and Goose, are you aiming to capture the dance music zeitgeist in a similar way? In a nutshell we’re trying to do the same thing. You mentioned the birth of the electro dance scene in Australia and I remember one year Parklife booked Justice, Busy P, Digitalism, M.I.A. Longevity in this business has a lot to do with constantly changing what you do. Something like Stereosonic for example is very huge and very commercial, we’re trying to fill the gap with artists who maybe aren’t so commercial. Now when we look around at festivals there’s a huge number of festivals still doing that and we think we need to do the thing that no one else is doing. And of course everyone else did afterwards. There was a dance meets indie crossover that we went with. Another thing is that Parklife evolved with the coming of electro which we embraced earlier than most promoters with artists like Justice, The Rapture and Felix da Housecat. It was small, it was house music, and I guess we’re itching to get back to our roots in a way. ![]() In fact it was exactly what we’re saying with Listen Out. Parklife was very unique when we first started it. I guess you look around at what’s available and I think Listen Out is more unique than what Parklife was. I assume the move to shelve Parklife was as much a business driven decision as it was a cultural one. I guess the real question I’m asking is whether Parklife became something which wasn’t financially viable anymore. You have to take risks and this is a calculated risk and I hope it pays off. But we still think it’s the best thing we ever did. By our standards, at the time, we were only barely able to recover from that. We nearly went out of business doing it because the first Parklife lost a lot of money. When we first did Parklife we were doing a really solid club night that was paying the bills and supporting us and because the venue wanted us to be exclusive to them we had to ditch that to do Parklife and Field Day. So framing it in the context of a business what was the cost benefit analysis of doing a smaller party as opposed to a national festival which I assume has the potential to be much more lucrative? It’s a pretty big risk. You mentioned that Fuzzy is a small business. It’s important not to stagnate so it’s time we did something new. ![]() In terms of not doing Parklife, we’re a very small business and we felt we would be spreading ourselves too thin to do both at the same time as well as the other events that we do so we said “what’s really important to us?” and what’s important to us is doing things we love and doing new things. It was very easy for us to want to do this. I always think that when things get very commercial in the market place you have to react to that and do something that’s less commercial. So it was very easy to say we wanted to do this thing which is a party more than a festival that concentrates on the rich amount of good house music that’s around and other similar styles. The way we’ve always run Fuzzy is to look around and find things we’re interested in, that we think are missing or underrepresented. ![]() ![]() Easy in the sense that we looked around and thought what we were doing with Listen Out was something we really wanted to do but also something that was missing. With Parklife being your flagship national offering and something a lot of your core audience would have a personal relationship with, what was the decision making process behind shelving it this year and how hard was it to actually make that decision? Kind of hard and easy at the same time. Pedestrian caught up with Fuzzy co-founder John Wall to discuss the rip-off claims leveled at newly launched music event Listen Out, the doubtful return of Parklife, and where he was when he first heard of Waters Of Nazareth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |