The first contingent of early bird tickets was offered on July 15, 2008, shortly after the end of the 2008 T in the Park , and was sold out within ten hours. On February 27, 2007, the New Musical Express announced that the tickets for the campsite were also sold out.
Festival organizer Geoff Ellis announced that the festival would have more than 120 artists and bands performing in front of an audience of 85,000 people. On January 31, 2009 the first acts for the 2009 festival such as Katy Perry and Bloc Party were confirmed, with Kings of Leon and Snow Patrol being headlined for Friday and Sunday. The Killers were announced to headline Saturday and Blur to headline last night's joint. This was the first time that four bands headlined the festival.
The festival
In the arena
The main stage , the Radio 1 / NME stage , the tut-ench-wah wah tent , the slam tent and the T-break stage all came back to the event. The futures stage also came back, but was renamed the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Futures stage . The Pet Sounds stage didn't come back. New at the festival was the BBC introductory stage , where relatively new and undescribed artists and bands appeared.
The Ceilidh tent was also rebuilt and hosted traditional Scottish music, as was the Bacardi B-Live tent with a cocktail bar and dance floor for electronic music. Due to its popularity from the previous year, the Healthy T Arena was retained for the festival, with numerous stalls offering nutritious and healthy foods, as opposed to the various fast food vans in the main arena.
Appearances
The Horrors , which were supposed to play Saturday morning, had to cancel at short notice because a band member suddenly fell ill.
On Sunday, several of the earlier bands had to change their time slots by about an hour to bridge the non-appearance of The Game . Ladyhawke also had to leave her set because she had flu-like symptoms and was replaced on the second appearance by the Dundonian band The Law . The festival got further into disarray in the evening with the possibility that Blur might cancel at the last minute because guitarist Graham Coxon was in the hospital, apparently with suspected food poisoning. After rumors got around that the band would not play, it was postponed again for an hour and a half. When Blur was on stage, they announced that it would be the last time they would play together. This was also the reason why Coxon left the hospital to perform.
