The Electric Picnic Line Up…

Here’s what I have so far….

POD CONCERTS & AIKEN PROMOTIONS PRESENT

THE ELECTRIC PICNIC – The Boutique Musical Festival
Stradbally Hall, Co Laois – Friday August 31/September1/September 2 2007

The Electric Picnic Ireland’s only Boutique Music Festival returns on 31st, August 1st and 2nd September 2007. Capacity remains at 32,500, ensuring that The Picnic’s trademark intimacy remains intact, but the festival will have an enlarged camping area to allow for more room and comfort for festival goers.

It’s a tribute to the festival that so many repeat visitors get their tickets without even asking who is on the bill. Now in its fourth year, The Picnic has grown from being a music festival to encompassing a lot more from music to art to poetry reading. The trust has been built up and each and ever year there’s something better about it. It truly is your listening festival, regulars return from each year’s bash with ideas/suggestions/advice as to how to enhance the experience.

Musically, it can’t be touched, The Picnic handpicks only those acts who know how to merge themselves with the Stradbally experience. And forget what it says on your birth certificate, there’s always something on somewhere for everyone in the audience.

This year’s highlights include The Beastie Boys doing their first Irish show in over a decade; the recently reformed Iggy And The Stooges, incidentally this will be their only UK/Ireland performance this year; a rare live outing by the wonderful Bjork; ex-Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker; a hark back to 1980s punk-pop with The Jesus And Mary Chain; cutting edge dance-rock from LCD Soundsystem (who have just released one of the albums of the year); the newly resurgent Primal Scream; the first ever Irish show by the Damon Albarn-led The Good, The Bad and The Queen; Modest Mouse, the dramatic Polyphonic Spree and the eminently adaptable Craig Armstrong; Soul II Soul – who are arriving over with a 12 piece band and string section in tow! Plus Paul Hartnoll’s The Ideal Condition and the return of the Dublin Gospel Choir who will be there to redeem your souls on Sunday morning.

Away from the music there’s a dizzying array of delights. The Body and Soul Village is back, bigger and better this year and you’ll find them down among the trees where they’ll have organic food and drink, a massive range of holistic treatments and plenty more stuff to keep you on the up and up. An added dimension to the Body and Soul area is the Village Green, there will be an Arts and Crafts area where some of Ireland’s best craftworkers will weave their talents to create a collective art piece especially for this year’s festival.

A dynamic, playful and ridiculously colourful kids field will house fun games, creative workshops, movies, arts and crafts, puppet making and circus skills. And not to forget the grown ups there will be tug of war, twister, giant skittles and rounders to tickle your fancy.

What would the Village Green be without the Village Hall? Get ready for a right rustic knees-up, with line dancing, daily ceili, gypsy bands, trad sessions, apple bobbing, salsa classes, dancing competitions and a bit of mayhem for all the family, friends and freaks to enjoy. There’ll also be a farmers market selling fresh produce from the local Laois farmer each morning.

Lost Vagueness are proud to attend The Electric Picnic for a third fabulous year. This time round they will be bringing you the infamous Chapel of Love and Loathing. The original and best festival chapel has amazed and astounded countless visitors with its heady combination of daytime wedding ceremonies and the darkest night time cabaret. In addition we are happy to bring you The Casino and The Changing Room. All in all a full Lost Vagueness experience and one not to be missed. Returning will be the Ballroom and the Laundrettas Laundromat Of Love providing a small army of stylists to pimp your look.

New this year is the world renowned Fossets Circus, with acrobats, clowns and jugglers.

Back by popular demand is the Leviathan Think Tank – the political debate tent hosted again this year by Economist, broadcaster and writer David McWilliams. Enlarged this year to 2 tents there will be a series of intelligent and entertaining discussions as the centrepiece to a vibrant weekend of spoken word events including poetry, theatre, speakers’ corner, story-telling, musical satire, comedy films and much more.

The very popular International Comedy Club also makes its return hosted as usual by the formidable Des Bishop.

The ever popular Southern Comfort Crawdaddy Tent, Bacardi B Bar and Foggy Notions Stage all make a welcome return.

In addition will be a late night stage which promises impromptu performances from various acts throughout the weekend.

In the Bodytonic Arena, they’ll be serving up the finest underground funk-dance (and plenty more besides).

With the finest accommodation facilities of any festival in Europe, this year you will really have to book early for the luxurious Boutique Campsite which has a 24 hour on-site reception and an extra special “Apres Fest” chill-out zone.

There’s also Beach Huts, a fab Bohemian Bivouac, the very popular Podpads, Tipis and the double decker dormitories that are the Bus Beds.

This year Electric Picnic intends to make a greater strides towards becoming as environmentally friendly as possible. Discussions with Cultivate Ireland & Global cool are on-going to investigate how we can reduce our use of non renewable energy & offset those we do. The festival will also have large on site recycling stations this year, instead of recycling off-site as previous years, and will be introducing a pro-active ‘Leave No Trace’ campaign. Enforcing a biodegradeable packaging policy with the traders and focusing on a more environmental traffic management plan, these are just a few of the areas which we hope we will make a difference. Watch www.electricpicnic.ie for developments over the summer and to find out how you can make a difference.

Subject to licence.

Tickets for the three day festival are priced €220, including camping. Tickets include booking fee and VAT. Phone & internet bookings subject to €5.95 service charge. Agents €2 per ticket handling charge. Avail from www.ticketmaster.ie / 0818 719300.

One thought on “The Electric Picnic Line Up…

  1. should be fun. Launchy launchy last night brought it all back.

    MEMORIES, FROM THE CORNER OF MY MIND

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