Here's.....Eddie

For most people Cambridge is four days of good music, good atmosphere and good beer. For some it's an all year around event. Virtually as the chords of this year's vibe fade into the night plans will already be afoot for next year.

The reason why Cambridge has been such a success over the years is because there is a good team behind it. At the head of a good team is the man whose job it is to make sure it all works. At Cambridge, that man is Eddie Barcan. You may have seen him at the wheel of the Banana Split Mobil.

We had a chat with Eddie recently to get some idea of the Cambridge year.
#E=Eddie Barcan #N=Neil King

#N Were quite close to the start of this year's festival. When did you actually start planning it?
#E Well really as soon as we go through the debrief for the year before. We need to capture anything that we did well, what we might have tried to do that we could have done differently. There's a light level of work that goes on during the Winter, but a lot of it's formulating ideas of line up and thinking about where we going in the next year. We like to have a good idea of bands by January.
#N As an aside, how many of the bands come through agents and how many are direct approaches?
#E Well most of them come through agents, but I do get literally hundreds of tapes through the post each year. We listen to as much as we can and we do try to return as much as we can to the artists that we know we're not going to use. There are a few artists every year that come from direct approaches. Quite often they're the ones that get the showcases or Thursday night slots.
#N So January you've got a good idea of the line-up.
#E January and through into February we try to tie up the contracts, but you can still sometimes be looking for that elusive name in March.
#N How difficult is it to find a balance?
#E I think it's something we achieve quite well, but that's because we put a lot of effort into making sure we get it right. IF it was easy I think there would be a lot more festivals about.
#N Feb bands sorted, March perhaps, what next?
#E Well the other things that happen in February is starting to put the other bits into place. Sorting out the production, marquees, sound. Food, cleaning contracts, making sure we can get the toilets, all the things that are needed to ensure that everybody has a good time.
March should also see the marketing for the festival start. Designing the press releases, designing the flyers for the mailing list.
#N How surprised were you at the speed the festival sold out this year?
#E I knew the line up was strong and I thought that we would sell out quickly. I knew that Cherry Hinton campsite would sell out very quickly. I was surprised at how quickly the full weekend tickets sold out. It was unprecedented the speed that the weekend tickets sold out. I think it was a combination of the bill, people expecting the tickets to sell quickly so they ordered earlier. The pre-sales publicity was good this year.
Continued...