Oxegen - Backstage Chit-Chat
What's it like to have fans singing along as you play the main stage in Oxegen? Is there any banter between the bands backstage and how did the weather affect the acts? RTÉ.ie posed these questions to some of those on the bill and here are the answers we got...
On the Irish Crowd
All-round cool guy Jason Mraz tells us: "The Irish crowd... always a very appreciative crowd, always a very vocal crowd, a singing bunch. I love 'em". His sentiments are echoed by Max Grahn of Carolina Liar, who said of the Irish fans: "We met them today for the first time when we played here. We got here for the first time in our lives yesterday. They know the songs and they know our names. It's crazy. We hope to be back in August." MC Double D (Daimon Downey) of Sneaky Sound System also had an interesting take on the Oxegen fans, saying: "You guys go crazy. I'm sure if someone just had a little fiddle and a chair you guys would go crazy to that as well."
Read more of these interviews here.
What happens backstage….
When we decided to be cheeky and ask for some backstage gossip we got some interesting results. Benjamin from Republic of Loose kicked off the chat by joking: "We had to ask Lily Allen to leave us alone," while his bandmate Deco chipped in: "Yeah, she kept stalking us!". Bresy from The Blizzards also had an interesting story for us… "One of the girls from The Saturdays was walking past and I don't know if the guy meant it but he was playing pool and the cue ball came straight off the table and obviously went to hit her and he just went "Hey, how are you?". It didn't work. She looked at him like he had two heads. There's better things to do than throw a cue ball at a girl. Maybe I'm not good at this but I don't claim to chat up girls by throwing cue balls at them... I throw the black at them!," he joked.
Read more backstage festival stories here.
The best thing about being on the road
The Twang were also in flying form before their Oxegen set chatting to us about life on the road. Phil kicks if off by saying: "I love being on the road and I love gigging because you're with your mates. You get put on a tour bus… it's like you've won the Lottery, mate. You're driving around… it's like a rolling pub. It's amazing." Then Martin chips in: "With a bed at the end." Then comes the retort: "With a bed at the end, yeah. And a little sick bag!" Nice!
Read more of our festival interviews here.
(The Oxegen acts were talking to RTÉ.ie's Linda McGee and Harry Guerin.)
