Griet :: 2 Years Later & The 5 What’s!!
2:36 pm 
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Griet is a well known and established artist management agency and events company in SA. If you have been to a top-notch party in Joburg or Pretoria recently where you woke up the next day saying: “Jesus, what happened last night?”… chances are you were at a Griet event.
With a formidable artist roster consisting of acts such as Mr. Sakitumi, Haezer and KIDOFDOOM, with events hosting such respected musicians as Le Castle Vania, Saint Pauli, the Cyberpunkers and DJ Antention, and with a cunning ear to the ground and the ability to look towards the future, Griet is a valuable part of the South African music industry and a company that should be admired and respected.
With their 2nd Birthday Event looming, we decided to catch up with Johan Auriacombe, one of the Griet supervillains to the lame, and ask him the 5 WHAT’s:
Dont Party presents
Griet and the 5 WHAT’s
1. what is Griet?
Ok griet is 2 things. We are an artist management company and an events company. The artist management is mostly run by my business partner Dominique Gawlowski and then the events side is mostly run by me. We have also recently introduced a new member to the Griet family Mr Peter Rodda aka Lighting and stage design guru J. It is great having Peter on board cause he reminds us to focus on the people that come to the events. We never really judge an event or an artist performance on the amount of people who walk through the door on the night we judge an event by what the fun level was on the night…if 200 people or 1200 people were partying their tits off then we see the event as a success
2. what do you think all Griet artists have in common?
Well they are all really friendly easy to work with people who have a rare talent, they also understand that having personal involvement with their careers beyond the music is key. There is a mutual trust and respect dynamic happening which makes it much more pleasurable for both sides.
So basically we choose people based on their personalities as well as their abilities as an artist. We have a big “NO ASSHOLES” rule in GRIET.
3. what were your top 5 events?
- My favourite was still the Dogbox foam party in January 2010. The Dogbox parties (Griet + Hotbox = Dogbox) are always fun…maybe its because we sell creamsoda cane J
- Halloween 2010 with Saint Pauli (Germany). This was the best organised and best attended event we have ever had. Thanks to Hotbox, Doktrine, Miller and all the bands and dj’s for being a part of something really special
- Dogbox, Havanna Club rum and Discoteque present Le Castle Vania. I was in Europe so Dominique, Peter and Hotbox organized that one, but thanks to Peter every 30 min I got a nice video clip in my inbox rubbing it in…hahaha but yes Le Castle Vania (USA) is a really SICK producer and it is a massive honour for us to be able to say that we’ve had him at a GRIET party
- Ramfest 2010 Electro Stage. This was probably the most fun me and Dom have ever had. We were running two stages at the same time, the Electro stage and the VICE/HAVANA CLUB Voodoo beach party. So it nearly killed us as we were doing this off the back of our first international band tour, we brought Johnny Foreigner down from the UK and RAMFEST was their last show of the tour.
- There is just so many shows that were fun so I’ll just mention a few and then they can all be my number 5. Lark 2009 tour (epic!!!), DJ Antention (Russia); love his music!!! Cyberpunkers on the roof top (because the buildings power board blew up and Cyberpunker’s were so damn awesome that they were cool with playing to a crowd of 600 people on 4 monitors…Respect!!!), Haezer’s first ever Gauteng tour and of course the Johnny Foreigner (UK) SA Tour. Johnny Foreigner was the first international act we ever had…the band was great and we really learnt a lot from this tour
4. what can we expect from Griet in the future?
Well we are starting off with two banger productions in 2011…the 2nd annual DOGBOX Foam party in Pretoria and then the Electro stage again at RAMFEST! Together with the Fourie brothers, the owners of RAMFEST, we are developing what we think will be one of the most impressive productions for dance music at a local outdoor festival. What we love about RAMFEST is that they are all about the fun level as well, not being fancy…people at RAMFEST are not afraid to go completely nuts.
From the artist management side we are going to be sending a lot more of our artist overseas…From the beginning we said that our main goal must be to get our people global careers in music. HAEZER went 4 times this year already, all of which were significantly successful tours and now we want to get Mr Sakitumi, yesterday’s Pupil and Double-Adapter there too. In June 2011 we have plans for a massive European tour, HAEZER is already booked for Portugal and Australia with Trashbags in Jan and Feb and hopefully getting into the Asian and American markets by end of next year as well.
From the event side we really want to start bringing over some bigger internationals and also we want to start doing some small band shows again, there are so many new alternative bands coming out but they are really struggling to get people who like music to come to their shows
4. what do you think of the South African music industry and club scene?
Shit I hate this question…even back in the kidofdoom days we always got this question but then again a lot has changed since those days…it’s actually awesome to see how many SA bands are touring the world like Isochronous just toured Germany and played to over 100 000 people in total and when I was at Pukkelpop in Belgium this year it was great to see people with Jack Parow hats and Die Antwoord t shirts…hey even go on youtube and search Haezer, most of the live footage is from international shows where people actually know the words to the songs…that’s also pretty damn epic .
As for local the cub scene, it’s great there is a party for any kind of music you like happening in most of the big cities all the time.
As for band shows more people need to start going to support bands they like…it’s really sad going to see a band you like and there are only 50 people there.
On behalf of everyone at GRIET I just want to give a big thank you to all the people that have supported our artists and have come to all our events and also to the Hotbox gangsters..all the shows we have done together have been endless fun
MORE GRIET?
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