Oxegen reveal headliners

Taking on board the criticism of an anonymous poster yesterday that the cynicism on this blog can become wearing, I'm going to approach the announcement of the headliners for the 2009 Oxegen Festival with nothing, nothing, but enthusiasm:

The Kings Of Leon!

The Killers!

Snow Patrol!

You'd certainly have to agree, there isn't another festival taking place at exactly the same time that could pull together that exact same line-up. And so many guitars, so many, many men with guitars.

At least you weren't in tents - Cleaning chief

A letter in the Guardian at the weekend from Tom Gibbons of Cleanevent countered the paper's story about poor treatment of staff at Oxegen:

I wish to clarify some matters in your story (Cleaners for festival had to sleep in stables, July 12). Cleanevent UK brought 34 staff to the Oxegen festival in Ireland and informed all staff in advance of the accommodation arrangements. Our staff did not sleep on "concrete floors" but were in a clean, sanitised and refurbished stable block with heating, natural light, hot showers, and a 24-hour restaurant serving hot food, with a recreation area. In fact, our shower facilities were good enough to be used by some of the performers at the festival. Every member of staff had a bed, and no staff member paid for their own bed. We are not aware of any staff calling the police and the three staff members who felt dissatisfied with the accommodation were provided with free transport back to the UK. Cleanevent take our responsibility to our staff very seriously, and we feel that the accommodation provided during the Oxegen festival was as good as, if not better than, that provided at events such as Glastonbury, where contracted staff often sleep in tents.

By the company's own account elsewhere, though, there was a delay in the beds arriving so, at some point, there must have been more cleaners than there were beds.

Festival misery

It's been a bit of a miserable weekends at the festivals: Not only the bloke being stabbed at T in the Park, but some poor woman at Oxegen got third degree burns after "a friend" somehow hit in the face with a "makeshift blowtorch" and a man was found dead in his T in the Park tent.

We're still trying to work out under what circumstances you'd require a blowtorch, makeshift or otherwise, at a music festival.

Oxegen of bad publicity

We know that part of the festival experience is meant to be the joy of roughing it, but not to this extent: cleaners for the Oxegen Festival this week were given a stable to sleep in.

Admittedly, it was good enough for the Blessed Virgin Mary, but the 52 cleaners were understandably unhappy. Especially since the floor of the stable was concrete, and apparently there were only about one third as many mattresses as people.

It took a call to the police to persuade the cleaning company to try and sort something better out - inflatable mattresses on kitchen floors.

Of course, Oxegen had outsourced cleaning to a third party, but still, you'd expect there to be some sort of corporate shame; perhaps a sense of apology?

The event's promoter, MCD, said it "worked with contractors in advance to ensure all staff requirements are fully met." Each contractor was responsible for its own staff welfare, it said.

The cleaners sleep like the Holy family; Oxegen's promoters behave like Pilate.

[UPDATE: company boss says conditions 'better than Glastonbury']

Ferry nearly sinks Editors

Playing two festivals on two different landmasses nearly did for the Editors: their equipment got stuck between Oxegen and T in the Park:

The band, one of several playing Oxegen prior to their T appearance, revealed their instruments and backline had failed to make it to the ferry to Britain. Drummer Ed Lay said: "The van with all the equipment was waiting to go on the ferry but they started allowing vehicles on in reverse order."

Rather oddly, the Daily Record doesn't bother to reveal what happened in the end, so we're going to assume they went onstage using Twangers (as seen on Rainbow) and drums made from boxes.