Fairfax bolsters music line-up in bid to entice public to Spectrum Playground
Fairfax has bolstered the musical line-up at its Spectrum Playground arts event at it looks to avoid a repeat of the opening weekend’s disappointing attendance.
Late additions to this weekend’s entertainment in the Domain includes Sneaky Sound System, The Cat Empire and Angus and Julia Stone, acts which are understood to have been booked only in the last few days.
They will join a variety of other artists including Jeff Martin from Tea Party, Elena Stone, The Knowing Glances, Olympia and Deep Sea Arcade.
A photo of last week’s poorly attended Spectrum event
It is hoped the late addition of such festival heavyweights will attract strong crowds on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Fairfax events boss Andrew McEvoy and major sponsor ANZ will be closely monitoring attendance levels this weekend, after the public stayed away from the Domain for the opening weekend of Spectrum Playground.
The free events, part of Fairfax’s Spectrum Now arts festival which runs until March 29, were hampered by poor weather with ANZ admitting numbers were “smaller than we hoped”. The weather forecast for this weekend is mixed.
A Fairfax spokesman said: “This is the first year of Spectrum Now and we’ve had great successes including many sell-outs. As it’s the ‘Festival of Surprises’ we’re making it better and better each day. With that in mind, we have been able to secure Sneaky Sound System, Deep Sea Arcade, Cat Empire, Angus & Julia Stone, Jeff Martin from Tea Party – along with other great attractions and food stalls.”
The publisher added that the Full Spectrum talk series begins this weekend “with some shows sold out or selling strongly”.
Steve Jones
It feels like I fell asleep and woke up in 2005.
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Agree with Dwight – I remember seeing Sneaky Sound System at Summadayze in 2004! Are Cat Empire going to play their little trumpet song for the 10millionth time?
Lift your game Fairfax!
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A perfect case of suits cashing in on something they know nothing about. None of these acts will put bums on grass.
If you’re trying to put a festival on use acts people have actually heard of, respect and care about.
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Pete Murray and Alex Lloyd must have been unavailable.
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Good on you Spectrum NOW organisers. Any companies or sponsors investing money so that the public can access free festivals and events should deserve praise.
PR and advertising issues aside, it seems the organizers being pro-active to the audience response. If it had been The Rolling Stones who were announced, I’m sure we’d all forgive a booking of a blast from the past.
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Didn’t Cat Empire already play a free concert in the domain in 2009 as part of Sydney Festival? Ironically also sponsored by ANZ! At least that was BYO and with proper sound and video, the Spectrum stage looks tiny.
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Come on guys, nobody’s asking you to go.
What do you expect? It’s not bloody Glastonbury.
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You would think they’d have done something imaginative. But this is just cookie cutters. Fairfax once had a big place in Melbourne and Sydney arts festivals and the comedy festival. But the management screwed all that up years ago.
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Emelia a lot of people here just question why Fairfax and ANZ had to add yet another festival to the roster when there are so many already that they could back. Good festivals are driven by their content, i.e. a program. It’s clear from the way Fairfax was desperately asking people to bring them content this Spectrum Now event is only driven by a business plan and greed. Crazy to see they then manage to completely fail in their own marketing. Have you tried reading the event website on a mobile browser? Have you tried booking a ticket? This is a communications company?? We can forgive a bank to be clueless about the events they sponsor, but not the organiser.
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Love these ‘corporate’ gigs – my colleagues in the booking agencies fully recognise a last minute booking …
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Anyone actually go and check it out tonight instead of just slagging off? I was there. Proper crowd rocking out. Seems if you build it – they will come. Agree they got it wrong to start. In a massive way – but give me a festival that got it right the first time? Ehemm Vivid who? in the their first year?? At least event organisers are doing what they can to reinvigorate. Seems it’s working too… Finally. Good on them for making these type of events free to the public and accessible to everyone.
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Well, the publicity in this article has gotten me interested in seeing what’s on this Saturday – particularly free stuff which I’m always open to.
A quick search:
http://spectrumnow.com.au/?s=F.....2015-03-21
Five free events .. none of them in the Domain?
I’m still trying to search that site .. how can I find out what is happening at the Domain on the weekend as part of the festival?
I’m not just being critical – I honestly want to know and I can’t find it. I’ve searched for ‘Free’ & ‘Domain’ .. and nothing comes up.
What search terms can I use on the site to find these things?
— Mac
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So basically free festival. Free live music. Great food offering. Easily accessible in Sydney City. No massive crowds and festival family fun? You’re right. It sounds horrible. How dare they… Cleary miscommunication is the only problem here. Generation Y much. (???) Keep complaining guys whilst watching those $80-150 gig tickets keep sky rocketing year on year. If you didn’t know about the festival before – you do now! Thanks mumbrella! See you there at the weekend!
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Call me a cynic but could there be a couple of fairfax employees commenting on the thread?
Valid comments though, it is for Free and in this day and age when $20 seems to fall out of your wallet the minute you walk out of the door, there is a lot to be said for that…
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Go and enjoy yourselves, don’t go don’t comment negatively about something you havent seen.
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So we went and it was pretty lame. The whole cart before horse thing: tiny stage and giant attempt to sell catering and brands. Even if they make it bigger next year it will still be hard to make this feel like a genuine community event. Failed attempt at a royal Easter show for hipsters.
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Nice weather for it… Certainly raining on the Spectrum parade, which is unfortunate.
To be fair, Mumbrella has promoted this event enormously. Our office was chinwagging about Spectrum over Friday arvo beers. Mumbrella brought our attention to it.
I won’t personally attend, as neither will a few of the colleagues in the office, due to ANZ’s investment in coal. So there.
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