It's 2007 and as several of the clubs around the island are paying the price for their alledged inability to control the consumption of the drugs that have been part and parcel of dance music since its arrival, a new trend in musical direction has crept into the equation.
’Indie’ music, Ibiza style, has caught the imagination of the international press, to supercede those stories of people being run over on the Sant Antoni road, or confined to hospital having bought dodgy drugs. Positive press about Ibiza can now be found in the international papers and on TV, albeit in the music section. However, we have to start somewhere...
Over the last couple of years Ibiza has attracted far more press for ‘indie’ music, involving scruffy Brits wielding guitars, than it has for the aging DJ heroes of the last two decades. At the same time there has been a big shift in youth and musical culture in the UK, which to many people at home appears to revolve around Ibiza.
The ‘gig’ that has caught the imagination of not only the press but, more importantly, today’s younger generation of music lovers is known as ‘Ibiza Rocks’. Recognising that dance music, as it approaches its twentieth birthday, has largely become the property of ‘30-somethings’ Ibiza Rocks set out to bring some of the new stars of the rock music festival circuit to Ibiza.
The way that this has been achieved to date has been by putting on gigs on a Tuesday night (whilst bands are between festivals and might fancy a bit of a holiday before next weekend’s big festival elsewhere in Europe), and utilizing the unmatched skill for finding sponsors that the management have perfected through the Manumission project.
This passion based project was conceived in response to the growing demand for guitarbased indie music in the UK, which is traditionally a leader in musical trends that eventually ripple their way around the rest of the globe. The theory runs that nowadays, in the world of MP3s and iPods, people are able to access so many different genres of music almost seamlessly that boundaries are becoming blurred, to the extent that there’s no reason why a night out in Ibiza shouldn’t include an indie rock band after sunset followed by dance tunes till sunrise at one of the clubs. In fact to this end Ibiza Rocks will be taking over the Global Room at Pacha every Tuesday night to enable you to do just that! Initially people on the island ridiculed the idea because indie rock music was such an English phenomenon – but then so were many of the other successes. In the end, three years later, people are beginning to realize that this project has already changed a lot of the perception of Ibiza in the UK. It has made young people think again about checking out the island. This can only be good as young people who fall in love with the island generally remain in love with it and return as often as possible.
This seems to have proved to be the case with the bands too, they love it. An intimate venue playing to a small crowd on the beach under the stars serves as a contrast for them to the huge arenas that make up the rest of their tour.
But these big names are extremely expensive to employ. They need top of the range equipment and a back up crew of up to twenty people, who have to be accommodated in villas for the duration. Whilst on tour during the summer festival season these bands normally play to audiences approaching 100,000, but here the Ibiza Rocks venue holds a mere 700! – so the sums don’t quite add up... From outset it has been an unlikely formula for an island with a reputation like Ibiza, but every gig has sold out well in advance, to the point that the obvious, if not only, solution is to take the concept to one or more of the big clubs.
Andy McKay, the visionary promoter, can see a time when Ibiza will have live bands every night throughout the summer, which would give him a fighting chance of making some money for his trouble.
But somehow one gets the impression that this is not a project simply about making money. It’s certainly not one that’s likely to generate a profit any time soon. It might almost be viewed as a gift to the island from a grateful resident: to keep it on track for the 21st C. in the field in which it has excelled and built its reputation over the last five decades – music...
As the man himself might observe “Dance music and parties are always going to be very important in Ibiza, but we have broadened the market.” He might add that there’s a reasonable danger that he’ll broaden the musical tastes of the more traditional Ibiza raver...