Another Banter Uptown session saw us taking a trip to Letterkenny for the Earagail Arts Festival and the Outstanding In Their Own Fields – Where The Irish Music Festival Goes From Here discussion in July 2010.
Over the last decade, the Irish gig-going community have demonstrated a huge appetite for summer music festivals. The attention paid every year to the Big Two (Oxegen and Electric Picnic), the number of standalone gigs for superstar acts (Lenny Cohen isn’t coming back to Ireland for the third summer in a row because he likes the full Irish breakfast) and the rise of a new breed of micro-festivals like Castlepalooza, Indiependence and Glasgowbury is testimony to our fondness for letting our hair down in big fields up and down the country.
But will the current recession mean an end to this love affair? Has festival fatigue set in as the same old bands dominate the line-ups? Do punters want something more than just the communal good times in a wet Irish field? Has the rise in popularity of trips to foreign events like Glastonbury and Primerva lessened the appeal of the homegrown bash? And will we still be giving out about the kids at Oxegen and the price of Electric Picnic tickets in five years time?
On the panel: Paul McLoone (Today FM, The Undertones), Una Mullally (Sunday Tribune, TG4’s Ceol Ar An Imeall) and Declan Forde (POD Concerts and Electric Picnic booker)
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