There’s a long standing tradition of music festivals in Ireland, from the Fleadh’s of yore with their bizarre intersection of trad and hippy folk revivalists, to the self organised beauty of the anti-nuclear festivals at Carnsore or the hilarity of a Dylan gig at Slane that broke out in a riot. The most romanticised of recent Irish festivals is the Semple Stadium Feiles, when sprawling night time chaos descended across a quite Irish town leading to jammed Liveline phonelines for about a week after and infuriated auld ones tearing the nation’s youth a new arsehole with verbal condemnation.

The tightening of planning legislation around festivals as a result of the chaotic nature of the Feiles led to a tragic respite from the multi-day festival from 1997 onwards. With a generation lacking any similar major rites of passage, the massive Slane one day events reigned supreme and there was always some fucker of a mate’s older brother to regale you with boastful tales of pissing, shitting and shagging all over Thurles in contrast to the placid state of Slane. But lets see these thirty something suckers dance now cos we've been pissing ourselves and getting our stomachs pumped at our own Feile - OXEGEN - or so Denis Desmond's main man Brian ‘Biggie' Spollen would have us believe.

Full rant and more discussion at Indymedia with a full set of photos..

Labels: festival, Gig Review, Indymedia, Music, Society