October 07, 2006 A BIGGER BANG Miami Festival Drafts Diverse Headliners For Second Edition BY MITCHELL PETERS After a tentative debut last year, the BANG! Music Festival will be back bigger and better with its second edition. Organizers project major numbers for the event, which takes place Nov. 11 at Miami's Bicentennial Park. "I truly believe we will hit 50,000 people this year," says Philippe Haddad, CEO of Florida-based Haddad Productions. "We are way above and beyond what our projections dictated." A crowd of that size would dwarf the 9,000 people who turned up last year to watch such acts as Fischerspooner, VHS or Beta, Front 242 and Chicks on Speed. "The reason the numbers weren't as strong is because we had a huge devastating hurricane the week before—Hurricane Wilma," Haddad Productions marketing director Starr Ackerman says, adding that a large portion of the festival's earnings were donated. "Our festival by default became a Hurricane Wilma relief fund." Last year's lineup didn't deviate much beyond dance and electronic acts. But this year, organizers went for broke in an attempt to reach a much larger audience by booking Duran Duran, Tiësto, Gnarls Barkley, Daft Punk, Common, Modest Mouse and Kinky. "A lot of festivals here cater to the DJ aspect of things, and we wanted to be different," says Haddad Productions VP Najib Elmasri, who books and oversees production of the event. "We're trying to market this festival to everyone, it's not dedicated to one group of people. Duran Duran is the 35-and-over market, Modest Mouse is more of the college crowd, and Gnarls Barkley is the current hot act that's a crossover for everybody." Waxploitation CEO Jeff Antebi, who manages Gnarls Barkley, says that BANG! and his client are a seamless match. "Gnarls has had a national radio audience of almost 100 million this summer, which speaks for how broad our fan base is," Antebi says. "With BANG!, we get a festival to play that is both relevant and dynamic, and they get a band that appeals to about as diverse an audience as one can have today." For now, Haddad Productions is working on branding BANG! in the Miami, Florida and East Coast markets, Elmasri says. To his surprise, however, quite a bit of sales have been coming from California, which he attributes to Daft Punk's April 29 appearance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. "I think their performance at Coachella was so amazing that people want to see them again," he says, noting that the French techno duo hasn't played since in the United States. "[Fans are] willing to take the trip and check them out." Some ticket sales have also been coming from Chicago, where the festival was promoted during August's Lollapalooza, and New York. That said, Elmasri says this year's BANG! will be a success. "The worst-case scenario is that we'll break even, but we're looking to be in the black." A burgeoning festival can only be successful if the right talent is booked, according to William Morris Agency agent Kirk Sommer, the company's major contemporary concert booker for the Southeast. "You have to build the right lineup," he says. "Established festivals sell tickets based on the brand itself. They have the ability to sell tickets without announcing lineups." Within the next year and a half, the BANG! festival could be taken to New York and even as far as Argentina, according to Ackerman. But for now, Elmasri is taking it one step at a time. And while there aren't immediate plans to add on another day, it's definitely something Haddad Productions is contemplating. "Miami is a weird market for the two-day," he says. "But we're definitely considering a two-day festival."