Electric Picnic, Day One, Friday 31st August 2007
by Yvonne Gordon
Well it’s finally here, day one of Electric Picnic! Excitement has been building all week with so many previews in papers and magazines and all the ticket-holders I know feel very lucky indeed that they are going, while those without tickets are regretting that they didn’t get one.
Having left Dublin at 6pm this evening, and crawled for an hour through rush-hour traffic out of the city, we hit Stradbally at 8pm and managed to be on-site with our tent up by 9pm. A remarkable achievement it appears, as many people got stuck for three hours in traffic in the village and didn’t get on site till midnight!
Having found our bearings, we made our way to the Main Stage and caught the last few minutes of Bjork - sounding a little more tuneful than she did at Glastonbury - and followed by LCD Soundsystem, both playing great sets on the huge outdoor stage. One of the most magical moments was the appearance of a nearly full moon behind the stage just after dark and the air filling with glittery silver paper raining down during Bjork’s performance. Stradbally Hall itself is illuminated with lights and forms a great backdrop.
Other popular gigs were Modest Mouse at the Crawdaddy Stage and Manic Street Preachers in the Electric Arena.
This is the fourth Electric Picnic and the organisers have been making refinements each year since it started in 2005, when it ran for just one-day. Over this weekend, the three-day festival promises to welcome 32,500 campers and enough musicians to fill ten stages, with an eclectic, left-of-centre music mix of everything from rock and pop to world music, hip-hop, dance, reggae and roots. There’ll be lots to discover.
One of the most ingenious features this year is the Eco-Cup - you buy the cup for €3 from the bar and use it for the weekend, instead of wasting plastic glasses for drinks. You hand in the cup every time you need a refill and can either keep the cup as a souvenir or get your €3 back at the end. I hope I manage to hold on to mine as it is one of the limited edition Electric Picnic branded ones!