Skyfire is back after five years

The Canberra Times

MIX 106.3's Nigel "Nige" Johnson and the man who creates the Skyfire soundtrack, Adam Jansen, share their memories of the event and their excitement for its return on Saturday, March 16

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - I first worked at a Skyfire as a street teamer.

00:16 So that was in 2006, and it was my job

00:19 to get the performing artists back and forth

00:21 in between the stage and the VIP function.

00:25 - Which is a much tougher job than you'd think sometimes,

00:27 depending who it is.

00:29 - The artist that year was Lee Harding of Wasabi fame.

00:33 Remember that guy?

00:34 - No.

00:34 - Yep, so that was the first guy.

00:35 - Nobody knows.

00:36 - Well, Lee's family might.

00:39 But yeah, that was the first Skyfire I worked at.

00:40 So that was when I was a street teamer.

00:42 And then I made my first soundtrack for the Skyfire 25,

00:47 which was in 2013.

00:50 So that was my first one.

00:51 And I've made all of the soundtracks since,

00:53 including a soundtrack for the one that didn't happen.

00:56 - And then COVID just,

00:57 like it was, we were a fortnight out, weren't we?

01:00 Or thereabouts, when they made the call?

01:01 - It was the day before.

01:02 - It was the day before.

01:03 - It was the Friday.

01:04 - Wow.

01:04 - It was the Friday.

01:05 So the soundtrack was ready to go.

01:06 All of the production was ready to go.

01:08 Ricky Lee was all set to perform.

01:09 And then yeah, we had to can it the day before.

01:12 - My first experience with Skyfire, believe it or not,

01:14 was as a listener.

01:17 1989, I was pumped as a young bloke in Canberra.

01:21 We were not even 12 months into having FM radio.

01:24 Up until that point, it was just the two AMs.

01:26 And all of a sudden, there's two new radio stations.

01:29 And one of them says they're gonna blow up

01:31 a hundred grams worth of crackers in time to music.

01:34 And as much as that's become a part

01:36 of Canberra's vernacular these days,

01:38 Skyfire is just an annual event.

01:40 It's become almost like Floriade.

01:42 There was a time, obviously in '89,

01:44 we had no idea what that was all about.

01:45 And I campaigned heavily for my family

01:48 to go and check it out.

01:49 The only person I could get across the line

01:51 was my old man, Barry.

01:53 My sister and my mom weren't interested.

01:54 They were like, "Burn up fireworks?

01:56 "No, that sounds rubbish."

01:58 So Dad and I went and we watched the first Skyfire

02:01 that ever happened from Commonwealth Avenue Bridge.

02:04 'Cause in that first year,

02:05 you could actually stand on the bridge and watch it.

02:06 It was all in the lake.

02:09 And they had me immediately.

02:10 By the end of that, I was like, "Whoa."

02:13 And I'd love to tell you,

02:14 that's probably when I decided

02:15 I absolutely had to work at a radio station.

02:17 So I went to every Skyfire since.

02:20 After that, every year.

02:21 And then eventually got a job here in 1998.

02:24 And so yeah, there was a period,

02:26 I missed a couple recently,

02:27 but up until recently,

02:29 I could look you in the eye

02:30 and say I've been to every single Skyfire,

02:32 either as a listener or an employee.

02:35 And there's no gig in Canberra I'm more proud of.

02:38 And that's not just 'cause I work here.

02:40 I just think it's an amazing event for anyone.

02:42 So if you haven't seen one before,

02:45 check it out, it's awesome.

02:46 - I reckon in total, I probably spent about three days on it.

02:49 So three work days.

02:52 Came together quicker this year

02:54 than I think it had in previous years.

02:56 I had a lot, because this is the first soundtrack I've made

03:00 that's going across both stations.

03:01 So we've never had one before,

03:03 a soundtrack that was targeted

03:04 at both the hit audience and the mix audience.

03:07 So I had a lot more freedom.

03:08 So I had an opportunity to use,

03:11 in excess in the same thing as,

03:13 whoever's big right now.

03:16 We're both far too old to know that.

03:17 - I guess, our target demographic for this year is.

03:19 - Dua Lipa.

03:21 - Anyone from 10 to 85.

03:23 - Yeah, yeah.

03:24 - So Frank Sinatra right through to Ed Sheeran, basically.

