Finally, a Kiwi music festival nails its line-up

The bad news? It's not in Auckland ...

Do you, like me, love a good summer music festival? Then you might want to find something else to do, because the next six months is looking hella bleak for live music lovers.

Laneway, an alt and indie festival that’s been held for more than 10 years in Auckland, has been postponed an entire year. Fomo and Friday Jams, which seemed on their way to becoming annual events, haven’t announced if and when they might return.

Bay Dreams, our biggest and best festival that is the closest in spirit to the dearly departed Big Day Out, is going ahead with almost no overseas acts.

In short, it’s been sad!

I tried to get a refund recently on tickets to Bon Iver’s now postponed show that I can’t attend and found myself dealing with lawyers sorting out Ticket Rocket’s receivership.

Clearly, Covid is starting to really bite hard on the entertainment industry.

That sucks. But, amidst all this, some festivals are forging ahead. Rhythm & Vines and Rhythm & Alps announced their all-Kiwi line-ups early. Bay Dreams is going ahead headlined by a trio of Aussie acts, Flume, Peking Duk and Pendulum Trinity. I have no idea how much it’s costing to put all those artists and their entourages through 14 days of isolation, but it must be eye-watering.

It can’t be easy running a music festival in the current climate. To make matters worse, promoters must be bricking it: if New Zealand goes back into any form of lockdown, these events won’t be able to go ahead. It sounds like they can’t get Covid insurance either. That’s scary.

So any festival attempting to go ahead right now, in a world where almost no festivals are being held, is incredibly brave. Some of them haven’t got it right, and there’s been plenty of criticism over the lack of diversity on line-ups. I covered this a while back, and offered a few solutions.

With the mighty JessB, Northern Bass seemed about the best of the bunch, and is my pick to see in the New Year.

But there’s one festival that has, quietly and confidently, nailed it. I knew nothing about Electric Avenue until my hairdresser was chopping my lockdown locks off and mentioned she’d purchased flights and tickets to it on a whim.

She’s onto something, because the Christchurch festival, at Hagley Park on February 27, is a bit of a stunner. It’s stacked. Really stacked.

Benee is at the top of the bill, like she is for almost every other summer festival, but there’s so much more. If you like your rootsy Kiwi bands, Kora, Fat Freddy’s Drop, LAB and Salmonella Dub are on there. Scribe and Shapeshifter are going to be mighty in front of a hometown crowd.

But that’s not even the start of it. Electric Avenue’s managed to swing a couple of overseas acts for themselves: former Aussie busker Tash Sultana and Northern Beaches psych-rockers Ocean Alley. And the line-up goes deep: JessB’s on there, so’s Ladi 6. Troy Kingi’s there, along with Wax Mustang.

In 2020, after a pandemic shut down the worldwide touring industry, this is as good as it gets. And it’s pretty damned good! In fact, I might go and buy my tickets right now …