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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. It was very easy for us to want to do this. 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’s important not to stagnate so it’s time we did something new. And here it is.
You mentioned that Fuzzy is a small business. 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. But we’ve taken risks before. 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. We nearly went out of business doing it because the first Parklife lost a lot of money. By our standards, at the time, we were only barely able to recover from that. But we still think it’s the best thing we ever did. You have to take risks and this is a calculated risk and I hope it pays off.
I guess the real question I’m asking is whether Parklife became something which wasn’t financially viable anymore. I assume the move to shelve Parklife was as much a business driven decision as it was a cultural one. I guess you look around at what’s available and I think Listen Out is more unique than what Parklife was. Parklife was very unique when we first started it. In fact it was exactly what we’re saying with Listen Out. It was small, it was house music, and I guess we’re itching to get back to our roots in a way. 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. There was a dance meets indie crossover that we went with. And of course everyone else did afterwards. 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. 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. Longevity in this business has a lot to do with constantly changing what you do. I think that’s essential. You can’t stand still.
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. 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. Justice were blowing up at the time but when we booked them the album hadn’t come out. We booked them on the basis of hearing “Waters of Nazareth” basically and thinking “OK there’s no turning back now this is where dance music is going”.
I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard Waters of Nazareth. Where were you?
I was in a car in Brisbane. A mate played it for me and I probably had the exact same reaction that you did. Yeah I actually remember where I was as well. It’s one of those songs. I was at Spank Records and Mark Murphy said “you are going to love this so much” and I was just like “holy shit”. I think there’s a similar thing going on with house music at the moment. Not as galvanising I think as electro was at the time but I think we’ve got some acts that are pretty high profile in a similar way and a bunch of others who aren’t quite as well known. But to people who are into the music they’ll be very familiar. You won’t be in danger of hearing Will.I.Am.
Will Parklife return? Who knows? It’s not on this year. Clearly it would be a pretty big thing for us to bring it back again but I guess one thing I’m happy with is that we didn’t let it ruin itself or go down the drain. You know how some festivals clearly can’t come back because they did really badly or spectacularly went down in flames by cancelling, or threw out two-for-one tickets the week of the event, I think Parklife has been good from start to now. We can’t say that we’ll never bring it back – we don’t have plans to – but it’s one of those things. We focus on what we should be doing right now. And if in a year, or two, or five it feels right we might do that. But for now, no plans.
Does it feel counterintuitive to have expanded that property nationally over a decade only to pare back now? Yes and no. Obviously it does. It’s kind of weird. But I’ve always been excited by the cycle of most kinds of popular culture but particularly music. Particularly dance music. Something starts and it’s small and underground til eventually it becomes commercial then people reject it and another revolution comes along. I think that boom and bust cycle in popular culture is great. We wouldn’t have had that electro Justice thing if people hadn’t gotten sick of the kind of house music that was around at the time. So in a way it’s not counterintuitive because you build it up and you tear it down and you start again.
Just on Listen Out’s point of difference. OutsideIn festival criticised you guys for having similarities in branding, dates and ethos and felt like you guys ripped them off in a way, whether that was intentional or not. How has it been for you having to defend the intentions of the festival at the launch stage? Look, once the lineup gets announced tomorrow it will be very clear that it’s not remotely similar. To be really honest, I think they planned to announce today and they felt like this put a spanner in the works. We had no idea they were planning to announce and weren’t in any way conscious that they thought it would be similar. I don’t think they will once it comes into existence. Effectively what we’re doing is a party with house music. Clearly not a new idea. The first party we did in 1996 was all about quality house music. We’re just doing what we’ve always been doing and if we’re copying anyone’s idea it was one which was conceived 30 or 40 years ago.
Can you see their gripe though? There is a similarity in the branding and the ethos and surely that would have factored into your research of what was happening in the market. I think they’re overstating it. I think any similarity is so vague. There’s instances where someone’s clearly copying and we’ve had that happen to us. We were doing Parklife for like eight years then someone in the UK started up something called Parklife with a really similar logo. Ditto Field Day in London. We’ve been doing Field Day for several years. They didn’t copy the logo but had an identical name for a relatively similar event. That’s the kind of thing that I think is copying. Saying you’re doing something with quality dance music is just not a new or unique concept that anyone owns. If it turned out that someone had planned to announce an event at the same time as ours it is a bummer if you feel like your announcement is being complicated. But ours is a national event for 5000 plus people and Outside In is a Sydney event with more like 1000 people, I can’t imagine that these two events are really going to affect each other much.
Thanks for your time John. Thanks
LISTEN OUT 2013 DATES AND VENUES:
SYDNEY | Saturday 28th September @ Centennial Park, 2pm-10pm
PERTH | Sunday 29th September @ Ozone Reserve, 2pm-10pm
MELBOURNE | Saturday 5th October @ Observatory Precinct, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, 2pm-10pm
BRISBANE | Sunday 6th October @ Cultural Forecourt, Southbank, 2pm-10pm