03:27 - We've got bad news for you

03:28 if you're expecting Frank Sinatra.

03:30 - Or Ed Sheeran.

03:32 - But yeah, so that was the challenge this year,

03:37 but it was actually, it was a fun challenge

03:39 of making something that was designed

03:40 for a broader audience than I think we had before.

03:43 And because we haven't done a soundtrack

03:44 or a Skyfire in five years,

03:46 I could go back to some of those old Skyfire favorites

03:50 and no one was gonna say, "Oh, you used that last year."

03:52 So yeah, there was an opportunity to,

03:55 yeah, I had a lot of songs to pick from this year

03:58 and I had a lot of fun putting it together.

04:00 So hopefully, hopefully, hopefully people enjoy it.

04:03 Hopefully, fingers crossed.

04:04 - And if they don't, well, that's on them, truly.

04:07 'Cause he's done a great job.

04:08 - You haven't heard it.

04:10 - Nigel's only out to hear it.

04:11 - I can tell just looking at it.

04:12 See, there's a, that may not mean much to me,

04:14 but I can hear that and it sounds wonderful.

04:17 - I remember when I first got started in production,

04:19 people said if there's lots of blocks on the screen,

04:21 then a lot of work's gone into it.

04:23 - Yep.

04:23 - All right, is that a lot of blocks?

04:24 - That looks like a lot of blocks.

04:26 I feel like there's a lot of purple.

04:28 - A lot of green.

04:29 - Not as much green as I would have liked to see.

04:31 - But first, throughout January,

04:33 and then he generally will put the fireworks together.

04:35 So he'll sync them up over the course of February.

04:37 So over the time, so it's all set.

04:39 It's all good to go.

04:40 It has been for quite a few weeks.

04:41 He has a thing called coding, so you can actually see it.

04:45 I don't have it, otherwise I would show you.

04:47 It has the music on one block on a screen,

04:50 and then it's got the coding for the fireworks on the next,

04:52 which is like a computer generated, I guess,

04:55 image of how it's all gonna look.

04:57 - Basically sorcery, witchcraft.

05:00 We don't understand it and we fear it a little, to be fair.

05:03 - Witchcraft or science?

05:04 - Both.

05:05 - Probably neither.

05:06 - In equal measure, you know.

05:08 - I'm just looking forward to 100,000 people

05:10 getting together down at the lake again.

05:13 - Yeah, because it's something that we kind of did.

05:16 - Yeah.

05:16 - I hope that doesn't sound arrogant.

05:18 That's not what I mean.

05:19 I just, the pride that comes with that, I guess.

05:21 Like when you look at the 35 odd nutbags

05:26 who work at this radio station,

05:28 the question I ask myself at the end of every Skyfire

05:31 is how on earth did we pull this off?

05:33 How did we make this all happen?

05:35 And just blood, sweat, and tears.

05:37 - The other thing too, and I think Nige mentioned as well,

05:39 that they're on air from five o'clock.

05:41 So it's not just a 20 minute fireworks demonstration.

05:46 We've got artists coming earlier in the day.

05:48 Dragon's gonna be up on stage,

05:49 which I'm absolutely pumped about.

05:51 So yeah, we've got Dragon.

05:52 - That's what Dragon yourself out for?

05:54 - So they'll be on the main stage.

05:58 We've got DJ, we've got Jazzy K performing.

06:00 It's not just, again, it's not just about the fireworks.

06:04 - It's an event.

06:05 - It's an event, it's a three hour event.

06:06 There's food trucks, there's entertainment,

06:08 there's you and Kristen up on stage,

06:10 there's Wilco and Kord up on stage.

06:13 There's a pageant happening.

06:15 - Round one?

06:16 - Really?

06:16 - Yeah.

06:17 - I don't know about the pageant.

06:18 - Yeah, there's a pageant happening.

06:19 Yeah, it's a big three hour plus event

06:25 and it doesn't cost anybody a cent to go to as well.

06:28 So, which I think's really cool.

06:30 - You're welcome, Canberra.

06:31 - Yeah.

06:32 - Yeah.

06:33 I mean, it costs our sponsors an absolute crap load,

06:35 but not you Canberra, not you.

06:37 (upbeat music)

06:40 (upbeat music)

06:43 (upbeat music)

06:46 (upbeat music)

06:48 (upbeat music)

06:51 (upbeat music)

06:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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