'We ran out of beer ... the power cut out.'
The three friends behind Flamingo Pier say a few small mishaps is what makes their DIY music festival so special.
Hi.
Right about now, Luke Walker, Dom Jones and Brad Craig are pulling open the doors on a container that’s been locked up for the past year.
In a lush Tāmaki Makaurau spot called Ahipao, the three friends will pull everything from that container and spread it out on the grass. In front of them will be tables, lights, extension cords, tents, decorations – and an old boat they found on the side of the road in Onetangi.
Almost everything the trio needs to decorate their little-music-festival-that-could is in that container. So, for the week leading up to Flamingo Pier – the name of their music festival, which happens this Saturday, and also the name of their band, which will perform as part of the line-up – they’ll build the Waiheke Island site themselves.
“You want to be there, you want to have your hands on it,” says Dom Jones, the group’s singer. “It gives it a more intimate feel. It would be weird to be like, ‘Someone else do this’.”
They’ve been doing this for more than a decade, ever since the trio met in the London suburb of Hackney Wick and realised they shared a love of laidback house music. “We hit it off real quick,” says Craig, the band’s bassist. He was touring Europe with his own group when he met Walker and Jones, so asked the pair if he could stay with them.
Craig soon realised he’d found not just a weird flat in a converted peanut factory – but also his new best friends. Within weeks, they were making music together. “I think it was a month after I moved in we were doing this thing called, ‘Flamingo Pier’,” he remembers.
At first, Flamingo Pier was a series of dance parties held in neighbourhood bars and loft spaces. But the trio made their own music – chill, tropical dance music, similar to the laidback group Leisure – to play at these parties too, so it made sense to call their own band the same name.
When their OEs ended in 2015 they decided to move it all back to Aotearoa. In an olive grove owned by the parents of a friend, they found the perfect festival site at Rangihoua Estate on Waiheke Island, and Flamingo Pier was born.
It had a DIY spirit right from the start. Favours were called in from friends and family. “It was just us,” says Jones. “We’d plug something into the same socket as the fridge then run it out through the bathroom window across through the forest,” says Jones. “Maybe people would stand on it, maybe it could get pulled out.”
They soon found that all-in spirit translated into an enjoyable day of music in the sun. “It was always a pretty humble, wholesome DIY thing,” says Walker, who believes their intentions were picked up by all those who attended. “It’s a bunch of friends putting on a party, essentially … it was very much, ‘Let’s just do this together.’”
They’ve continued to do it together. Over the years, Flamingo Pier has grown to become a multi-stage, multi-day event, a proper festival with bars and food trucks catering to thousands of people up for an “all-day, all-night dance party”. Because of renovations at Rangihoua Estate, it’s now held at Ahipao, and will be back to an all-day event for this weekend’s 10th anniversary.
But it’s kept its DIY attitude along the way, but that’s meant there have been brushes with near-disaster. “I remember in the second or third year, we ran out of beer,” says Craig. “I had to get in a van and drive to every liquor store on Waiheke Island and buy VB or whatever they had and restock the fridges.”
Minor mishaps are, says Chris Cox – aka the DJ Frank Booker who we met at the end of last year – part of the Flamingo Pier package. He was first booked to play in 2016, a night he remembers well because the generator cut out during his set. He thinks back on that moment fondly. “People were having such a good time they hung out and waited. When [the generator] came back on, they partied,” says Cox.
He loves it so much he ranks Flamingo Pier among his favourite places to play. “It’s beautiful,” he says. “It’s a magical, mystical Narnia.”
Tomorrow, Laneway kicks off with verified superstar Charli XCX as the headliner. In the coming weeks, huge summer festivals are being held around the country, with Electric Avenue, Homegrown and Womad putting on multi-stage entertainment spectacles with dozens of big-name artists for tens of thousands of fans.
This Saturday, though, a festival of a different kind gets underway. Flamingo Pier’s 10th anniversary will have just a few thousand in the crowd, and they’ll enjoy a dance-friendly line-up of chill vibes and happy times featuring Cox, Nathan Haines and two different sets from Flamingo Pier themselves.
