Electric Picnic, Crawdaddy Stage, Stradbally, Sunday, 2nd September 2007

If memory serves setlist was as follows :

wings (up to the "cheapo airline snobs" line before morphing into)
wolfkidultman
pacifying joint
fall sound
theme from sparta fc
what about us?
strange town
my door
over! over!
mr. pharmacist
blindness

stunned that i stood and watched smith sing half of wings. sound was excellent and mes' amp fiddling actually made sense. turn the guitars down here, bass up here, more eleni there. turn guitars back up, soften the bass, throw mic into bass drum. didnt seem as random and incoherent as it sometimes does. mes spent most of the gig decontructed kierons drumkit, taking away mics, and a cymbal. guitarist looked under serious pressure, didnt look comfortable at all. a great fall gig with smith really up for it on the vocals and seeming sober, lucid and laughing at times with the eagle. ferociously growling the lines "i never loved you and i never will" during my door.

nicest touch was the "no RTE for you baby" in fall sound. RTE is the irish semi-state tv and radio broadcaster.

wolfkidultman is pretty strong musically and seemed to have more lyrics than ive heard before. i meant to jot down a few lines that struck me but it was a festival afterall and there was far more important things to be doing!

strange town is a really good cover, i think theres a mention of green grass in there somewhere. seems to be a recurring image/metaphor for mes

seen the gruppe 6 times now and this show would be in my top 3. not as good as hammersmith but on a par or slightly better than galway 04

Very good gig. Sound was great. MES' vocals were top notch. He barked out the lyrics, even shouting at times. He sang bits of Chicago now in the middle of Blindness and one other song I think. Especially good to hear Wings though. Band were super-tight and MES was wearing a suit that looked as it came out of an Oxfam shop in the eighties.

I wasn't impressed with this festival other than the good music I saw. I'd say that 95% of the people there were dickheads. My friend got attacked by some guy at the main stage. The guy gave him a swollen lip and a black eye. Me and some other people managed to pull the guy off him eventually. We tracked the guy down and brought a cop with us. He denied that he started it and complained about his shirt losing a button!

The cop was useless, there was very little security around, it was really badly sign-posted on the way in and it wasn't anyway like the way that it was advertised in general.

10 out of 10 for the bands that I saw.

3 out of 10 for the way the festival was run.

definitely ring Liveline about that, talk to Joe, talk to Joe

Festival is getting slated on the forum on it's own website. Glad to know it's not just me being grumpy, and people are genuinely pissed off with the way that it was run this year.

It was a good set. Some of my mates hadn't seen them live and were impressed. Was fantastic to hear Wings.

It sounded good in the tent and most people I spoke with were pretty positive about the set. I enjoyed the festival itself with some reservations - see other thread.

mikeyboy - sorry to hear about your friend. That's disgraceful and I agree, there were quite a few knobs at it this time.

Thankfully there were no idiots at The Fall.

My friend is fine now but the whole thing was a bit surreal, seeing him getting knocked to the ground and punched. My friend has never hit anyone in his life. A lot of people came over to help me pull the guy off him, and someone even picked up my friend's glasses and gave them back to him, so there was some good people there too.

did you get the garda's serial number, something always worth doing, and let him know you know it, as in "excuse me officer number 923, is that all you're going to do about this disgraceful behaviour? you haven't heard heard the last of this officer 923" etc.

I'm suprised the EP forum is allowing negative comments, Oxygen shut down their forum last year, and threatened to sue any section of the media that gave their festival nay negative publicity, although I suppose MCD is a different animal

Never thought of getting the Garda's number or anything like that in the midst of the shock.

Yeah, there was quite a few negative comments on the EP forum yesterday.

maybe MCD paid a few goons to act as agents provocateurs and attend the EP and engage in thuglike behaviour to bring it into disrepute

Sorry too hear about your friend too, Mikeyboy. Beating one who's wearing glasses can't be punished hard enough. Speaking out of experience.

Im surprised the mobile phone cameras didnt get a mention. It seems these days if I ever see any trouble start (thankfully not often) everybody grabs their phones and points them, it can be a big dissauder in some situations.
(even if your bluffing)

That sounds all very shitty audience-wise but brings glad tidings performance-wise to the lucky ones who are in berlin on thursday ! I was half-dreading (read full-dreading, or fall-dreading) a no show or shambolic walk on walk off, all based on the rather muddled last LP.

Concerned Bowie of Berlin.

It'll be 999, won't it?

Oh please, someone go back in time to record it so it can be uploaded on dime!

That sounds a real shame about the Electric Picnic. I went last year, primarily for New Order, and it was a lovely chilled out relaxed event, even at night.

Lots of pissed up people but no aggro (well, that we saw). In fact the only raised voices I witnessed came from me when some knob kept pushing me and tutting because I stepped into his private reserved standing space for 30 seconds to take some pictures of Rufus Wainright. Wish I hadn't picked the quietest part of the song to tell him to feck right off!

Mate was at the gig said it was a bit crap, mind you I probably would have shit myself hearing the Wings riff.

He reckoned Jinx Lennon was the highlight and the fact he's a Dundalk man would not have influenced this in the slightest

have to leap to defend the festival, I thought it was magic.

of course out of 30K people you will find some trouble, and no surprise that you happen to run into assholes up front at the main stage.

on the whole the crowd were very chilled and good natured. i had a nine year old with me for the first two days/nights and an eight year old for the last day/night and we saw no trouble - even around main stage area or in the dj tents after midnight.

can't fault a lineup that has fall, sonic youth, jesus and mary chain, bjork, primal scream, iggy and the stooges, beastie boys, chemical brothers, lcd soundsystem, jarvis cocker, deerhoof and probably over a hundred acts if you include comedy, djs etc.

can't fault the location or the variety of entertainment, markets, food.

toilets well maintained, camping facilities as good as you can hope for at a festival, security pretty smart and good natured, ...

yeah, overall I loved it, definitely booking next year, figure it must be the ideal festival these days since it's just big enough to get the good acts but not as nuts as glastonbury etc

my gripes;
- putting the beastie boys in a 2K capacity tent when 10K people were scrumming to see them
- no big screen for main stage
- bars closed too early

the fall were great but the set was too short and it was excruciating to hear mr pharmacist again. but I guess that song makes sense since it has probably been a hook for more first-timers at fall gigs over the years than any other. blindness was the highlight of course, with wings a close second.

alan mcb

I have to disagree with you about the way that it was run. For starters, there was little to no security in the campsites (at least, not in my campsite). I could have went to someone's tent and murdered them and nobody would have noticed. There were several break-ins, including one guy who was asleep in his tent when someone came in. They took his insulin injections and the poor guy could have died. Another person came back to their tent to find that someone had taken a s**t in it. A lot of the security guys were dealing drugs, hence the lack of drug busts.

I'm probably focusing on the negative, but the organisers took a quick buck and ran. They could have run it better but they couldn't be arsed.

Very sad to hear, was very well run for the years I've been

Hope they still had the coloured lightbulb walkways through the forests though

A friend of mine played at the festival and didn't enjoy it - he found the staff he was dealing with to be disorganized and apparently unhappy to be there.

some very good pictures, not sure if this link is already known...