O.N.O Hip Hop Hooray – where is the love?

Just last Saturday, I attended the O.N.O Hip Hop Hooray party. It was a disappointment.
I was disappointed, not because the event was lousy, in fact, it was so lovely, it broke my heart.

O.N.O stands for One Night Only, a series of 5 genre-themed parties. Hip Hop, I must say, was a brilliant choice to kick off the series. 8 top local DJs were invited to spin for the night from 8pm to 5am:
DJ Garuda (Singapore, New York)
DJ Krumbs (Singapore, the Netherlands)
DJ Jstyles (DMC Champion Singapore 2000, Club Mink Resident DJ)
DJ Andrew Chow (DMC Champion Singapore 1998,1999, 2002)
DJ Andrew T (Butterfactory Resident DJ)
DJ Titus (Singapore, Australia)
DJ Ko Flow (DMC Champion Singapore 2003)
DJ Ollie Des (Superfellaz, dblO Resident DJ)

Sounds good already, isn’t it?

On top of that, it was held at the Marina Barrage. Check out the awesome view under the stars:

The event organisers had everything beautifully conceptualised and planned. Besides the great array of DJs and amazing venue, they put together FOUR gazebos for guests to exchange for their 2 alcoholic drinks, or to get more drinks.  The stage, lighting and sound was fabulous. They even made arrangements for shuttle bus services through the night till 6am!

But look at what happened:

That was taken at around 11.15pm. We were hoping that the crowd was streaming in slowly.
More than 300+ said they were attending on the facebook invite page.. but it seemed like only 50-70 made it there.

Everything was perfect, from the music, the ambience, the space for people to dance or mingle…there was a smoking area, everything! Even the weather was on their side! It rained that day, but it stopped in the afternoon, and the lawn had enough time to dry up.
So what really happened?

My first reaction was that Singaporeans do not give a damn about local talents or appreciate good music. It costs $30 for early purchase of the tickets, and $40 at the door. Maybe, like what one of my friend felt, was that $30/$40 was too expensive for an event like that, especially since he was not really into such partying events. What about the party-goers? Maybe they are not THAT into the music or the DJs to pay above the usual club cover rates, since they can get their party-fix at any of the clubs anyway.

Then, it could be due to the lack of publicity. At least 14,000 friends were invited to the event via Facebook. Out of that figure, about 10%, indicated they were either “not attending”, or “maybe”. About 50% didn’t reply. I bet they didn’t even know that even existed on their Facebook invite.

I was very excited when I saw this event on Facebook, and I went around looking for friends to attend this with. None of them knew about it. Looks like there were not any other avenues for publicity?

I’m guessing the organisers spent at least $350,000, and only received $2000+ back in sales. SIGHHHH. I wished they cut back on the gazebos and alcohol booth, DJs and the shuttle service..and spent maybe, $50,000 on more advertising and publicity?

My friends and I agreed that the event was great in content and concept. It was a pity there was no crowd to complete that splendid night.

New this week – Elvis Costello on Sesame Street

This is really cute. Somebody commented on youtube “funny that my kid will learn about elvis via elmo — instead of via drugs like the rest of us did.”

Enjoy the video!

Jason Mraz & Shlomo – The incredible Voice

Jason Mraz jams with Brit beatbox artist and World Loop station Champion Shlomo. A trained percussionist & jazz drummer, he discovered his talent for beatboxing when he could not physically practice on the drums. He is the founder of the world’s first beatboxing choir, the Vocal Orchestra.

Together with Jason Mraz’s ever-carefree style, see how sparks fly between the two in this video.