Monday, July 18, 2016

Boomshack Band: In Which I Decide to Socialize

I went to a musical event in town last night at the Poverty Bay Club. Part of the building also houses the Dome Theatre, the cool movie theatre in town (which I'll hopefully have a post about soon.) The concert was a fundraiser for the Dome to help raise money toward an expensive upgrade to fix some of their film equipment. For $15 at the door, it was definitely worth supporting this historical and cultural landmark. This is a picture of the building that I stole from TripAdvisor, so you can get an idea of the atmosphere, at least of the outside.


So for an extremely unexpected turn of events, I decided to forgo my evening of reading by the fire at the Barn, and instead tag along with my cousins and their friends to experience the exciting nightlife of Gisborne... We didn't see more than three cars on our way because absolutely nothing happens in town after about 5pm, but once inside, I realised this was where everyone is hiding tonight.



Now, I haven't been to too many bars with bands playing in them, but I think this one was pretty unique. Some things stood out in my experience. I don't have more than that outside picture for a couple reasons. One, it was about 40 degrees out and my hands were permanently stuck in my jacket pockets until I entered the nice warm, overcrowded bar. Two, during my entire evening, from about 8-11:30, I did not see a single phone in anyone else's hand. No video recording the musicians, no selfies, nothing. I decided very quickly I was not about to scream FOREIGNER and take out my phone to snap pics just to blog about later. And it would have distracted me from actually, you know, enjoying the performance and atmosphere. It was a high energy night. Everyone was dancing, drinking, just having fun with their friends, and being present.

Maybe this was just an isolated incident, or maybe it's a small town New Zealand thing, or maybe bands playing in bars go by entirely different rules than concerts and I'm reading too much into it. Either way, it enriched my experience of the whole shindig. I'm still in disbelief.

The band that played is a semi-local one, called Boomshack Band (^ as seen above.) I had not looked them up beforehand, and with an odd name like that I really had no idea what to expect--I just crossed my fingers. Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. They mostly covered old rockabilly songs like Johnny Cash, Elvis, Chuck Berry, and also threw in some surf rock and The Kinks. THIS is my kind of music! (Yes I know it's weird but I wear my weird music tastes proudly.) And people my age were dancing to it! This renewed my faith a little in the music-loving world. It's not all crap out there. I had a whole lotta fun this evening.














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