Music fans spoilt for choice
The lights were dim, the beers were free, the crowd was young and, at the end of the night, someone went home with a sweet meat pack won through a charity raffle. Inside an Eden Park conference facility a few weeks ago, spirits were high. Bands performed while roaming the crowd, sipping beer off the bar and spitting lyrics into punters’ faces. People angled their chins, smiling for photos that would end up spamming social media sites.
As the clock struck 7.30pm, the crowd made its way onto a deck overlooking the otherwise empty stadium to watch the lineup unveiling for this year’s Rhythm & Vines festival.
Scrolling across Eden Park’s biggest screen, the names were mostly dance-friendly, the biggest being UK duo Disclosure.
When festivals announce their lineups, they usually chuck the poster up on Instagram, and hope a few news outlets and radio stations pick up on it.
This was different. This was big. It might be the biggest music festival lineup announcement New Zealand’s booming scene has seen.
Hamish Pinkham, the festival’s co-founder, didn’t just throw a party. He put on a mini-festival all of its own.
His festival can afford to. Rhythm & Vines has been running for 17 years and, despite a few wobbles, it’s now on solid ground. Before the Eden Park event, he’d pre-sold most of the tickets to this year’s event, which is held at Gisborne’s Waiohika Estate at the end of every year. At the time of going to press, just 1000 three-day passes were left.
When I asked someone connected to the festival why all the fuss, he replied, ‘‘Why not?’’
But, as names of the festival’s headliners floated across the screen, something interesting happened. At almost exactly the same time, rival festival Bay Dreams – New Zealand’s biggest, held in two cities for 55,000 people just a few days after Rhythm & Vines – took to social media with surprise news of its own.
Bay Dreams was adding two new artists – young Maryland rapper YBN Cordae and streetwise singer Blackbear – to a lineup that had already shocked by securing Tyler, the Creator, a rapper
who’d twice been banned from performing in New Zealand.
It didn’t need to announce more acts. Bay Dreams already had pop stars Halsey and Ella Mai, plus grime star Skepta and rapper Yelawolf, on its bill.
The timing seemed like a flex, one designed to knock the wind out of Rhythm & Vines’ sails.
At Eden Park, the bands kept playing and the beers kept flowing. The Rhythm & Vines party continued well into the night with sets by rowdy young rockers Daffodils and chill maestros Leisure, who will perform at this year’s event.
About 9pm, when a friend returned from the bathroom, he reported ‘‘aggressive snorting’’ coming from a locked cubicle containing several people.
This was an event that said a lot about where New Zealand’s music festival scene is at.
‘‘It’s insane,’’ a music promoter told me recently, and he’s right. There are more dedicated events, more boutique festivals, more stadium spectacles and more big-name artists to choose from than ever before.
If you’re into sun, sweat, music and moshpits, you’ll need to open an Excel spreadsheet to chart all your options and work out where your money should go between now and the end of summer.
Because these are not cheap events. Want to go to something new, like Spring City, which is bringing Two Door Cinema Club and Flight Facilities to Auckland in November? That’ll be $105, thanks.
How about Festival X Rising, which has Calvin