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The Beths
The Beths perform at Winter Best. (Photo: Chris Schulz / Treatment: Bianca Cross)

Pop CultureJune 20, 2022

Auckland’s music festival return was perfect – but why weren’t more people there?

The Beths
The Beths perform at Winter Best. (Photo: Chris Schulz / Treatment: Bianca Cross)

Multiple stages, food trucks, The Beths – Winter Best was just like a music festival of old. Only one thing was missing, writes Chris Schulz. 

We found a car park, showed our tickets at the gate, wandered into Corban Estate Arts Centre and then just stood there gawping, our feet like concrete blocks. We hadn’t seen this many people gathered together in years. We didn’t know where to go, or what to do first.

The last time I was at a music festival, it was to see Tyler, the Creator headline Bay Dreams in Nelson. That was back in the carefree days of January, 2020. Neither I, my family, nor much of the rest of the country has been to a music festival since, for obvious reasons.

So it was a strange yet familiar experience to arrive at the West Auckland venue this past Saturday night. Strings of lights and glitchy laser beams spread across the sprawling grounds, with stages dotted from one end to the other from a chill-out zone filled with pot plants to a clubby DJ zone nestled into a long corridor. A main stage hosted headliners The Beths and Leisure, while in a small church Tiny Ruins serenaded the few who were lucky enough to get inside. And it was all free.

Winter Best
Fans enjoy Winter Best (Photo: Chris Schulz)

Hundreds had arrived for the all-day festival, and they were huddled around tables, crammed around stages, gathered alongside DJ booths, scoffing dinner around food trucks, then squeezing into front rows.

I’d forgotten what it was like to hear music blasting from multiple sources, pulling you one way then the other. I’d forgotten what it was like to have tall people obscure your view, or constantly bumping into you. We’ve been rightly educated to avoid those kinds of situations lately.

I’d also forgotten what it was like to have festival FOMO, when multiple stages full of great acts means negotiating set lists, travel times, food stops, toilet breaks and, for parents, juggling their own wants and needs with those of their kids. You could, if you wanted, plant them in the family zone and let them get their faces painted while being entertained by the likes of Suzy Cato and Captain Festus McBoyle.

We used to do this all the time. That summer I saw Tyler, the Creator there was a string of festivals and stadium performances around the country, a record-breaking run of hot and heaving headliners that one publication dubbed “the summer of boom”. One Love. Laneway. Homegrown. Soundsplash. Rhythm & Vines. Splore. Womad. Elton John. Queen. The Pixies. Tool.

You could go see a major act play every few days. It all seems so excessive – and such a long time ago – now.

Winter Best
Lights were part of the attraction at Winter Best. (Photo: Chris Schulz)

So Winter Best, an under-publicised event held on a drizzly Saturday, felt like a wobbly step in the right direction. Everything was in its right place, and no expense had been spared. If you wanted to travel there on two wheels, two minders were on hand to look after the bicycle stand. There was probably a security guard and emergency staff member for every 10 people, and a Portaloo for every two people. If you wanted plant-based chilli, paella, or Jamaican jerked chicken for dinner, you could do so while standing under covered stages with great sound, good vibes — and enough room to swing a cat.

Those headliners delivered, with Leisure dishing out a downbeat dose of summer funk, and The Beths showing off their spiky pop-rock honed to perfection on a recent overseas tour. We couldn’t get in to see Tiny Ruins, who performed inside a small church, with queues extending out the door, but I imagine that was magic too. With Anika Moa, Weird Together, Stinky Jim and Finn Andrews on the bill, it was the kind of lineup that doesn’t come cheap.

Winter Best
A fan enjoys the sights and sounds of Winter Best. (Photo: Chris Schulz)

A great lineup, in an excellent location, at a well-organised event. Hundreds turned up, but why wasn’t it thousands? I only found out about Winter Best because of a random Facebook post. No one else in my office went. Several shrugged their shoulders when I asked if they’d be going on the Friday beforehand. Yet tickets were entirely free, easily claimed just by registering your email address.

Perhaps, worried about creating a super-spreader event, capacity was purposefully kept to a minimum. Possibly, a packed Eden Park hosting the hyped Blues vs Crusaders game across town was too much competition. Maybe it was the weather keeping everyone away. No one’s used to going to music festivals in June, especially when it’s muddy and drizzly. (According to organisers, Winter Best is “supported by the Local Activation Fund Programme, administered by Auckland Unlimited on behalf of the New Zealand Government”.)

But those who stayed home missed out. After half an hour, we relaxed into it. I smothered pastries from a food truck called Gracefully Jerked in diabolically hot sauce and ate them while taking in Leisure. Our kids ate chocolate brownies and played tag across a giant lily pad in the chill out zone, then experienced their first rave in a room filled with smoke and bass. When The Beths came on, my daughter danced furiously to ‘Future Me Hates Me’ then requested I put it on a playlist for her.

I went to bed that night with my ears ringing. I’d forgotten what that felt like. And I can’t wait to do it again.

From the organisers: 8534 people got tickets for Winter Best, and 3176 attended. While persistent, sometimes heavy rain kept a lot of people away, we’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback from people that attended. We hope to do it again soon, and hopefully the weather will be on our side next time!

