Soundwave explains Sydneyvenue change

Thu 3rd Feb, 2011 in Local News

Earlier today Soundwave festival has announced that this year’s Sydney event which was scheduled to take place at Eastern Creek raceway, has changed its venue to the Sydney Showground located at Sydney Olympic Park.

To answer all the important questions about the move – including staging, set times, capacity and noise restrictions – FasterLouder grabbed the festival’s organizer AJ Maddah for a quick chat to explain what the move means for the punters.

About a week ago the Sydney Morning Herald quoted you talking up some of the new improvements you had at Eastern Creek with new water taps and shade tents. Why have you now made the decision to move the festival to Sydney Showground at Sydney Olympic Park?
Yeah, the improvements were ongoing, we were bringing about half a million dollars worth of sheet structures and these big tents and the thing is that there’s other things to kind of improve the situation from what it was last year. We have to prepare for any kind of weather or any kind of circumstance.

However I wanted to make sure that we were as close to perfect as possible and we felt that we hadn’t got there. While I’m fairly certain that we would have got everything done in time I couldn’t be a hundred percent certain and I couldn’t take that chance. Because at the end of the day the most important people at this festival are the kids that bought tickets. And those kids have been good to us and they’ve been patient with us while we’ve had various issues and I just wanted to make sure that we deliver an event that is as perfect as possible this year.

Obviously there’s been some criticism for the Sydney festival in previous years, with some punters complaining that it’s a very hot venue without a lot of shade. Were there considerations before this year to try and move the festival?
Well, we didn’t really have much of an array of options in terms of venues and we’d been working on the Showgrounds for some time to try to have a better possibility of having the event there and they’ve come through for us this year and we’re very, very grateful.

Is the Sydney Showground the only alternative venue that you looked at?
The Show Ground wasn’t the first venue, no. We looked at a number of venues. Ever since we brought the festival to Sydney we’ve looked at every possible venue. They all have their pros and cons. We looked at Eastern Creek in terms of that it doesn’t have a noise limit and it doesn’t have a curfew, which makes it a great venue for a rock festival. But then it has issues about not having shade and the water thing, things like that, which to their credit they were addressing very rapidly.

And we’ll certainly look at going back there once it’s been brought up to a certain standard. But then there’s other venues could think they are too glamorous to have a rock festival, there are other venues that can only hold a set number of events per year and they already have those numbers of events. We would have to wait for somebody to pull an event out for us to get in. We’ve put a lot of work into getting as many options as possible.

So Eastern Creek had no noise restrictions or curfews?
Yeah, which is fantastic.

Does that mean that you do face those issues with the move to the Showgrounds?
I’m pretty much sure that [Eastern Creek’s] the only venue in Australia that doesn’t have noise restrictions or curfews.

Will you have to turn the volume down or rejig the timetable for the Showgrounds?
No, no everything else is fine because it sticks within the confines of the Showgrounds and the conditions there. So no it doesn’t effect the timetables at all. We were going to add some late night programming and add a few more bands as a one off for Sydney which now we won’t be able to do.

Obviously the fans will want things nice and loud, will you promise that it will be no less loud than it would be at Eastern Creek?
No, I mean at Eastern Creeks it could be ear burning [if we’d wanted] at the Showgrounds we’ll be loud but respectful. We’ve got our production and when we’re looking at setting up P.A. systems and anything else we will make sure that it’s loud and clear.

And you’ll have the same number of stages?
Absolutely. We’ve also reserved the park next door, so that’ll be effective for the festival area.

Does the venue have an increased capacity for you, or is it the same size?
No it’ll be the same size. We’re not interested in getting too much bigger as far as our capacity is concerned.

During the interview AJ Maddah also confirmed the venue for the Perth leg of the Soundwave tour – the details will be announced exclusively on FasterLouder early next week.