A diverse range of the biggest names in music, including DJ legend Fatboy Slim, indie icon Brett Anderson (formerly of Suede), Mercury Prize nominee Ghostpoet and former Busted star Charlie Simpson will perform their most unusual shows to date – inside an Oxfam shop – to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Oxjam music festival.
A London Oxfam shop will stage a series of exclusive, intimate performances among the books and clothing on the shop floor itself to launch the fifth edition of the charity’s month-long Oxjam music festival.
“The reason I’ve been involved with Oxjam in previous years is that, as well as being one of the highlights of my DJing calendar, I see it as the best way for people to use their love of music to help a really worthwhile charity like Oxfam,” said Fatboy Slim. “I’m delighted to be joining in the fifth birthday celebrations this year, and I hope that budding DJs all around the country will also be using their decks and records to help fight poverty in October.”
The confirmed lineup so far, with more to be added, is:
*Monday 26 Sept: Fatboy Slim, Kissy Sell Out, Man Like Me
*Tuesday 27 Sept: Brett Anderson (Suede), Patrick Wolf, Ghostpoet
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Wednesday 28 Sept: Charlie Simpson plus more TBA
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Thursday 29 Sept: DRC Music album launch feat. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Richard Russell (XL Records), Kwes (Warp Records) and more. The Thursday night show will help celebrate the release of Kinshasa One Two, an album by DRC Music, which was recently recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo to raise money for Oxfam.
The Oxfam shop in London, whose location will be revealed the week before the shows, will become an Oxjam shop for the week, selling the best second-hand music in the city during the day. During the evening, it will be converted into a gig venue, playing host to these intimate performances in front of a just a handful of fans lucky enough to get their hands on a ticket.
Tickets to the shows cost just £25 per night for Monday to Wednesday and £20 for Thursday’s show, and will go on sale from 5th September exclusively from www.wegottickets.com/oxjam. Tickets for these exclusive one-off performances will raise money for Oxfam’s lifesaving work around the world.
"In the early nineties, Suede bought most of their clothes in Oxfam shops," said Brett Anderson. "It was always somewhere you could find cheap, interesting old things that no-one else had and for a few years it pretty much defined our style, so I feel a massive sense of homecoming with the Oxjam gig.
“The Oxfam shop is a great British institution that no high street should be without, and the Oxjam gigs are an extension of this blend of philanthropy and off-beat style.
“Even better, the shop gigs are only the beginning of Oxjam, a whole month of music raising money to help Oxfam keep saving lives and making a difference all over the world.”
The charity shop gigs officially launch the Oxjam month of music, which runs through the whole of October. During October, more than 800 venues, 11,000 volunteers, 9,000 bands and musicians and more than 200,000 audience members will enable Oxjam to raise at least £350,000 to help Oxfam fight poverty. Oxjam is a festival with a difference: hundreds of fundraising music events are put on by ordinary people – from large-scale festivals to local sponsored busks – making it the biggest line-up of any music festival in the UK.
The highlight of the month-long festival will be the Oxjam Takeover, a series of city-wide mini-festivals taking place in 33 locations across the UK, from Aberdeen to Bournemouth, on the weekend of 22 and 23 October. During a single weekend, around 3,000 musicians will perform to an audience of more than 35,000, all raising money to help Oxfam fight poverty worldwide.
Previous artists who have performed the Oxfam shop gigs in the last couple of years include Jarvis Cocker, Diana Vickers, Johnny Borrell, The Charlatans, Editors, The Kooks, Hot Chip, Jamelia, VV Brown and Basement Jaxx.
Since 2006, more than 40,000 musicians have played to an audience of more than 800,000 people at over 3,000 Oxjam events, raising in excess of £1.5 million to fight poverty around the world. Oxjam 2011 is expected to take the total past £1.8 million, enough to buy safe water for 2 million people, 900,000 bags of seeds or 72,000 goats. To find out what Oxjam events are going on in your area this October, visit www.oxfam.org.uk/oxjam or call 0300 200 1255.
