So Parklife’s stellar 2010 Lineup was unveiled this morning and if you’re a fan of dance music there’s plenty to get excited about. Soulwax, as always, will melt faces, Missy Elliot will work it (ha!) and newer acts like Delorean and Memory Tapes will get to play in front of an Australian audience for the first time ever. To shed some light on the festival’s increasingly eclectic lineup we caught up with Fuzzy co-founder Ming Gan and discussed the logistical changes to this year’s festival, why Busy P keeps coming back and scouting bands at SXSW.
Who are you most excited about seeing come Parklife 2010? I can’t actually play favourites (laughs)…
Is there a sentimental one perhaps? Look, different acts excite me for different reasons. There are upcoming acts there that we picked late last year that have suddenly blown up. And then there are acts who have ten or more years of rich musical history like Groove Armada, Dandy Warhols and Missy Elliot who, by the way, has 28-35 people touring with her.
Wow, a real entourage. Looking at the lineup there’s also a few returning favourites. What do you think keeps acts coming back to Parklife? Well, this will the third year in a row that Busy P has played Parklife and he thinks that it’s the best festival he’s ever played in Australia. And for us he’s very important, just from his background as Daft Punk’s manager and Justice’s manager and running one of the coolest record labels around – he’s always looking towards the future and he’s probably like our Parklife mascot to be honest. Other people like Soulwax tell people this is one of their favourite festivals to play and they were actually begging for us to include them on the lineup.
It’s hard to imagine Soulwax begging for anything. What does a guy like Busy P, aside from the DJ sets, bring to the festival, which, has been described by the acts we interviewed last year as a sort of “touring camp for adults”? (Laughs) Pedro is like the camp leader. He’s like the group leader. When you go on tour you always need a group leader who a certain group of other artists follow and because he’s been on the Parklife tour before he knows how it all works and where everything is. He’ll have his posse – last year it was Aeroplane and Erol and Tiga – and he’ll look after them. He doesn’t just host the festival he hosts the acts!
There’s also a stack of bands who have never played in Australia at all. I’m looking at Memory Tapes in particular who only worked out how to translate his stuff live recently – how did you nab him? With Memory Tapes we just loved the music and interestingly we booked him before we actually saw the live show. But then John (Wall, Fuzzy co-founder) went to SXSW and saw him and I got text messages and phone calls during the gig saying “this is the most amazing show, it’s spine-tingling!”. So yeah, we took a bit of a punt on how the live show would be but as soon as John saw him play we knew it was going to be amazing.
Let’s talk about the local contingent as well. A big coup for you guys is Cut Copy who haven’t played in a couple of years – what can we expect from them? It has been a couple of years and from what we understand from their record label they’ve pretty much finished their new album or they have finished their album I’m not exactly sure. But we’re going to get a new show to start off with and we’re expecting to hear the debut of some new music in Australia which we’re very, very excited about.
And finally just for Parklife in general are there any logistical changes that the readers should know about in 2010? Well the only change has been that we’re moving Parklife from Brisbane to the Gold Coast and that has to do with capacity. It’s one of the fastest growing cities and it was the first one to sell out. Unfortunately there were some logistical issues with the Brisbane site with regard to capacity on certain stages but the Gold Coast site doesn’t have that problem so we’re moving South. But otherwise expect a bigger, better Parklife.
Ming, thank you for your time and I can’t wait to see Missy Elliot’s entourage. (Laughs) Neither can I. Thanks.
