I am a festival junkie. I cannot seem to get enough of them. Aside from the music, I love the vibe, the company and the fact that it’s an escape from corporate Johannesburg, even if the festival is in the middle of the city.
The strange thing about this one was that it was a go-home , come back one, which was odd.
Another oddity was this:
The music was brilliant, to say the least, and the festival very well organised. There were enough toilets, good food, vegetarian food (which is a win from which Oppikoppi Productions should take a hint) and everything was slick and just all-round excellent. The stalls were cool, and the message of being environmentally friendly with Nokia’s recycling campaign and WWF there, like its Cape-originated sibling, was very clear.
However, not many people seemed to get the message.
Rocking the Daisies marked the beginning of the real hippie festival outside of KZN’s Splashy Fen. Splashy is all psychedelic, yes. But RTD is one which is actually powered by solar, wind and biofuels, as much as is possible. Hippie to the max. I half expected to see Joni Mitchell brought back to life.
I am not sure about what went down in Darling this year in terms of environmental friendliness, but I can say this for Johannesburg; it sucked.
Nokia held a recycling campaign, and sure enough, Johannesburg outdid the Cape in terms of recycling old cellular waste – 51 items were recycled at RTD and 204 at RTG, according to Nokia South Africa. But the Joburgers were despicable when it came to their festival waste.
By the end of the festival, there were bottles, cups, packaging and just”¦dirt”¦everywhere. There were not enough bins and even though there were workers picking up garbage afterward, the people should never have left that stuff there in the first place.
This detracted from the fact that the bands, especially New Young Pony Club, Hot Water, Springbok Nude Girls, Zebra and Giraffe and Wrestlerish, were superb.
Overall, I think the festival was a success, and Johannesburg certainly looks forward to the next one. Although we could do with more of a full-weekend thing rather than having a 10pm and 6pm curfew, which led to Z&G and Springbok Nude Girls having to cut their sets short. Emmarentia dam may not be the right place for this sort of thing, as beautiful as it is, because of the fact that it’s in the middle of white picket fence suburbia.
How’s about we try a farm out in Diepsloot or something for next year’s festival, please? And for god’s sake, keep it clean!
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