Oxegen r.i.p - A look back at an Irish rite of Passage

Opening up the stiff tent zipper, hands cold and wet from clawing heat into my body through the long muddy night, a vista of chaos was all I could see. 

Like an Apache raid, tents around me were blazing, the cries of empty crisp packets left behind plumed into the Kildare sky and I saw the warriors of blue camp run screaming towards one another.

“I’m never coming back here again,” I said to myself as I stuffed my dirt-encrusted possessions into a bag, like a spy leaving a hotel room. But I did come back, for two consecutive years. To Oxegen, the greatest session known to a 17-year-old. It was a sort of masochistic ritual, a cross filled with cans carried through a field, where, for three nights we would self-flagellate with sharp vodka and occasionally wander into a tent where someone may or may not be playing music.

Now, it is true to say that each person’s Oxygen experience is totally different. Some arrive as avid fans of all acts on show, a pamphlet program swinging about their neck like a badge of respect. Others are there simply for the social aspect – well, as social as striking up a conversation with a guy who is pissing on your tent can be. I, was a mix of the two.

Oxygeners

One’s first insight into the Oxegen ‘crowd’ begins with the bus. Leaving from Parnell Street, an old double decker would ferry the souls across the river Styx and here you could identify which camp people would fall into.

Some older, cooler couples sported rain ponchos, lawn chairs and ‘in-case-of-emergency’ pancake makers. These were the experts. Professionals in their field, whichever one they had carefully chosen to stay in.

Then there were the drinkers; three or four lads decked out in floral shorts, old football jerseys as if they believed they were attending a match, and a small industrial forklift full of cheap Lidl cans. 120 cans, you would hear them shout: “40-a-day, just to be safe.”

Then there were the unprepared, the overdressed, the loners, the stoners, the computer programmers. A wild array of Irish life that only at Oxygen would ever merge.

Camping

Tent pegs. Confusion. Frustration. Accepting defeat and opening the first warm can.

Watching as the one competent member of your party assembles the crude contraption, while the rest look on in awe.

Choosing where to set up your tent is an art. Some diligent campers would triangulate their resting space using a specific and methodical list of criteria; proximity to the toilets, distance from desired stages, escape routes and, like a upper class hangover, the pedigree of your neighbours.

My own inexperience had left us dropping anchor only 10 feet from the amusements, which would only cease for two hours of the day. The rest would be drowned in haunting remixes of old eighties pop songs. I still seize in fear some nights, the ghastly ‘tilter whirl’ spinning around my brain. I can almost smell the beer-soaked sleeping bag that I used to shield my ears.

Music

The whole reason you came, or at least the whole reason you tell people you’re going. Apart from last year’s move towards a dance-orientated crowd that brought us the newspaper headline ‘Five teens injured in overnight slashing assault’, Oxegen still pulled in the thousands because it had good bands, putting on good shows.

Nine inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine for the black nail painters and general ‘rockers’, while Kings of Leon, the Script and Coldplay catered for the ‘musical populists’ and the ‘generally boring’. There was something for everyone to enjoy.

Watching a drunken Oxegener fighting against his body’s urge to shut down and mouthing lyrics like a satanic incantation as Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’ boomed through the afternoon air,was personal favourite moment of mine. He, in a lot of ways, summed up the Oxegen ethos for me. Here for the music, but the session comes first.

If you could navigate the minefield of the camp-site, manage not to walk through small communities of lads with republican slogans spray-painted to their tents you would be in for a treat when you reached the arena.

Campers and non-campers were easily distinguishable. Non-campers and day-trippers were full of energy and sunshine, floral wreaths on the girls and designer wellies, buying burgers and chatting about the next act. Camper zombies waded through them, neither alive nor dead, screaming internally ‘You’re having fun’. But it was the kind of fun you derive from a survival mission – it tested your mettle.

For all the pain and cold and fear and disgust, the squatting bush girls, and comatose ‘lads’, Oxegen will forever be remembered by all who ever set foot on its cold ground. No amount of therapy could ever rid you of it.