True to form, the skies opened and it pelted with rain throughout the first day of the event, turning the site at Punchestown Racecourse into a slightly sticky, mud-tastic experience - which didn't dampen any of the vibes.
The highprofile festival is promoted by the country's largest concert and live event organisation, MCD and this year it featured a strong line-up.
Dublin-based rental company Just Lite's relationship with MCD's Denis Desmond stretches back over 20 years, and the company headed by Paul and Alan Smith has been involved with lighting the festival for the last 11 years, when it was originally launched as Witnness in 2000. Once again this year, they won the tender as the main lighting contractor on site for the three-day Oxegen event, providing lighting for the Main Stage, The Heineken Green Spheres arena, the 2FM Hotpress Academy tent (for new talent), the Red Bull outdoor arena and the VIP bar.
Says Smith, "With the truly stellar line up this year, we really wanted to up the production values and ensure that everyone had the best technology at their fingertips."
Main stage headliners included the Black Eyed Peas, the Foo Fighters and Coldplay, and a number of other incendiary performances including an epic homecoming set by local heroes The Script, who energised the crowd in great style lifting everyone way above any first day sogginess.
Liam McCarthy was Just Lite's crew chief on site, with the FOH domain at the main stage co-ordinated by Mark Hanna. They looked at all the various top-billing band's specs and from there designed a production that was rig flexible and diverse enough to accommodate everyone's needs. All the headliners and some other artists also brought in their own floor specials packages.
"The Robes are absolutely brilliant in bad weather - they are built for festivals," says McCarthy, impressed with how they just keep on going no matter how damp it is.
Some of the fixtures were rigged on fully exposed places around the stage, like the PA wings and on the audience-side of the front truss. These were all fitted with Robe's very neat Rain Hats, which offer effective water protection for the main parts of the unit.
On the main stage there were 40 Robe ColorWash 1200E ATs, 36 ColorSpot 1200E ATs, 16 ColorWash 2500E ATs and six ColorSpot 2500E ATs.
Lighting designers for the headline acts were Gary Waldie who looks after the Black Eyed Peas, Dan Healey for the Foo Fighters and Graeme Fest, who is lighting director for Coldplay's show which is designed by Paul Normandale.
Over in the Green Spheres Arena, the core of the lighting rig was 16 of Just Lite's new Robe Robin 600 Spots, delivered just in time to go straight on to this event. Lighting was operated and looked after by Nick Malbon. It was all hung on a six-legged ground support system, and included PARs, egg strobes, Source Four profiles and PARs, complete with a Hog iPC console for control. Headliners in here included Leftfield, Propaganda DJs and Primal Scream.
(Jim Evans)
