically about which of your favourite acts are playing at the various festivals Ireland is lucky to have.
Without the likes of Electric Picnic, Indiependance or indeed Oxegen, we would be left idle and without excuse to wallow in our own filth for what will assuredly be the weekend blessed with the worst weather Ireland sees during the long summer months.
Most of you probably already know which festival you will attend, but if not, a breakdown of some of my preferred acts to visit our fair old isle may help you decide. The mighty Oxegen will see The Script triumphantly return to the festival. This festival arguably set the bands career in motion by bringing their tear jerking tunes to the masses.
After vowing never to return to the Oxegen festival in 2005, The Arctic Monkeys will also play to promote their new album Suck it and See, which is due for release in June. The Foo Fighters will be there this year too, although big names like BeadyEye, Bruno Mars and Coldplay will attract their own substantial following also. Don’t forget your baby wipes and wellies all the same. *€244 for 3 Day camping + €20 for Thursday night at Oxegen*.
Electric Picnic will as usual host the more eclectic and alternative side of the industry. The Stradbally ‘Music & Arts’ festival will play host to massive Indie names such as Pulp, Interpol and P.J Harvey, not to mention the comedians which will appear throughout the weekend. Perhaps Arcade Fire will be more suited to playing Electric Picnic following their less than memorable set after Jay-Z last year at Oxegen. They will be certainly more at home among the ‘hippy folk’.
What is admirable about Electric Picnic is that it gives a great footing to Irish bands who are about to break through (Oxegen generally sticks the lesser known bands in the darkest tents as early as possible). I am delighted to see that The Cast of Cheers, CODES and Adebisi Shank have been added to the bill. These will hopefully perform outstandingly as they have time and time again in venues such as our very own Quad showcase. *€240 for 3 Day camping at Electric Picnic*.
Indiependance is a substantially smaller festival, but its stature cannot be denied at Irish music events. The bigger names involved in this festival (held on a local Mitchelstown farmers land) are Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip and Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters. The Corona’s seem to be a tired choice of a band that would be more suited to opening Oxegen and then leaving again until 2012, but we will hardly be so lucky.
Smaller acts which promise to entertain at this festival will be the eccentric Ham Sandwich, the fantastic Miracle Bell and The Riptide Movement; a band which impressed at the Jagermeister promo night in Rearden’s. *€99 for 3 Day camping at Indiependance*.
The tickets for all the festivals are available now. As far as prices go, Indiependance is definitely the best bang for your buck. Whether you can justify spending almost €250 on tickets for a festival that charges €3 for a bottle of coke is another story altogether, but good luck affording accommodation next year!!!
Personally, this year will possibly be the first year since 2008 that I will not grace the dreary, muck filled fields of Naas. If you want my advice, spending all that money in the pursuit of a drink filled and filthy environment is simply ridiculous. It is however something that needs to be experienced at least once. The fun and debauchery is a spectacle to behold and there isn’t many places you can go to in this world where drinking from a welly and smelling of urine and alcohol for a weekend is acceptable.
So enjoy your summer, enjoy your festivals and make sure you fleece our welfare officer for as many free johnnies as you can get your hands on to stock up for festival season.
By: Scruffy_Joe
