It’s one more sleep until Rocking the Daisies 2014! So I caught up with the organisers of the Cape Town music festival to get the inside scoop on the rave cave, services, security and more!
1) Is it true the rave cave is back?
Haha, I prefer to call it the “DAISY DOME” or simply “THE ELECTRONIC DOME”. Yes its back and its on steroids!! Its an absolute MONSTER with some of the highest tech available lining every inch of this bad boy so please try and make every effort to get there to watch at least one act over the weekend, my choice would obviously be The Presets and the Rudimental DJ set they are going to be the stand out artist, mark my words!
2) Festival goers will now have arm bands with their names & ID numbers on them. They also have to collect their bands personally. Is this an attempt to step up security at the festival or stalk us?
It’s def more for security reasons. It cuts out the black market as well…so protects the fan from devious punks trying to make a quick buck and scalp tickets.
3) How do you monitor your social media when you’re so busy trying to organise things?
We have an incredible team 100% dedicated to serving all our social media platforms.
4) I think this is my 7th or 8th Rocking the Daisies, what year is it actually? The 9th?
This is actually our Ninth year, so its the BIG 10 year next year, so very exciting. A quick stat, we had about 1000 people on site in 2006 (year one) this year we will be over 20,000 people…
5) Will we go all out for the 10th anniversary?
We started planning line ups and extras in June this year already…so expect a BELTER! I am turning 40 next year as well, so it’s going to be a pretty large year 😉
6) What don’t festival goers appreciate about bringing internationals to South Africa? Expense? Scheduling conflicts? Accommodation logistics?
Bringing internationals to SA is a huge undertaking, it doesn’t just happen over night. We are getting heaps of requests now though! South Africa being such a desirable country to visit these days and all the awesome fans is definitely making our job easier to hook these artists these days…
7) Would you like RTD to be the biggest festival in South Africa or is keeping numbers in check NB?
As a four day camping festival in South Africa, I think we are the biggest already. We believe in growing our festival organically and will never grow too much in a year…we have gone this route from the beginning and it seems to be working as numbers have always gone up and never down.
8) Has the Cloof farmer ever said we’re ruining his farm and the party is too big? (I don’t think people realise it’s an actual working farm!?)
NO, they love us as much as we love them…we have an incredible partnership and we hope it will last for a very long time!
9) Who books your line up and how to you decide who plays?
Everything is done in house. We are pretty diplomatic about who plays, so everyone in the office has a vote which holds equal weighting…its a pretty rad process and can get really heated at times, but its all good and heaps of fun!
10) What non-music thing do you recommend festival goers MUST check out this year?
You gotta get into the Savanna Lemon Tree Theatre, all our top SA comedians will absolutely floor you 😉
