Festivals now a Kiwi institution
The all-day music festival has become as synonymous with Kiwi summer culture as jandals and an ice cold chilly bin.
It’s the time of year when everyone else is putting automated out-of-office messages on their emails and booking trips out of town – but for those in the music and events industry, summer means gearing up for their longest days of work.
Festival season is the biggest and busiest time of year in music, with a whole host of multi-day events competing for your dollar. They’re certainly not cheap and Kiwi punters have become accustomed to forking out close to $300 dollars for a decent festival package. No matter how much you might love music, chances are, you won’t be able to enjoy them all.
It’s a tough market – last year, several promising gigs fell over, causing consternation in a fiercely competitive industry.
Even for the most experienced operators, it can be difficult. Veteran promoter Campbell Smith delayed his big-ticket until March 2018. The gig, Auckland City Limits, came in hot, boasting Compton-born Grammy Awardwinning rapper Kendrick Lamar, as headliner for an epic and unprecedented debut.
The festival circuit and unmatched Kiwi weather brings with it some big names to this part of the world and, for some, old favourites. There was one version of UB40 closing Raggamuffin 2016 and come January, what’s left of 90’s favourites Morcheeba will wow the crowds at Splore.
Others opt to keep it small, intimate and ultimately homegrown. Summer, for many, means navigating your way around hard-to-reach parts of Northland or covering the vast majority of the sandy Coromandel, gearing up for the likes of Fat Freddy’s Drop, Shapeshifter, Kora, Conchord Dawn and Six60 – festival favourites that complete a Kiwi summer gig. For the musicians, it can be their biggest earning gigs of the year, especially bands that head out on the legendary North Island Christmas and New Year circuit of beloved old pubs like the Mangawhai and Coroglen Taverns.
Kiwis are often spoiled for choice, and despite a few hotlyanticipated gigs dropping off the radar, there are still a smorgasbord of summer sounds on offer.
Here’s a list of some of the season’s best, from the windy city’s waterfront to Auckland’s CBD.
Just BYO beer, sausages, tent and chilly bin.
St Jerome’s Laneway Festival
St Jerome’s Laneway Festival, scheduled to kick-off at Auckland’s Albert Park precinct in January, the one-day indie gig will feature a variety of homegrown and international cross-genre acts, spread across four separate stages.
The international line-up includes Aussie electronic duo Flight Facilities, Nick Murphy aka Chet Faker, London-based rockers The Veils, Norwegian singersongwriter Aurora, Canadian electronic act Bob Moses,tame Impala and Atlanta rapper, Young Thug. Organisers say the new-look festival will boast more than 70 per cent more roaming room, craft beer and boutique wine bars and a whole host of local food vendors.
January 30, Albert Park Precinct, Auckland.
Homegrown
Wellington’s favourite Kiwi music festival is going large for its 10th birthday. In keeping with tradition, Homegrown will transform the capital’s waterfront with six stages to host 48 of the country’s biggest acts and up-andcoming stars. The line-up for 2017 includes a combination fruit basket of Shihad, Six60, Fat Freddy’s Drop, The Black Seeds, Savage, Ladi6, and even a retro return from rock band, Elemeno-p.
March 4, Wellington Waterfront.
Womad
Billed as ‘‘The World’s Music festival‘‘, Womad will see musicians from around the world – this year including legendary British ska act The Specials – flock to the fringes of New Plymouth. The eclectic festival offers camping and a relaxed, familyfriendly vibe, including workshops, face painting and a chance to try your hand at crafts from around the globe.
March 17-19, Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth.
Bay Dreams
The one-day music gig, scheduled to kick-off at Tauranga’s ASB Baypark Stadium on January 2, boasts an impressive international and local line-up, featuring the likes of Sticky Fingers, Grandmaster Flash, Bizzy Bone and Aussie electronica act Peking Duk, alongside Kiwi festival favourites Katchafire, Shapeshifter, Kora and Concord Dawn.
The festival, now in its second year, has already amassed an impressive following. The gig will be spread across four stages; the main stage, bass stage, a 360-degree indoor stage and an indoor arena.
January 2, ASB Baypark Stadium, Tauranga. Why you should take time to enjoy The Breakaways.
What were we like, as a nation, during the early 60s? Beats me. I was too busy breast feeding, learning to walk, studying my ABCS at primary school to notice. But I have it on good authority that at least some of us were pretty damn wild back then, just like Taranaki band, The Breakaways.
Dave Orams on bass, Midge Marsden and Bari Gordon blasting away on guitars, singing drummer Bryan Beauchamp. They burst out of the ‘Naki, headed to Wellington and proceeded to bash out six singles and two LPS for HMV, with a few line-up changes along the way.
Scandalous mop-top hair, unreasonable mod threads, a deep affection for The Kinks, Bo Diddley, The Yardbirds, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker: they specialised in the kind of grubby, amped-up NZ pop I was a little too young to hear the first time around.
In Wellington and Lower Hutt, The Breakaways packed out nightclubs with excellent names like Teenarama and The Hideaway. There were screaming girls in Foxton, Otaki, Shannon, Hawera and Palmy.
The band relocated to Nelson for a residency at the Top Twenty Coffee Lounge, playing Wednesday evenings, 6pm to midnight. After being booted out of their rental accommodation for their long hair and Union Jack bell-bottoms, they ended up sleeping there, too, until the police moved them on.
Pivotal moment? Early on, The Breakaways were heading home to New Plymouth for a break when they had their collective minds’ blown by a chance encounter with greatness, catching a show by visiting British R’N’B miscreants The Pretty Things as they passed through my hometown of Whanganui.
The passage of fifty-odd years has done little to diminish the power and punch in the 17 tunes compiled on brand new Breakaways LP All For One, released on aptly-named German label Break-a-way Records, who heard these songs and leapt at the chance to get them back out and into the ears of the world.
Listening to raw garage R’N’B like this, you’re propelled back to another time, another place, another New Zealand entirely. I was there, but I missed it. – Grant Smithies