Get Fresh

Oxford is by its own nature a student city and has been for centuries.

The majority of the population, or at least the majority of the city’s clubbers, come in when they start their degrees, take three years figuring out where the best places to go out are, and then spend their student loans drinking, dancing and hopelessly flirting in these venues.

This also means that the student demographic is constantly evolving, regenerating itself as each year a large amount of a club’s target audience disappears and it then needs to find fresh new ways to market itself to an entirely new group of revellers.

These people are known as ‘freshers’, and this is the time of year when they come out to play in that curious but puzzled and very slightly lost manner.

Freshers week can be a time of jubilation for some of our male citizens, but for the clubs of this city it’s an all-out promotional assault to gain the custom and allegiance of the student bases’ newest recruits.

Get them early, you get them for good, or at least that’s the idea, and one the O2 Academy is only too keen to pursue.

This is the reason behind the Academy rebranding the excellent Transformation, while at the same time undertaking a transformation of its own... into Propaganda.

Propaganda is a branded night, tried and tested at 15 other O2 venues all over the country and has now finally made its way to Oxford.

An all-star line-up designed to entice the new customers down to the O2 features Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman kicking things off with a crowd pleasing set that goes down a storm.

Next up was a live set from Johnny Borrell, the singer from Razorlight. And here’s what I don’t understand about his set — it’s the singer from Razorlight singing Razorlight songs, but with a backing band who aren’t Razorlight, so basically he seems to have formed a tribute act to his own band. Curious.

In any case Borrell lights up the venue, and while I was never a big Razorlight follower, the set is solid, tight and the crowd absolutely loved it.

Propaganda veteran Tom Rackham rounds out the rest of the night in a manner I can only describe as befitting of the old Transformation guys, whom I would imagine will be gracing the stage more often than not in the coming weeks.

The other rooms still host the excellent Trashy and the awesome Room 101 but I think I was wrong in my original assumption that this would be a simple rebranding of a decent night.

Propaganda is a more amped-up, energetic night that promises to make more of a show than Transformation ever did.

The Academy have done an excellent job of cementing all these brand new ‘freshers’ as fans by providing an upgrade on the original, and personally I can’t wait to see what they’ve got coming up in the coming weeks.