Posted By eoghan on 23 Jun 2009 04:17 AM 
Is there a Cluas regular who was at Slane [...]?

And throw together a review too, of course :)

I was at the gig, and must admit the whole thing seemed badly organised. Some people had to walk up to 6 miles to find their bus, not getting on it until 3AM (the gig ended around 10:30) while getting out of the gig was very difficult, taking about 45 minutes to even get out of the place. I don't know about the reports of more getting in than there should've been, but a friend's friend wasn't allowed to re-enter after going out for a bottle of water, and he later told me that there were around 30 others in the same boat on the first bus back to Dublin. This was the first gig I've ever been to of this size, so I didn't know whether all the problems were standard or specific to this one. As for the reports of crowd trouble, I was at the front, but too distracted by my own crowd problems to see into the VIP area. For the most part it was fine, but when it got to The Prodigy and onwards there was quite a bit of aggression from certain quarters, even outside the pit (where it's to be expected). About 3 fights broke out in the area immediately surrounding me and through talking to others near me it seemed there were more breaking out all around the front area. The gig itself was excellent, an immense experience, but it can't be denied that there were certain organisational problems and certain aggressive elements beered up in the crowd trying to cause trouble.

What's also striking is the fact that the gig ended so early - since when do supposed pretenders to the crown of Best Rock Band in the World end a concert in daylight?
That said, Slane is usually in September so maybe U2 and RHCP did end their slane slots at the same time..