Promoters of the Electric Picnic are promising a downscaled music festival that provides access without sacrificing excess, writes Brian Boyd
POSH music festival! Early reports of the Electric Picnic one-day music fest to be held in Co Laois on Saturday, September 4th would have you believe that it would be like the Henley Regatta with a bit of subdued backing music. Picnic hampers with lashing of champagne and foie gras would be compulsory, and everyone would be decked out in linen suits and wearing boaters. Nobody would be allowed to sweat (or mosh), you would sit on antique furniture and be attended to by local servants while gently (very gently) nodding your head along to the mellowest of rhythms.
Well, not quite. It's just that after a summer of rolling around in the mud, walking miles and miles to get to the "adjacent" stage, queuing up for interminable hours and only being able to see the main bands on a big screen far away from the real action, the Electric Picnic offers a bit of respite to the dedicated festival-goer.
Numbers are limited to 15,000, there are three close-by stages and, because of the compact nature of the event, there is no need for big screens. The line-up studiously avoids all the acts who have already ploughed their way around the outdoor festival circuit this year. Instead, there's more wide-ranging fare, including Groove Armada, Super Furry Animals, Soulwax/2 Many DJs, Jurassic 5, Lee "Scratch" Perry and Arrested Development.
More of a "bijou" than a "boutique" festival, the Electric Picnic represents a growing area of live music activity. The standard outdoor festival is now one big, travelling circus, with the same bands playing the same events, just in different countries. The crowd size is in the tens of thousands, which puts a strain on facilities and reduces the chance of getting up close and personal with the main acts.
Bijou-style festivals keep their audience size down to a manageable level and typically programme musical acts that appeal to a wider age range of music fan. The UK's Jazz Café festivals , similar in size to the Electric Picnic, have already proved popular with people who don't fancy their entire festival experience consisting of staring at bands on a big screen while trying to keep out of the way of hordes of rabid teenagers.
Nightclub owner John Reynolds of Pod Concerts is the man behind the Electric Picnic. "Because it's a smaller scale event than the usual outdoor festival, there is a lot more attention to detail," he says. "We don't want people queuing for hours or having to spend most of the day walking from stage to stage.
"This, though, is not aiming to be a mini-Oxegen. If anything we're going for a mini-Glastonbury feel. In fact, when I showed someone from the Glastonbury festival around the site we are using, he remarked that he could fit the whole Glastonbury festival into our space. We've got 64 acres at Stradbally Hall, the surroundings are beautiful and it's all just 50 minutes away from Dublin."
The standard line about bijou festivals is that they're targeted at thirty- and fortysomethings, the post-cider, post-ecstasy generation who now want to relax to the sounds of some soft soul-jazz music. According to Reynolds, "This really isn't the case at all. People confuse smaller size crowds with an older crowd, which doesn't make sense. If you look at our line-up you could hardly say that Soulwax/2 Many DJs appeal to an 'old' crowd, or Jurassic 5 for that matter. And we've just announced the addition of Detroit Cobras, who are a young, noisy rock band."
Traditionally, Irish outdoor festivals have tortuous problems with the planning authorities before receiving their licence. But Reynolds says that the very manageability of the crowds expected at Stradbally House expedited his case. "From Laois Co Council to the Garda to the local residents, everyone seemed to have a good idea what this would be about, and that we weren't trying to stage a Slane or an Oxegen-style event." All the acts on the bill are ones that Reynolds has previously promoted. He's also staging a Comedy Tent which will feature Tommy Tiernan and live commentary on the Ireland vs Cyprus World Cup qualifier from the Après Match trio.
"This really is us getting our feet on the bottom rung of the concert promoter ladder" he says. "We have a 10-year deal for the site, so we're thinking long-term. I'd be looking at acts such as George Clinton and Prince for future festivals, and we are already planning to make next year's event a two-day one with camping facilities available.
"I really believe you can increase the size of the audience at this type of festival without sacrificing high standards. I look at festivals like the Big Chill in the UK, which have managed to have larger crowds without losing the compact nature of the event."
While not completely re-writing the rulebook of outdoor festivals, these bijou-style events are now a major growth area. Because they avoid/don't want the big festival bands, the smaller-scale affairs can become more genre-specific or be as willfully diverse as they like.
Just don't use the word "exclusive" to describe them. "Exclusive!" says Reynolds. "Let's not forget this is still a music festival in the middle of a field."
The Electric Picnic is at Stradbally House, Co Laois on September 4th from 3pm to midnight
