Summer of music to love
From boutique events to stadium spectacles, a massive summer of music is coming. Chris Schulz has a few ideas on how you should spend your money.
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
Harris, Juice WRLD and Lil Pump on a Thursday night in November at Western Springs? That one’s $129.90. Next month’s Listen In, with Flume, Diplo and Schoolboy Q, is another $125.
Fomo Festival, top of my list, thanks to securing this year’s breakout star Lizzo and hip-hop boy band Brockhampton, is in West Auckland in January, and will set me back $115. I think that’s money well spent, considering I can just about stagger home on foot afterwards.
If you want to see in the New Year at a three-day event, Mangawhai’s Northern Bass will cost you $289, while Rhythm & Vines is $325. Camping will cost you more, and we haven’t yet mentioned food or drinks.
Those are the big events, the ones that will attract the kids. But if you’re after something a little more chill,
Splore, south of
Auckland, lets you dip your toes in the ocean while watching the main stage.
In New Plymouth, you can pitch your tent, sip on a pale ale and perch yourself under a tree at Womad. Laneway is yet to announce its lineup, but Albert Park is a sweet way to see the future unfold.
Take a deep breath, because there’s so much more. If you like old school rap and reggae, Friday Jams has Janet Jackson and the Black Eyed Peas, and Tauranga’s One Love has Sean Paul and Shaggy.
There are stadium shows scheduled by Elton John, Queen + Adam Lambert, Metallica and Slipknot – and Six60. The 1975, The Pixies, Khalid, Kiss, Liam Gallagher and – yuck – Pentatonix are
all on their way, too. All of those options, yet you might still be shivering under your duvet, bingeing on Netflix and thinking that summer is ages away and you don’t have to plan anything just yet.
You’re wrong.
Tickets to many of these events are selling fast. Mt Maunganui’s Bay Dreams sold out in six days, and its sister site in Nelson has just about done the same. Some Elton John and Metallica shows are already booked up. Rhythm & Vines is likely to sell out soon. I hear many more are heading towards sellouts.
Perhaps Soundsplash, the three-day event held in Raglan in January, is the best example of how things are going. It’s been running for 16 years, and next year, the festival adds another leg in Timaru, with a lineup that includes Home Brew, Mitch James and Winston Surfshirt.
On Tuesday night, pre-sale tickets sold out in a minute. A single minute. This summer is on fire. Consider yourself warned.