We had a great evening on Saturday. The Town of Bassendean put on a free family concert at Sandy Beach Reserve by the Swan River. It was billed as a Rock n Roll Extravaganza and for the most part it lived up to its name.
The Ballpoint Penguins seemed to be the odd ones out on the evening. They performed very well, had great voices, were very tight, accomplished and clever. Unfortunately they seemed to be more impressed with themselves than the audience was. I don’t know why an accapella group was asked to perform right in the middle of a rock concert. Their performance seemed to shout, “Look at us. Aren’t we clever?” In my opinion, any group who commences their performance at a family event with a song about sex needs to learn a few lessons about the concept of time and place. There were certainly sections of the crowd that warmed to them but by the lack of rousing applause I think many more may have sided with the voice who cried out “Get off” towards the end of their time on stage.
The rest of the performers were brilliant. I’m not a fan of ‘tribute bands’ but none of these guys took themselves too seriously so it was just a lot of fun. There was the Australian Blues Brothers Show pumping out a lot of music from the movie, Abbasolutely reliving the hey day of ABBA and not one but three guys dressed as Elvis in Elvis and the Jailhouse Rockers.
There would have been a few thousand people there enjoying perfect weather. Hundreds of kids were running around having an absolute blast. Some were dancing on the dance floor, others were just happy to play with their friends.
While the ‘Blues Brothers’ were playing I caught myself thinking that they were very, very good musically but not quite up to the real band’s standard. Of course the real Blues Brothers band was made up of some of the best musicians the world has ever known so it was a little hard to live up to that. They still did a fantastic job and had the crowd on their feet.
It was a marvelous time and I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for any similar events.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
Technorati Tags: Blues Brothers – ABBA – Elvis – Ballpoint Penguins
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