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Picnic time: ThePost.ie TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2006/04/09 > Picnic time Archives Search Simple Advanced Date Search Help ThePost.ie News Features TCH Archives Keyword Search Date Search Contact Picnic time Sunday, April 09, 2006 - By Simon Carswell John Reynolds has a black eye. But while he says music promoting is a ‘‘cut-throat business’’, his injury is a result of a flying elbow in a game of five-a-side football, not a run-in with a rival promoter.The man behind the Pod nightclub and Crawdaddy music venue in Dublin, and the Electric Picnic festival in Stradbally, Laois, Reynolds has watched rivalry in the industry - especially between Denis Desmond’s MCD and Peter Aiken’s Aiken Promotions - intensify in recent years.Reynolds is not immune to the competition, recognising that he has to be innovative to compete in an ‘‘extremely volatile’’ industry. ‘‘If promoters have four or five festivals, they will put in multiple offers for artists who will play exclusively for them for those four or five festivals,” he said.‘‘Electric Picnic is our only multistage festival, so we have to be clever about the acts we bid for.” While Electric Picnic has grown in popularity since its launch in September 2004 - Rolling Stone magazine described it as one of the best festivals in Europe - Reynolds is reluctant to call himself the country’s third major music promoter.‘‘It is a small pond with two big fish in it, and I might be a little tadpole swimming around in it,” he said. He laughed when he read media reports about the rivalry between Electric Picnic and MCD’s own boutique-style festival, Hi:Fi, which is taking place a month earlier.Like Reynolds’ event, Hi:Fi is taking place next to a stately pile in the midlands (Belvedere House in Co Westmeath). ‘‘To compare Hi:Fi with Electric Picnic is hugely amusing,” said Reynolds. ‘‘Hi:Fi is an out-and-out dance event. It couldn’t be further from Electric Picnic.”Still, Reynolds enjoys the competition.Last year, when Justin Green of MCD was quoted as saying of the Oxegen music festival: ‘‘This ain’t no picnic, it’s the real thing,” Reynolds sent a picnic basket to MCD, thanking them for the endorsement.‘‘It was sent in a tongue-in-cheek way,” said Reynolds. ‘‘I hope it was accepted that way. I admire what Denis Desmond has built up and acquired. He has taken some big risks. Good luck to him.”Electric Picnic has made festivals more attractive to 30-somethings, eschewing fast food and expensive beer for better food and drink and more comfortable surroundings.Reynolds said people wanted more for their money, and concert promoters have had to respond.‘‘I am a festival-goer. I camp at Glastonbury. I go to gigs. I am part of the market and I felt that you need better quality and a better variety of food and drink, and more attention to detail. We felt that if we were going to do an event, we had to do these things or else we wouldn’t bother,” he said.Reynolds admits he made mistakes at the first Electric Picnic. He lost Ђ150,000 on the inaugural event and personally replied to complaints afterwards. Launching the event just two months beforehand was high risk and left Reynolds with a very short period in which to sell tickets.He said the best phone call he received in 2004 was from Ticketmaster boss Eamon O’Connor who told him that the event was selling well.‘‘The first year was very difficult, getting the acts,” said Reynolds.‘‘On the surface it went okay but behind the scenes it was chaotic and we made mistakes, but I felt that we learned by doing it.” This year he has increased the number of tickets for Electric Picnic from 26,000 to 30,000, added two stages and another 30-40 bands.There will be no day tickets this year, just weekend-long tickets, to encourage people to camp in an effort to create ‘‘a sense of community’’ at the festival. Acts confirmed so far include Basement Jaxx, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Blue Nile, and Massive Attack.Damien Rice will be hosting his own stage at the event. Electric Picnic is part of Reynolds’ larger plan to establish a strong position in the industry. He wants to have a small music venue catering for 300 people, a larger venue for about 1,500 people and a festival.‘‘I made a decision some years ago to either get really serious about it or to get out. I felt there were three things I needed in order to, not only survive, but to flourish. You need those three elements. To get the bands when they are breaking in, you need a small venue and then you bring them to a larger venue and then to a festival. I did it back to front. I did the festival first and then the small venue [Crawdaddy].