Keep going!
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Pop CultureJune 20, 2022

Everything I loved about Everything I Know About Love

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The new TV adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s much-loved memoir is a refreshingly earnest exploration of friendship, writes Shanti Mathias.

Spoiler alert: the “love” of Everything I Know About Love, the new BBC series now streaming on TVNZ+, is not romantic love. Based on Dolly Alderton’s wildly popular memoir of the same name, the show is a joyful, chaotic ode to the love that exists between friends, specifically four young women living together in London after finishing university. 

I read the book a few years ago, at a time when my main criteria for determining enjoyment of media was “relatability”. So while I found it funny and delightful, I didn’t feel it really spoke to me given that I hadn’t moved to London or taken a lot of drugs. Several years on, I found a lot more to appreciate about the series. Alderton, who has co-writer and executive producer credits on the show, is probably a big part of this – the self-awareness and humour that distinguished her memoir is embedded throughout. 

Maggie and Birdy’s friendship is the core relationship of Everything I Know About Love (Image: Screenshot)

The show is anchored in the experience of being in your early twenties, where everything feels desperately intense and nobody has any idea what they’re doing. Nell, a teacher, parties through the weekends and despairs during the day, realising that she doesn’t care about her students’ behaviour. Amara fakes doctor’s appointments to dash from corporate meetings to dance auditions. Birdy, the quieter friend, tries to balance time with her flatmates with her first serious boyfriend. And Maggie, the character based on Alderton, stumbles into a dream job producing TV thanks to a lucky coincidence. She “chases the night”, regularly staying up until dawn, hoping that the party won’t stop. 

The Guardian recently published a piece on Maggie as the archetypal “Messy Millennial Woman”, known for being both very fun and completely unreliable, the latest inheritor of a trope previously seen in shows like Fleabag and Girls. In Maggie’s spontaneous trips to Liverpool and haphazard passport-losing, she certainly fits the description. But while it’s easy to judge other people’s bad decisions (and the characters around Maggie do at times), the show is instead absorbed in portraying the relational consequences of these decisions. Maggie, and to a lesser extent her friends and housemates, make choices that hurt themselves and each other, but the show is less interested in their angst and self-flagellation than it is in their exuberance and care for each other. You may not know who you are yet, it says, but you have the tools to learn. And more importantly, you still have lots of time to have fun. 

At times, this message can come across as rather hamfisted. Over several episodes, each of the four central characters has a realisation prompted by an alcohol advertisement that declares “Find the good times”. (At other moments, this exposition-via-text is more ironic; Maggie’s boss and landlord has a sign in her office reading “Make your own luck”, while a newly serious Maggie returns to her flat in the final episode with a poster that says “Work hard and be kind to people”). The final episode delivers what could be the thesis of the whole show: “You’re an extraordinary person who wants an ordinary kind of love”. This from Maggie’s mother, whose beautiful speech doesn’t quite feel merited by her brief time on screen. 

Everything I Know About Love embraces the silliness of being in your early 20’s (Image: screenshot)

But what makes this sometimes clumsy messaging forgivable – and what delighted me most about the show – is its earnestness. As playful and reckless as the characters are, they take their friendships seriously. A central thread that runs through the seven episodes is Maggie reconciling with her best friend Birdy’s new relationship – in one scene, they resolve to schedule time together to prioritise their friendship, and a few episodes later reconnect with a sleepover, giving each other makeovers and attention. The four housemates spend their free time choreographing dance routines, the pure fun of this endeavour at odds with the adult world: “But what’s the point?” asks the obnoxious hipster Maggie is dating. 

That earnestness and humour can also be seen in the episode where Maggie and her friends host a “Queen” themed party for the 2012 Jubilee, all committing fully to their monarchy-themed costumes. Later, Maggie and her landlord get high at a street party for plot reasons, hallucinating a blurry Queen. It’s also a reminder of how strongly anchored the show is to a particular moment in time. The attention to time period detail shows in the costume design (the team combed Depop for secondhand high street clothing from the era) and the extensive, maybe too extensive, soundtrack

Taking party pills at the 2012 Queen’s Jubilee? Why not. (Image: Screenshot)

Though the show is set just a decade ago, the early-2010s already feel ripe for nostalgic rewriting. There’s something gloriously pre-pandemic about all the maskless partying, dating apps existing as a mere curiosity and housemates still gathering to watch lowbrow reality shows on live TV. Four years after the book was published, added discussion of gentrification and privilege insert some politicisation to the other forms of self-discovery. 

The nostalgia is less effective in the sepia-tinged, uniformed mirages of Birdy and Maggie’s childhood. In the original memoir, breathless messaging with unknown boys and the minutiae of English suburbia are rendered vividly and hilariously by Alderton’s writing. But – and perhaps this goes back to the question of relatability – I found Birdy and Maggie’s relationship far more compelling in the story’s present, as they figure out how to pair their love for each other with a longing for independence. I didn’t need to see them as gawky, inseparable teenagers to believe their relationship had weight. 

After a restrained seven episodes, the series ends on a bittersweet note, with character arcs not fully resolved. From my hazy recollection of the book, Alderton has plenty more material from her twenties she could adapt for TV; she’s clearly holding out for a second season. I hope she gets it – I’d love to see more stories on screen about the delirious intensity of friendships you can cling to while everything else changes. 

Everything I Know About Love is streaming now on TVNZ+.

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