Well. It’s been a frustrating week for those of us waiting, sorry, gagging for November 7. Yes, Hallowe’en is now a distant memory and November 5 slash Guy Fawkes night won’t even reach the grid.
Last Thursday, October 29, the Buenos Aires city government confirmed that the 2009 Creamfields BA, the biggest of ’em all in the whole darned world, had been suspended. And the reason was as simple as this: the government had not authorised permission for it to be held at GEBA in the Palemero neighbourhood.
A cock-up on a grand scale if you please.
Creamfields BA has changed hands this year: that’s to say its main man Martin Gontad of 2 Net, voted into the top 100 of an influential British electronic music magazine’s dance pioneers, is running it independently from the event’s previous promotor Time 4 Fun.
The silence has been noted all round, and more than ever since last Thursday. Clubbers have been talking about CF for months, but no line up was announced until perhaps six weeks ago. Rumours went flying round about Armin van Buuren, Orbital, David Guetta, 2 Many DJS and Danny Howells long before the website went live confirming their presence, and no one could ascertain where it would take place.
The GEBA venue, with half the capacity of 2008’s Autodromo, was then confirmed a month or so ago, and billboards covered the streets.
But despite this disastrous turn of events, perhaps Gontad knows exactly what he is doing. He brought electronic music to Argentina, he’s been promoting for 15 odd years, and all the biggest names play here because of him. He sat on a panel at the second Ibiza International Music Summit this year and frankly this man is unlikely to let the BA city government get the better of his beloved Creamfields.
With four days to go, rumours include a return to the Autodromo or postponing it to December, which seems unlikely given that it will be nigh on impossible to reschedule all these DJs’ diaries, never mind the logisitics of putting up all those stages.
Perhaps he’ll open up the Costa Salguero with its 5,000 capacity for those who already got tickets. Maybe we’ll be travelling round the city all night hunting down our fave DJ who’ve been shipped into some murky club like Cocoliche. Or maybe Gontad will have his way with GEBA after all.
This evening Martin Gontad promised me via email that he would be making an official annoucement at 11am tomorrow.
All I know is that even if Creamfields does take place this Saturday, I won’t be going because I forgot I’m heading to the Mar del Plata International Film Festival…