Pages

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Hear that? ... It's band comp season

Oh I do love a good band competition and Christchurch seems to be veritably swimming in them at the moment. It can only mean that one; there’s enough bands working out there to warrant all the effort and two; that there’s a big enough market to support all the new sounds being produced. In fact there’s over 500 local bands currently listed on CHART the Christchurch Music Industry Trust site. How fantastic is that? Well pretty blimmin' fantastic actually - what a great environment for young bands to enter into.

It seems to me that the amount of venues with regular slots for original music has been off tha hook this year - it’s just so great to see after years of dreary covers bands being the only live music you could find most nights. Not that I have anything against covers bands but it’s great to see original local music pulling good crowds and riding high for a change.

Spring will see band competitions kicking off this month at Zebedees with Rapid Storm for bands under 20yrs and then Roundup at the Dux de Lux next month. The only problem I foresee is that the grand final of both these competitions are on the same night. But if you look on the bright side the good news is that there’s gonna be two great gigs on Saturday Oct 2nd at Zebedees and the Dux for your viewing and aural pleasure. You just need to plan carefully if you want to see both.

I’ll be heading to the Dux because, as I may have mentioned, I LOVE a good band comp and I can’t wait to see who will be in the Roundup final this year. Previous winners include Sleepy Age, Von Klap, The Tiger Tones, Bang! Bang! Eche!, Slipstream, The Undercurrents, Shapeshifter, The O'Lovelys, The Deceivers, The Insurgents, Heavy Jones Trio and P Bass Expressway - who will be next?

I should also mention that UCSA had their band comp recently which it was taken out by Von Voin Strum. Well done guys!

And this news just in - Chartfest Band Search winners Custard Bear have made the Smokefreerockquest Final. Whoop! They'll compete with 7 other bands in Hamilton on September 11.

Watch my blog and I'll keep you posted on who's entering Roundup this year, how the heats at Zebedees are going, and how Custard Bear get on at Smokefreerockquest.

Can Out - best damn party ever!

The poster
I recently organised an event called 'Can Out' to support the Christchurch City Mission Foodbank over the winter months. The idea was simple - organise a fantastic gig with great local bands and entry would be a can of food - all cans would then be donated to the Foodbank.

Here's what I posted on Myspace the day after the event

Can Out was a roaring success on Saturday night. Al's Bars was packed to the rafters. Everyone was in a very generous and jovial mood making for an absolutely brilliant night.
The bands were all top-knotch. Loafer opened and were followed by the wonderful Tim Moore. The Eastern brought the house down with an unbelievable set - praise be and thank the powers above for the Eastern family. Wow! Love love love The Eastern. And if that wasn't enough to get everyone hopping along came The Unfaithful Ways. These boys just kept the good vibe pumpin' with beaut songs, gorgeous harmonies all round fab musicianship. Love love love The Unfaithful Ways.


Loafer opens at Can Out



The Eastern get all the bands up for a rousing version of the
Carter family classic "Will the circle be unbroken"



We collected 4 trolleys of cans for the City Mission - I should've counted them but I was a bit under the weather when we picked them up on Sunday and the last thing I felt like was counting hundreds of cans. I spoke to Eli and Gareth who looked after the door all night and they said that there were only about 4 people who didn't bring a can - amazing.

Thanks soooo much to everyone involved and to all of you who came along and jammed out to support the city mission. On ya!

Can Out crew Eli and Gareth.


More pics on the Can Out facebook page.

If you'd like to read more about how Can Out was created check it out on my old Myspace blog

Welcome to my new blog

Kia ora and welcome to my new blog.

I've been blogging away on Myspace for a while now about the Christchurch music scene and it recently occurred to me that although people were happily reading my posts it didn't make a whole lot of sense for them to be tied up in amongst our band blog.

So in the interest of good housekeeping (something I'm sure to discuss in detail at some point) Loafer's blog will remain just that, and all other comments and thoughts I have on the local music scene will now be here.  Plus the Myspace blog space is quite limited in regards to content management and template styles so HELLO blogspot!