international news _ 10th April, 2007
Creamfields Cures Epidemic Of Melancholy
Text by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
Creamfields chief James Barton chatted to Skrufff this week about this
year's upcoming event and broadly agreed with the Observer's suggestion last
week that festivals provide fan ancient means of experiencing collective
joy, that are helping tackle an 'epidemic of melancholy'.
"That's an interesting view point, sure," said James, "Though I would like
to maybe translate that into plain English by saying that dancing in a field
with your best mates listening to damn good music is the best feeling in the
world."
Observer journalist Rachel Cooke culled her opinion from Barbara Ehrenreich'
acclaimed new history of partying book Dancing In the Streets, and suggested
visiting a festival could be a form of self medication, akin to taking a
drug.
"As Ehrenreich writes: the capacity for collective joy is encoded into us,"
she added, "We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk
of succumbing to the solitary nightmare of depression."
The same article also mentioned recent press reports that 450 festivals will
happen in the UK this year, a statistic that brought mixed reactions from
James Barton about the long-term sustainability of so many events.
"It is a concern and in a way it does remind me slightly of the boom time of
dance music when everyone was jumping on the bandwagon then," he admitted,
"But I think that new entrants soon find that running a festival is a costly
and difficult job and usually end up out of business".
"But saying that, we have just launched a new show ourselves this year; the
Knowsley Hall Music Festival with the likes of The Who, Keane, Coral,
Zutons, Madness, Joss Stone etc. Tickets are flying for it," he added.
James also cautioned that this year's slightly greater emphasis on live
bands (Kelis, Chemicals Bros, Simian Mobile Disco, Groove Armada) reflects
the market as much as trends, with price and popularity they key factors.
"For me it's simple if there are good artist around then the punters will
support them," he said, "But that support will only stay if we as promoters
and the artists continue to deliver shows and music that excite and inspire
at affordable prices. It's really important that we don't fall into the same
trap we did at the end of 90's by not listening to the audience," he added.
Creamfields takes place at Darebury, Halton, Cheshire on Saturday August 25,
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