THE twitterings of a spoof blog site set off gossip about a headliner for this year’s Rhythm and Vines music festival but, as the subject of the rumours might have said, the information is pretty shady.
In fact, festival founding director Hamish Pinkham says neither US rapper Eminem nor his
alter ego Slim Shady will be at Gisborne’s three-day festival in the countdown to the New Year.
“But it’s great to see a build-up of anticipation in the form of these fake blog sites . . . we thought that was only reserved for (UK festival) Glastonbury,” Pinkham laughs.
Having dispelled the rumour that Eminem was booked to play (a rumour delivered complete with “quotes” from the artist himself), Pinkham says that, following on from the success of last year’s performance from US artist RL Grime, R&V 2016 will certainly be looking for a strong showing from hip hop and heavier trap artists.
Now in its 14th year, R&V has tweaked its format to deal with financial challenges faced post R&V 2014 and is once again in high demand: it last year attracted up to 15,000 punters on each of its three days, and as of last month had sold out of Early Bird tickets for 2016, with sales up 69 percent on last year’s presale.
