Oxegen

[Note: for those of you keeping track of such things, and may God have mercy on your soul, that is not a typo, but rather the name of an Irish music festival]

I’m not a big music person; I don’t go to concerts; only buy CDs if I’m going to listen to them over and over in the shower or when planning cute lil’ outfits; and I do not base my identity on the bands I like (actually, I knew very few ‘bands’ right now). I have more of an appropriative (rather than appreciative) relationship with music, meaning that I enjoy songs not really for their artistry but for what I can bring to them, like memorizing their lyrics so I can lip synch to them on the dance floor. And yeah, I have pretty tacky tastes. I like classic jazz while cooking and pop and dance for everything else. And it’s gotta be upbeat. My main problem with hipster music is its aching earnestness. They sing love songs as though no one else had ever sang of love before. If I like a song about love, it’s got to be love with several giant quotation marks.

So when I first heard about the Oxegen music festival, assuming it would mostly consist of hipster indie bands I had never heard of, I wasn’t super interested in going. But I did have the weekend off. And I found out that Lady GaGa and Katy Perry were playing, and while I am not huge fans of either, I appreciate that at least some people are taking pop back from dull, over-produced solo efforts from former band lead singers and creating music we can dance to again. Plus, when it came down to it, I thought it would be good to do something really different with my weekend and have a new experience, something I hope I would never forget.

Unfortunately, after I had already bought the ticket online, I came down with a cold. That, combined with the fact that Niamh was the only person I knew there that I could meet up with, caused me to worry quite a lot as the time of departure for the concert approached. The festival was a Naas, which is about an hour outside Dublin, and Dublin city very kindly provided their double-decker buses to take us directly to and from the event. I did have to wander all the way to the North side (on my way I dropped off a thank you card for the woman at a Starbucks who had faxed my CV around the city), and was feeling quite ill when I got to the bus debut. The bus was filled with young people, many of whom were 19, many of whom were already drunk. I planned on reading my Oscar Wilde book for the journey, but the countryside was distracting (it was the first time I had seen any this trip) as was the singing of a group of teenage girls behind me: “POK-POK-POK-POKER FACE!” Also, I remember one of them, over and over again screaming, “I fucking snogged Pete Doherty!” It was like the bus to summer camp, but drunker.

When we exited the bus at the festival grounds it immediately began raining again. Luckily, I as smart this time and brought a hoodie, a rain jacket and an umbrella. I did not bring, for I do not have, a pair of rain boots, and I did not realize that “Wellies” were essential at Oxegen; the place was basically a giant mud pit. Even chichi Lohan-looking girls in neon tops and eye-liner, their hair fashionably unwashed as though they slept on the ground (although at Oxegen, they very well might have) wore rubber boats with their clingy skirts and opaque tights. After trudging through miles of mud to get to the entrance (only to have to trudge back as I missed the place to I was to pick up the tickets), I entered the festival only to discover that they did not provide one with a schedule of the performers, or a map of the grounds. “Great,” I thought, sniffling.

Then for about half an hour I wandered around in a daze, feeling wet and feverish and overwhelmed by the crowds of people, the loud music, the mud. I walked from one end of the grounds to the other to get a feeling for the lay of the land and text messaged Niamh. I finally asked a young woman if she had a schedule, which she did (evidently they were selling them, but I never saw any) and she told me Lady GaGa was about to go on, so I raced to the designated stage. By this point, even though it was still wet and muddy, the song had come out. Lady GaGa emerged from some sort of large white papier marche geometric enclosure in her characteristic wig and booty panties. It was very surreal it see her in broad day light. I think she would be better helped by a night venue, or at least being inside. I think the people immediately around me had some trouble relating to her as well. Her interaction with the audience was a little forced. “If you had told me a year ago that I would be performing in front of [how many people were there that day] I would have told you to fuck off. I used to work so hard to be successful and get famous, but y’know, now that I’m here, I wish you all were famous!” Yeah, sure you do.

Probably the best thing about Lady GaGa, besides all the male spectators who were sort of dressed like her, was a guy walking around with a sign that read “Lady GaGa was a dirty camel toe!” which got big laughs from everyone (I don’t think the Lady herself saw it). But when she sang ‘Just Dance’ almost everybody around me got into it and did what the song instructed.
Then Niamh texted me saying she was at the Lady GaGa performance and asking where we should meet. I said at the closest T-shirt stand, so when her ladyship was finished both Niamh and I ran around the T-shirt stand, yelling into our mobiles “I’m here! What?! Where are you? What?!” until we ran straight into each other. She gave me a big hug. “This,” she said proudly. “Is Oxegen! I will introduce you to my friends. As a young man, whose name I can’t remember, performed on the stage where GaGa had just been, Niamh introduced to her group of hardcore Oxegen-ians. “This is Max!” “Oh, are you going to write about us on your website?!” “You called Niamh a fag hag,” one of them announced loudly. “She is not a fag hag; she is a PUBLIC VAGINA!” Then PUBLIC VAGINA was screamed a lot. It may have been an inside joke.

Before I could decline, Niamh was dragging me off to buy drinks (“Because you are cold sober, Max, and I am shit faced!”) and talking me into buying two overpriced beers (“While we’re here. I’ll get two as well.”) Somehow, Niamh walked away with one, but I had two giant plastic cups of Heineken which I drank very quickly as we watched the next performer.

So I got drunk. But not drunk enough that when we were walking towards the Katy Perry venue, and some boys were wrestling in the mud and Niamh wanted to join (“Yes. Yes! It’ll be FUN.”) to not try and stop her. But she ended up in the mud anyway.
Katy Perry was probably the most fun. She brought a lot of props with her, like an inflatable strawberry and giant chap stick, and was wearing the pink leopard print body-legging much derided by the gofugyourself girls. She was much better at connecting with the crowd than GaGa. “Hey Ireland! I hear you guys are crazy! I just in Scotland and...” There were a few scattered boos for Scotland. “Hey! You guys are friends, be nice! You have the same proportion of gingers!” Then she added, “I can say that, I have a ginger in my family.” She sang ‘Waking up in Vegas’ and ‘Hot N’ Cold’ (my favourite) and the audience was mostly really into it. Of course, it was Oxegen, so there was still shenanigans: a giant inflatable phallus appeared and bobbed around the crowd. “What?” Katy yelled, responding to something someone said in the audience. “No, I’m not going to sit on it! You people ARE crazy!” Then she confiscated the giant phallus, but replaced it with her strawberry, although she brought it back out for a later song and writhed with it a bit. She finished with ‘I Kissed A Girl’ (natch) but halfway through the song the rain came back, but we all didn’t care and kept singing and dancing. Instead of hiding beneath the canopy of her stage, Katy came out and sang close to the audience and got soaked too, her mascara streaming down her face. When she was finished, I wanted to hear more from her, but it was probably for the best, as those were all the songs of hers I knew.

Niamh and David went back to the camp side to dry off and tidy up, and I found a fish and chip stand and ate my greasy dinner ravenously as I watched the passing concert goers slip around on the mud despite their Wellies.