Oxegen baby!

So anyway I had better tell ya’ll about oxegen….. very good weekend, although I did have a head cold throughout.

So Rich, Corla and I headed off to Dublin airport where we were picked up by Noreen and headed to Newbridge, close to the festival where their mate Peter lived and was putting us up for the weekend (when I say putting us up that included continental breakfasts, cooked breakfasts, welly cleaning, the lot which was sooooooo lovely of Peter and his wife!).

Saturday:
No rain fortunately, but there had been lots of rain leading up to the festival which meant the whole site was a complete mud bath. Thank god for those wellies! So to start with we saw the Goo Goo Dolls (surprisingly good), a smidgin of Avril Lavigne (also gave it loads, bless her) the Fratellis (jolly good too!) then I went off to try and get into the mosh for Kings of Leon, but couldn’t. At that point I was a bit disgruntled because I wouldn’t be meeting up with anyone until after Muse, which meant I had 5 hours to kill by myself (and all for a good spot for KOL.….. it seemed like good thinking at the time!) but I remembered Ocean Colour Scene were playing in a smaller tent, and figured I’d be seeing KOL in December at Wembley anyway. What a good choice that was because OCS were fantastic. They played all their goodies and the atmosphere in the tent was far better than the main stage. They finished off with Day We Caught the Train and everyone went mental singing the lala lalalal bit at the end. After that I went over and caught bits of Maximo Park, and Tori Amos (who was a big poser), but was really looking forward to Interpol, who sadly clashed with Snow Patrol (but I didn’t really mind anyway…). Interpol were rather good although you would have to be familiar with the music to appreciate it, me thinks. After that staggered through the mud back to the tent to catch Queens of the Stone Age- again surprisingly good, and I realised I was a lot more familiar with their songs than I thought I was. Finally caught up with the others after Muse and got home around 2am. So Saturday was really a day of pleasant surprises in terms of the music. It was all about the music man..

Sunday:
No hangover to report and ready to start the day! Was hoping to see The Thrills, but all the timing on Stage 2 was out of wack thanks to Amy Winehouse cancelling (was probably at the off-licence in Camden drunk as a skunk…) so missed them but ah well never mind because Bloc Party were next. Brilliant! Cool! And my pick of the weekend for sure. Yay. Then it was into the tent to see BRMC who were also excellent. Also saw Hollywood actor Josh Harnett and R.E.M frontman Michael Stipe at the side of the stage. I took a really bad photo of them hehehehe. After that it was Arcade Fire, the heavens opened for a bit, then some more good music from Razorlight, saw a bit of Rufus Wainright and then The Killers. The Killers were very good, but unfortunately we could hear bits of Daft Punk from the other stage and it
sounded way cooler. Maybe in hindsight it might have been the better gig of the night.
That’s all really!