Oxegen is an annual Irish music festival held since 2004, sponsored by Heineken. Now Ireland"s biggest festival and the largest 100% CarbonNeutral event in Ireland, it was previously called Witnness, which ran from 2000 and was sponsored by Guinness. The event is promoted by MCD. Oxegen was originally a three-day festival but for 2008 was expanded to four days. It takes place at the Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare, Ireland and has an average attendance of around 90,000 a day, with around 80,000 of these camping on site for the duration, and the rest travelling to the site each day. It takes place on the same weekend as T in the Park in Scotland and shares a very similar line-up each year, although Oxegen is generally regarded as Ireland"s version of the world-renowned Glastonbury Festival, with the 2008 festival sharing three of the same headliners as its English counterpart. Oxegen 2009 was heralded as "a marvel of organisation" when compared to the Woodstock Festival held in the United States in 1969.Oxegen has attracted significant attention from outside Ireland, with many of those attending travelling from overseas and Northern Ireland also experiences a "mass exodus" to the festival. Members of bands such as The Killers, Snow Patrol and R.E.M. have spoken positively of their experiences at the festival. Celebrities frequently attend, including models Helena Christensen (a regular attendant) and Glenda Gilson, American television personality Chris Pontius, actor Josh Hartnett, and Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones, who was pursued by "half the journalists in the country" and many of his own relatives for much of the 2008 festival. However, Oxegen has also attracted some negative publicity, particularly following the 2006 festival. This is attributed to such factors as the age of admission -17- and easy access to alcohol.



History

Oxegen first took place in 2004 over the second weekend in July. The Killers, who went on to headline the festival twice in 2007 and 2009, were one of the bands to appear at the first Oxegen. Dave Keuning, in an interview with Hot Press prior to the 2009 festival, described Oxegen as "a big deal because it"s one of the first European festivals we lpayed when we came over from Vegas in 2004. We only had one hit—"Mr. Brightside"—and were worried in case no one showed. But the tent was packed with people screaming out the words to songs we didn"t think they knew. It was that night we thought, "Hey, something"s happening here!" Oxegen more so than Glastonbury even was the highlight of our summer."The original festival, Witnness, sponsored by Guinness, took place during the start of August with notable headliners, including Oasis, The Foo Fighters and Green Day; however in its second and third year, running changed its dates to the second weekend of July. Oxegen became a three-day festival in 2008.Rodrigo y Gabriela made their breakthrough after being asked by Damien Rice to perform with him at Oxegen 2005.The Japanese Popstars formed after viewing several dance acts at Oxegen 2006.R.E.M. members Michael Stipe and Peter Buck watched several shows from side stage at Oxegen 2007 before returning to headline the festival the following year. Stipe credits his 2007 visit with inspiring him to want to go on tour again, saying: "I saw all these great bands and the next day after the festival we went into the studio." Muse, known for their spectacular light show and their position as one of the world"s best live bands, headlined the Oxegen 2007.Battles played the biggest festival show of their career at that time in the Pet Sounds Arena during Oxegen 2008. The Prodigy played four new songs at Oxegen 2008 before informing the crowd: "No disrespect to people on the other stages but they are in the wrong place. I"m going to take you back to fucking 1991". Also in 2008, Interpol were sent champagne by U2 as they arrived for rehearsals.Chad Wolf of Carolina Liar described the band"s performance at Oxegen 2009 as an "an out-of-body experience".Each Oxegen has been defined by the attention focused on its own weather, with The Belfast Telegraph referring to 2005 as "the sunny one", 2006 as "the torrentially rainy one", 2007 as "the muddy one" and 2008 as "the so-so one".{| class="wikitable"|-| 2004 || 2005 || 2006 || 2007 || 2008 || 2009|-valign="top"|Headliners included:

The Cure
The Strokes
Kings of Leon
The Libertines
Muse


(more...)||Headliners included:

Green Day