Electric Picnic is 20 years young this year. The first festival in 2004 was a one-day affair with a crowd of about 10,000.
It is now the undisputed behemoth of the Irish summer festival circuit with 75,000 people due to attend the Stradbally, Co Laois venue this weekend.
Electric Picnic is usually held in the first weekend in September and marks the end of the Irish summer in a way that the All-Ireland hurling final used to do before it was moved.
This year Electric Picnic has been moved to the middle of August to facilitate the schedule of one of the performers. Which one? “It wouldn’t be fair to single out any artist,” said festival promoter Melvin Benn. It hasn’t stopped the consensus emerging that the artist in question is Kylie Minogue. The evergreen pop princess is Sunday night’s headliner. It is hard to believe that the other headliners, Noah Kahan (Friday) or DJ superstar Calvin Harris (Saturday) would have a similar sway.
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The site is solid underfoot. A smattering of rain is forecast for Thursday night, but it promises to be fair otherwise for the weekend. Mr Benn, who makes a great play on the festival’s sustainability, says the main-stage generator will be powered by renewable sources, while the generators for the other stages will be fuelled by biodiesel. It is the first major festival of its kind to do that, he says.
Local brewery Ballykilcavan, which is situated just outside Stradbally village, has questioned the festival’s sustainability given that neither it nor any other craft brewery or distillery can sell their drinks on site. Instead, Heineken has a monopoly on alcohol served at the Picnic.
Mr Benn responded: “I don’t like the beer. Does that ever occur to anybody? I’ve tasted it. I don’t even like it. Why I would invite them to be here when I don’t even like the stuff?
“I’ll choose what beer we have and I hope people like it. I like what we have got.”
The first performers at Electric Picnic were Hermitage Green, the Limerick-based multi-instrumentalists, who were given a showcase to the media on Tuesday. They pronounced themselves very pleased with their headlining of the Rankin’s Wood stage on Sunday night even if it clashes with Kylie Minogue’s set.
“We’ve got to lean into the nerves a little bit. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves as we want to blow people away. That’s the energy we want to feed the crowd. You get it back from Electric Picnic every single time,” said bassist and singer Barry Murphy.
An unlikely performer at Electric Picnic will be former president Mary McAleese, who will be interviewed by broadcaster Mary Kennedy on the Ah, Hear! Podcast Stage on Sunday afternoon. The pair have the Changing Times – the Allenwood Conversations podcast.
“My kids are mortified that I’m here. They think I’m a big fraud,” she said. “My grandchildren think it is so cool. I’m in the final quarter of my life. I’d be as well to do it now as any other time.”
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