“We will open a larger venue in September next to the Pod which will hold between 1,600 and 1,700 people.”A nephew of former taoiseach Albert and son of dance hall operator Jim, Reynolds cut his teeth promoting gigs in his native Longford and in a venue on Anne Street in Dublin while studying at Trinity College.In 1993, he bought part of the old Harcourt Street Railway Station, opening the Pod nightclub soon afterwards. He has been developing the building ever since.When his new venue opens, Dublin’s three main promoters will have their own large music venues in the city -Aiken Promotions owns Vicar Street with Harry Crosbie, and MCD has the Olympia. ‘‘If you want to compete, you have to have your own venue,” said Reynolds.He said he expected even more concerts to be announced to keep the venues ticking over.Referring to a statistic in Billboard magazine that showed that Irish people were among the most concert-going in the world, he said Irish music fans had ‘‘an insatiable appetite’’ for gigs.The fact that the planned Rolling Stones concert for the Phoenix Park is not going ahead is ‘‘a terrible pity’’, said Reynolds. He said he was delighted his friend and frequent collaborator Peter Aiken, whose company owns a third of Electric Picnic, won the competitive tender for the gig. However, he said the longer MCD’s judicial review of the tendering process went on before the courts, ‘‘the greater the uncertainty of the Rolling Stones playing in Dublin’’.‘‘Obviously Denis wasn’t happy with the process,” said Reynolds.‘‘I’m disappointed that the Rolling Stones aren’t playing. The reasons for it not going ahead? I wouldn’t like to say.”Another band that Reynolds would love to see is a reunited Boyzone performing live. A stakeholder in the Boyzone juggernaut, Reynolds co-managed the band’s merchandise operation. He had been invited by his friend Louis Walsh to invest in the five-piece band at the outset.‘‘I would love to see them reforming,” said Reynolds. ‘‘When they broke up, they had a huge fan base but no farewell tour. There would be an appetite for them to reform and go on tour, and it would be very lucrative for them. But it’s up to them, and who they would want to do it with.”Reynolds also wants another punt at investing in radio, despite the failure of his consortium’s bid for a licence for the 15-34 age group.That led to a high-profile court skirmish with the IRTC (now the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland) over the awarding of a licence.‘‘To this day I would love to be in radio in Ireland,” said Reynolds. ‘‘I think there is an area there where we could come up with great ideas.”Reynolds also has behind-the-scenes investments in The Market Bar off South Great Georges Street in Dublin, and Bellinter House, a trendy hotel near Navan in Co Meath, which will open later this year.He is a co-investor in both ventures with Jay Bourke and Eoin Foyle, the entrepreneurs behind the Cafe Bar Deli restaurant chain and The Globe bar in Dublin. Reynolds had hoped to open a live city centre music venue in the former sausage factory where the Market Bar now stands.The factory’s owner had promised years earlier to sell it to the music promoter if he ever thought of disposing of it. ‘‘I was walking up the street one day and Jay Bourke was at the front door of Cafe Bar Deli. I had known him and Eoin for years.‘‘I had just come from a meeting with the planners who had ruled it out as a live music venue but would allow a bar and restaurant in the building. Jay asked what I was going to do with the sausage factory. I replied: ‘I’m going to sell half of it to you in the next 20 minutes.’‘‘We went into Cafe Bar Deli for a coffee and shook hands on a deal.“The builders were in 24 hours later.“We didn’t formally sign an agreement for two months.”Reynolds said the popularity of the Market Bar is ‘‘completely down to Jay and Eoin’’.‘‘I know my strengths and weaknesses.“I am not a publican or a restaurateur.“I can barely make a toasted sandwich. If I had taken on the restaurant part of the Market Bar, I would have poisoned half of Dublin,” he said.Reynolds, Bourke and Foyle are planning to knock the Market Bar through to Georges Street below Grafton House, the fashionable 18-bedroom guesthouse owned by the three men. As in the case of the Market Bar, Reynolds discovered Bellinter House in Co Meath.While waiting to pick up his parents at Dublin Airport, he spotted an advertisement for the house in a newspaper. He stood up his parents, deciding instead to drive to Navan to inspect the property.‘‘It was a retreat run by the Sisters of Sion, a religious order. I bluffed it and put on an English accent, trying to get in. I got back in the car, drove to Dublin and rang Jay,” he said.Reynolds describes the businessmen’s vision of the new Bellinter as ‘‘a modern twist on an old house’’ and ‘‘a quirky rock and roll sort of thing’’.The hotel, which is due to open in July, will have 40 bedrooms, treatment rooms, a cinema and an outdoor heated swimming pool.Its design will be along the lines of the hip Soho House in New York and London, and Grafton House, which is run by Foyle and enjoys high occupancy rates. The Co Meath project is all part of Reynolds’ grand plan to give more demanding customers exactly what they want.‘‘People vote with their feet and their wallets,” he said. ‘‘If Electric Picnic was just another festival, it wouldn’t work. People look at niches. We looked at something that just wasn’t being catered for and we acted on it. If somebody does it better than us, then people will move on. That is one of the most enjoyable parts of business - it is the competition.“It’s what gets you up in the morning.” Business Post Archives Home | Business Post Website Simple Search | Advanced Search | Date Search © The Sunday Business Post, 2005, Thomas Crosbie Media TCH разделы trinity hi-fi