To make it this far is special, the trio say. “This is about old friends and new,” says Jones. “Everyone that’s there, there’s a reason that’s there. They’re part of the family, they’re part of the story so far.” So, this week, the three friends will add a few extra decorations to the collection. Extra lighting has been ordered. And after a big day setting up the site in the sun, there’ll be a shared barbecue for everyone who has helped out.
This, they say, is part of the Flamingo Pier package: three friends, in the sun, hanging out, just like their days flatting together in the UK. “The festival goes by in a blur,” admits Jones. “The days leading up to it are almost more fun than the actual day.”
Flamingo Pier gets underway this Saturday; tickets are available here.
Trump, tariffs, tech titans, transphobia … if you visit a mainstream news site these days, you’ll find there’s nothing but terrible times to be had. Over a career spanning 20 years, I used to provide balance for those news sites. Now I do it with this lil’ newsletter. If you need escapism from the world’s day-to-day drama, you might find your community of like-minded people growing right here. So please consider signing up to become a member. The more that do, the more I can do…
Everything you need to know.
Doechii was already a star before she won the Grammy for best rap album. Her mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal proved it. Her Camp Flog Gnaw performance proved it. Her Late Show guest spot proved it. Her Tiny Desk show proved it. Every time she’s stepped up to a microphone in the past year, she’s proved it. So she didn’t disappoint at the Grammys with a performance that left jaws on the floor. If you haven’t seen it already, here it is, here’s her celebratory single ‘Nosebleeds,’ here’s Stereogum ranking it the best performance of the night, and here’s Pitchfork saying it was the night she became “a superstar”.
As for the Grammys, it was … kind of good? The Weeknd ended his lengthy boycott, Kendrick Lamar won almost everything and showed exactly why Drake is staying down under for an extra two weeks, and Charli XCX warmed up for tomorrow’s Laneway by going full brat. Pitchfork called it a “blockbuster,” Rolling Stone said it was a “refreshing surprise,” The Guardian said it finally recognised that pop music had become “messier, more heartfelt and personal,” and Stereogum described it like this: “In a world that’s gone to shit, somehow the Grammys were good.”
As for Laneway, if you have a Sydney Morning Herald subscription there’s a ridiculously good long-read about the festival up right now ($$). It traces the event all the way back to its beginnings in a Melbourne bar up, examining how it’s managed to survive when almost every other Australian music festival has fallen over. “I’ve knocked back huge headliners many times,” co-founder Danny Rogers says. “These are acts that every other festival has booked, and I’ve said no, even when I knew they were worth a lot of tickets.” If you’re heading along tomorrow, the forecast is great and the map and timetable are here (what’s up with McDonalds?).
Speaking of Australian music festivals, Splendour in the Grass is taking a second year off. “Splendour needs a little more time to recharge and we won’t be back in 2025,” organisers wrote on their website. “Think of it as a breather so we can come back even bigger and better when the time is right.” And Groovin the Moo is doing exactly the same thing.
News in brief: Beyoncé is touring – but she’s still not coming here. If you’re heading to a Bryan Adams show, maybe don’t dance. Shihad’s tour merch caught on fire in Melbourne. Juicy Fest ticketholders are still waiting for their refunds. A Tauranga drummer might end up in Primus. And Central Cee tickets go on sale today (a certain 14-year-old in my house has been asking for some).
Finally, if you’re looking for a group to soundtrack end times, Punchlove have you covered. ‘(sublimate)’ is their sublime new song that shapeshifts into a nightmare gut howl. Or, as the band’s Jillian Olesen describes it: “It felt a bit like suddenly noticing a portal in a room you’ve spent your whole life in that for better or worse you now cannot un-see.” Heavy stuff, but this kind of chaotic energy is helping me get through this week…
Bonus beat.
You say do t dance at Brian Adam’s. Security must be getting bonus ‘s cis they nearly booted out a doting mother n son act dancing up a storm at Thom Yorke too Arghhh sad.
Having watched the FP journey since that start in Hackney Wick (I was part of the touring band with Brad in the UK where it started) there isn't a more understated, hard working & nice crew of people in music. Their work in developing a scene (alongside Booker & others) in Auckland with their club nights, live series and this festival is a masterclass in building community through music that doesn't have to rely on cult of personality or 'the music industry'. Congrats to them!