Looking back, one’s memories are framed in grays and browns. Greased in rain, caked in damp, spanked in the arse by a wind with a serious attitude, the first 24 hours of Oxegen 2006 unfold as a series of muggy snapshots: Regina Spektor conjuring her kooky theatrics in a damp, heaving tent, a balmy Magic Numbers daring the weather to do its worst and encouraging us to feel sun-kissed anyway; James Brown turning in a set that made one exhausted just watching.
Here, in fact, was the sort of day to restore not only one’s faith in rock festivals, but in popular music itself. Sod MySpace and the download revolution – amidst the mud and the scowling thick-necks in Armagh jerseys was to be found the beating heart of rock, in all of its wondrous dishevelment.
By now, Oxegen has, simply by holding firm, carved out a singular niche in the pop calendar. Nobody here is pitching to a demographic. Juxtaposing the gut-bucket indie of Arctic Monkeys, the blue-jeaned raunch of Primal Scream and the OC-mandated Pacific Northwest pop of Death Cab For Cutie, Oxegen is happy being all things to all people.
Having hidden in the car in the (wildly over-optimistic) hope of the rain abating, your correspondent fetches up in mid-afternoon of Day One, too late for Dave Couse – for whose continued obscurity the world ought hang its head in embarrassment – but just in time for the aforementioned Regina Spektor, the indie-pop princess who, when not banging out backing rhythms on a chair, delivers a mean impersonation of Tori Amos’s goth kid sister. She’s brought the chair along to Oxegen and a great deal of her winsome charm also: the set finishes with the heart-crushing double whammy of ‘US’ and ‘Carbon Monoxide’.
Elsewhere, Magic Numbers are swimming courageously in the face of the crowd’s chilly indifference. On paper their reedy melodies and fizzy-pop choruses ought to come wretchedly unstuck in a sodden field in Kildare. Yet, despite ourselves, we get it: Magic Numbers chronicle life from the loser’s perspective, and having been rained on for the past two hours, songs of quiet bravery and fragile nobility assume a strange relevance. It’s like – I’m wet, but Romeo Stodart has spent half his life gathering up the shattered fragments of his heart. Puts things a little into perspective, don’t you think?
It can’t, of course, rain all of the time, not even in Ireland. And so, as late afternoon segues into early night, the storm packs its bags, leaving the crowd, bewildered by the sudden lack of downpour, to look forward to such treats as Arctic Monkeys, Primal Scream and Hard-Fi. Of the three, Arctic Monkeys are the most engaging, and not only because, with an average age of 19, they fizzle with puppy dog enthusiasm. No, the Monkeys’ songbook seems cleverer with each encounter. Eight months in the public domain and already ‘I Bet You Good Look On The Dancefloor’ has the air of a generational anthem. Lyrically the Monkeys are flirting with nonsense, but it’s a profound, transcendental nonsense.
Later, Death Cab For Cutie will provide a masterclass in simpering alt.pop and Whipping Boy will show how uplifting it can be to travel to the heart of someone else’s darkness. For many though, The Who are the highlight, delivering a set that demonstrates age counts for little when the embers still burn bright. Despite the cold and late encore of drizzle, we tramp towards the horizon elated, and not solely because we aren’t spending the night at the campsite.