I'd say a lot of the crowd in Vicar Street would have been dressed, shall we say, less glamorously in 1986 when the Bangles supported Queen at Slane Castle. Ah yes, the Irish festival season was becoming established and along with it came the Irish festival weather.

At Slane that year, the drill was 15-minute bouts of torrential rain every 20 minutes, to the extent that the hacks being fed and watered in the castle (happy days indeed!) knew when to take cover.

Things were bad enough for The Fountainhead (who had Jim Corr in their ranks that day) and Chris Rea, but during the Bangles' set people were involuntarily sliding down the hill, such was the muck and rain.

Still, fair play to the thoughtful journo whose pair of binoculars were shared out when Susannah Hoffs and co were performing.

At Dalymount Park in 1977, despite the presence of the Boomtown Rats, The Radiators, and Graham Parker and the Rumour, all the talk was of who the reputed 'mystery guest' would be. The hot money was split between an appearance by the Sex Pistols and Van Morrison leading a reformed Them.

As it transpired, when Thin Lizzy took the stage, the first thing Phil Lynott said was: "Does anyone know who the 'special guest' is? Because I sure as f*** don't!"

Hopefully this weekend's Oxegen festival in Punchestown will pass off without too much incident but parents certainly can't accuse today's generation of inventing the notion of festival trouble.

During the 1970s, there were fence-stormings at Lisdoonvarna, hassle when The Police, U2 and Squeeze played at Leixlip Castle in 1980, riots in Slane in 1984 the night before a concert by Bob Dylan (of all bloody people!) and then there were the Larks in the Park.

Being on the Northside, there was always something of an edge to those St Anne's Park gigs, but they were only in the ha'penny place compared to the carry-on in Blackrock Park. There was usually the same amount of rampant cider-swigging and random violence at the Southside venue, but in Blackrock bands were playing below audience level on a stage on an island in the middle of a big pond. Bad idea.

I once saw Jon Kenny pushed into the water, guitar and all, as he sang Please Help Me I'm Falling, while bands which didn't meet with the approval were pelted with bottles of pee. No, we didn't have playstations back in the day, but we certainly made our own fun.

- George Byrne