By Chris Schulz*
The crowd raise their fists at the Fisher concert at Victoria Park. Photo: Supplied / Chris Schulz
Review - Auckland finally has a post-New Year's party to be proud of. All it took was a former Aussie pro-surfer to show us how it's done.
They danced in the queues for food, drinks and the toilets. They moved their bodies in the GA area, the "losing it" zone, the fenced-off VIP section and the exclusive "VVIP" tent where punters lounged on couches and snacked on tapas.
They shook their stuff on the second stories of temporary structures around the venue, threatening their shaky foundations.
They did so while dressing like their hero: in bucket hats, colourful Hawaiian shirts left open, and sunglasses that stayed on even when the sun went down.
As they moved, some sat on their friends' shoulders, others carried signs.
"Wasn't going to miss you even with a baby on board," read one being waved around in the front rows.
Photo: Supplied / Chris Schulz
"Come to mumma," read another.
Even the people perched precariously on rooftops and those peering in for free from the skate park down the back could be seen having a little shimmy.
They danced from the front of Victoria Park to the back for one man: Fisher, the 38-year-old Australian former pro-surfer turned superstar dance DJ who came to complete what has seemed for the longest time to be an impossible mission.
For years, Auckland's festival graveyard has been filled with the carcasses of those who have tried to launch a sustainable New Year's music event, either booking the wrong acts, putting them on the wrong day, or suffering from the city's changeable weather.
Many have tried - none have lasted.
It's why all the summer festivals happen elsewhere.
At Victoria Park, normally home to gentle cricket matches taking place on carefully cut grass, Fisher delivered the summer stunner Auckland has so desperately needed.
With a savvy knack for playing just the right song at just the right moment and enough confetti, pyro and fireworks to match Coldplay's recent run of shows at Eden Park, he knocked it out of the park.
"Auckland, I f****** love you!" were among the only words he said to the crowd, but it didn't matter. His constant ear-to-ear grin said it all.
It took a festival to fall over to make this happen. Promoters have admitted they cancelled Bay Dreams 2025 - once the country's biggest music event, held in Tauranga and Queenstown - because they couldn't wrangle enough talent.
"It's hard to sell tickets at the moment," they said about multi-stage festivals at the time.
Photo: Supplied / Chris Schulz
Instead, inspired by Fred Again's surprise run of packed pop-ups last March, they pushed all their chips onto one act, booking Fisher for two shows in Christchurch and Auckland while hoping they could sell just as many tickets as a fully stacked Bay Dreams.
It was a bet that worked, with a crowd of 40,000 showing up in Auckland, so many that Victoria Park heaved under the weight of them all.
That crowd was a mix of teens there to party, 20-somethings keen to keep the holiday vibe going, Christmas holiday-makers returning to the city for work next week, and many Ponsonby revellers keen to check out what this new event being held in their backyard is all about.
"I drank too many beers, took too many drugs," one punter told me.
He carried a large plastic bag with him. Worried about the site filling with rubbish, he was partying and helping cleaning contractors do their job.
None of this would have worked without Fisher meeting the moment.
Photo: Supplied / Chris Schulz
His was a performance that built and morphed across the night, beginning with dancefloor fillers and then adding plenty of crowd-pleasing singalongs into the mix, including booming remixes of Bob Marley's 'Jammin', Gotye and Kimbra's 'Somebody That I Used to Know,' and Sir Mix-A-Lot's 'Baby Got Back', all receiving rapturous responses.
His set was accessible, friendly, and often joyous, a vibe that landed somewhere between Fred Again's blissful beats and Flume's harder-edged material.
With a nearly full moon gleaming overhead, the Sky Tower lit up behind the stage, and four screens towering over the star, this felt like a taste of Coachella's Sahara Stage smack bang in the middle of the city.
It was so good that even when dark clouds that had threatened to dampen proceedings all evening finally opened up and drenched the site fans cheered the rain on.
Last night landed as a surge of dance acts head our way, with Becky Hill warming things up on Friday night at Golden Lights in West Auckland, and Kaytranada and Channel Tres coming our way next week.
Performances by Nia Archives, Dizzee Rascal, Carl Cox, Dimension and Synthony are all happening in the coming months, with all eyes on the big one: Charli XCX finally giving us a taste of her brat summer at Laneway.
But they're going to struggle to top Fisher's performance.
Photo: Supplied / Chris Schulz
"That could have gone for another four hours," a sweaty, happy, grinning punter told me after the show had ended with a pounding remix of the Black Eyed Peas' 'Pump It'.
It's true.
No one seemed to want to leave, and security had to clear punters off the site well after the star had left. Tauranga's loss, it seems, is Auckland's gain.
* Chris Schulz is a freelance entertainment journalist and the editor of the industry newsletter Boiler Room.
