Weekend Rewind: Remember these NZ music festivals?

Singer Dave Dobbyn singing to a crowd of around 8000 people in 1999. Photo / NZ Herald Archive

Opinion

With Laneway happening on Monday, and Splore on the horizon, NZ On Screen’s Nicky Harrop revisits some local music festivals gone by.

Today, New Zealand's music festival market offers something for everyone. From the all-Kiwi lineup of Wellington's Homegrown, the world music celebration of WOMAD, and the indie-cool of Laneway, every genre and audience is catered for. But it hasn't always been the case. The rise of our festival scene has seen many events – some great, some not so great – come and go.

In the summer of 1970, nearly six months after Woodstock, an event that had been hyped as New Zealand's own version – the Redwood 70 National Music Convention – took place at a park in Swanson. As it transpired, Redwood would be a rather more sedate affair, with 1500 music fans treated to what MC Peter Sinclair described as "36 hours of non-stop top pops". The only remotely counter-culture moment? When international headliner, Bee Gee Robin Gibb, received a West Auckland welcome in the form of a well-thrown tomato. This half-hour documentary captures events.

Watch Redwood 70 here:

In 1979, the three-day Nambassa festival was held on a Waihi farm, attracting a somewhat more respectable 60,000 people. Landing a lot closer to the Woodstock mark, it represented a celebration of music, crafts, alternative lifestyles and all things hippy. Performers included Split Enz, The Plague (wearing paint), Limbs dancers, a yodelling John Hore-Grenell and prog rockers Schtung.

Watch the Nambassa Festival documentary here:

Come 1980, it was time for Sweetwaters, making its festival debut on a farm site in Ngaruawahia. Legendary music reporter Dylan Taite covered the event for this in a Radio with Pictures special. While headliner Elvis Costello proves elusive, there's great footage of locals The Swingers, Mi-Sex and Citizen Band, along with some hilarious crowd shots.

Watch Radio with Pictures - Sweetwaters here:

Sweetwaters ran annually for five years, before folding under a something of a financial cloud. In 1999, it was revived by original festival director Daniel Keighley, and held at Manukau's Puhinui Reserve. Despite a healthy lineup, the event became mired in controversy, when it was revealed that many of the acts weren't paid. This clip from documentary Sweet As follows the experiences of two groups of festival attendees - six teenagers (including actor Kate Elliott, then 17), and a group of 30-somethings (many of them veterans of the 80s Sweetwaters). There's also footage of Elvis Costello (once again an international headliner) dropping an on-stage bombshell about the non-payment of artists.

Watch an excerpt from Sweet As here:

In 1994, another rowdy youngster joined the New Zealand festival scene – The Big Day Out. Launching two years earlier in Australia, the Auckland leg of the event quickly became an annual musical institution, faltering briefly in 1998 and 2013, before eventually spluttering out in 2014. This Havoc special captures the "punters, munters, sights and sounds" of the 1999 BDO. Headliners Korn, Marilyn Manson and Fatboy Slim are interviewed, and Newsboy meets "Nelson College old girl, grunge super bride and Big Day Out recidivist" Courtney Love, who (apparently) gives him the glad eye.

Watch Havoc at the Big Day Out here:

Arriving in 2003, Rhythm and Vines has brought New Year's revellers to Gisborne's Waiohika Estate for 15 years. Favourites of the festival, Shapeshifter have played R&V three times to date, capturing one of their performances in the video for Electric Dream.

See the video for Shapeshifter's Electric Dream here: