Inaugural Grandoozy festival attracts 55,000

The inaugural edition of Colarado’s Grandoozy Festival “exceeded expectations” according to organisers Superfly, with the new late season event attracting 55,000 across the weekend to Overland Park in Denver.

Headlined by Stevie Wonder, Kendrick Lamar and Florence + the Machine, the 14-16 September event marked the first festival to take place in the city since the permanent hiatus of Mile High Music Festival in 2011. Alongside the line up, organisers say they celebrated the city itself, with local bands, food and drink all featuring prominently.

“It was a fantastic weekend, our ops, creative, production and booking teams all nailed it,” says Grandoozy’s executive producer David Ehrlich. He continues: “I was Rick Farman’s [Superfly co-founder] chauffeur for a few years. I got to know him really well and we looked at a ton of sites together [for the festival].”

“It was a fantastic weekend, our ops, creative, production and booking teams all nailed it”

According to Ehrlich, planning for the festival started four years ago, with local authorities initially opposed. “We were very reluctant at first,” explains Fred Weiss, director of finance for Denver’s Parks and Recreation department. In a bid to change minds, Weiss and a colleague were invited to Superfly’s Outside Lands in San Francisco. “Going to Outside Lands was incredibly useful,” Weiss adds. “We were able to relay our experience in seeing how professional Superfly are and how well they work with the city.”

Whilst the event largely received praise all-round, Superfly co-founder Jonathan Mayer was quick to admit some lessons would be learnt from the first edition. In particular, many festivalgoers found fault with the event’s transportation plans, with one local news outlet calling the unorganised ride sharing system implemented on Friday “a major buzz-killer”. Mayer reflects, “That’s the reality of our business – you do a lot of planning, you do a lot of coordination with different officials, and then you do [the event] and everyone learns how to do things better.”

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Festival Focus: FIB, Outside Lands, Forbidden Fruit

Jess Glynne, The Coral, Soulwax and The Kills are among the 16 new acts announced earlier today for the 21st Festival Internacional de Benicàssim (FIB).

They join Rat Boy, Dan Deacon, Walking on Cars and Little Simz, local talent Zahara, Lois, Baywaves and Aeries and DJs John Talabot, The Magician, Ryan Hemsworth and Mr Oizo (will Flat Eric be there too?) at the Valencian beach festival from 14 to 17 July.

Bonnaroo promoter Superfly will this August welcome Radiohead, Lana del Rey, Duran Duran, Air, Beach House and J. Cole to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco for the ninth Outside Lands.

Also performing will be LCD Soundsystem, who clearly aren’t worried about having any free time this summer, Lionel Richie, The Last Shadow Puppets and, perhaps most excitingly of all, Animal’s band from The Muppets, Dr Teeth and The Electric Mayhem. (Lana del Rey photo by Thomas Hawk.)

Here’s the line-up video:

Another band for whom spare time is at a premium, Tame Impala, have also just added another event to their ever-growing list of festival commitments: Project Pabst, in Portland, Oregon. The Australian band will perform at the MusicfestNW spin-off on Sunday 28 August, while Duran Duran and Ice Cube will play the previous day.

T in the Park, whose future is looking rosy after its Scottish government grant was ruled to be legal at the end of March, added 11 new acts to its line-up over the weekend. Lightning Seeds, Ash, Augustines, Sunset Sons, Alessia Cara, Borns, DMA’s (with booing Noel Gallagher in tow), Vant, The Struts, The Sherlocks and JR Green will play DF Concerts’ long-running festival for its second year at Strathallan Castle in Perthshire from 8 to 10 July. (Lightning Seeds photo by Coventry City Council.)

Also adjusting to life at a new home is eco-friendly French festival We Love Green, which will move to Bois de Vincennes park in Paris this year. PJ Harvey, Air, Diplo, James Blake, Hot Chip, Savages, Amon Tobin and – yes – LCD Soundsystem lead its first wave of confirmed acts.

Following the sad decline of Kilimanjaro Live’s Wakestock, there’s only one contender for the title of the UK’s premiere festival of music and watersports, and Boardmasters 2016 has the line-up to prove it: Maxïmo Park, Michael Kiwanuka, My Nu Leng and Dread MC and 16 more acts have been added to a bill that already includes Deadmau5, James Bay, Chase & Status, Primal Scream, Mystery Jets, Kaiser Chiefs and Wolf Alice.

Back in North America, Pemberton Music Festival has revealed its 2016 line-up. Performing at the HUKA Entertainment-promoted event, which takes place from 14 to 16 July in Pemberton, British Columbia, are Pearl Jam, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, The Killers, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, FKA Twigs, Mastodon, Billy Idol, Girl Talk, Savages and more.

And finally over to Ireland, where Dizzee Rascal, Katy B, Young Fathers, Bodhi, Mmoths, Steve Mason, Klingande, and The Field will play the sixth Bulmers Forbidden Fruit festival in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, in the first weekend of July. (Dizzee Rascal photo by Achim Raschka.)

Plus, in case you missed it earlier this week – or are one of the foolish people not signed up to our essential IQ Index newsletter, which went out to 10,000 lucky subscribers earlier today – Neil Young will be rockin’ in the Nordic world at Roskilde in July…