Imagine if South Africa could pull off a proper music
festival. One of Reading/T in the Park standards. Sure, Rocking the Daisies and
Oppi Koppi exist, and they’ve brought out some great bands, but they’re also
very limiting. If you’d never heard of Alt J, then you went to Daisies last
year simply to get high. If Deftones were too hardcore for you, then you spent
all of Oppi rolling around in the mud, because you’d definitely never heard of
Yellow Card.
Then, of course, there was My Coke Fest, and who knows what
really happened there. I heard rumbles about sponsorship issues. But while it
lasted, they brought some huge names including Kaiser Chiefs, Muse and Jared
Leto’s Face – oh, whoops, I mean 30 Seconds to Mars. Curse my living in KZN/
the Eastern Cape in those days. Anyway, Coke Fest hasn’t happened in a good 6
years or so, so they’re pretty much out of the picture.
Just when I was about to give up hope and move to the UK in
time for festival season (I kid. Kind of.), last night happened. I happened to
catch a glimpse of a Facebook rumour that none other than Fall Out Boy would be
gracing our shores with their presence later this year. Around the same time, a
tweet surfaced regarding some kind of reveal on 5FM last night. Currently, I
don’t actually think that the two pieces of information were related at all, as
I heard nothing on 5FM at all, but a quick sweep of the interwebs did uncover
something call Steyn Entertainment. No, I’d never heard of them either. Word on
the Twit was that they were organizing some kind of festival in Joburg (IHeartJoburg
Festival), which would include 6 international acts, some of which were to
announced that very night! Oh boy!
Now imagine me sitting at the John Newman concert, waiting
for the support act to come on stage, obsessively refreshing Twitter to find
out if any of this was true.
…
….
…..
Refresh
……
Refresh….
Refresh…….
And suddenly it was true! Fall Out Boy were coming! Oh, and
Jason Derulo and Jessie J too. Now we wait for the reveal of the last three
internationals. Personally, I’m holding out for The Killers, but it’s a long
shot. A very long shot. Like, there’s more chance of Johnny Cash coming back
from the dead and playing a DJ set at The Assembly this Saturday night. But
still, I have hope.
With plots and plans already in place for a Joburg trip for
the 6th of September, I was amazing to find out that tickets are
only between R500 and R1000. For 6 internationals plus 6 local acts? I’d pay twice
that.
All together now… “Am
I more than you bargained for…”
Find out more: www.iheartjoburg.co.za
