Friday Night

Last night my friends Bobbie-Leigh and Francesca and I went out to this concert in town.
Bobbie was meeting a friend of hers there, and that friend's brother was the bassist in one of the bands playing. About 9 bands played, and they were all, by my guess, school-age. It was a tour, and a few of the bands were from our capital city. Since May is our country's Music Month, we thought this event was very appropriate.
Anyhow, this is what happened:
We were all going down in the same car, because Bobbie's mum was going to stay down there with us. After our drive down to our country's largest city, and a bit of frantic map reading, we had found the community centre where it was being held. We got there at about 6.30, so waited around in the foyer until the show started at 7. It was only $5 to get in, and upon entry we were given free stuff, and c'mon, everyone loves free stuff! The pack was full of badges, guitar picks, ear plugs, stickers and even some coasters. The first band up was Charm School Rejects, which was the band whose bassist's sister we knew. They were pretty good, and it's impressive that they were already writing and performing their own material at such a young age. Every other band that played performed some original material as well, and that is very encouraging.
They were very enjoyable to watch; there were seven of them on stage and they were all jumping in sync and dancing. We were a tad shy because the show had just started, and so just stood and watched, rather than moshing and head-banging.
We went outside after their set and found that everyone was relatively hyperactive.
We convinced ourselves that we would dance to the following band, but when we got there, the stuff they were playing was rather slow and the lead singer didn't even move. He just stood there, wearing his leather jacket, and sang with his hands in his pockets.
I'm not an expert on performing arts, but I think it is crucial to strike the right balance between engaging the audience and entertaining. It can be very boring if a band just plays for themselves.
The next band was a group of girls named Cross Eyed Mary, and they were very skillful and also perfomed well. We jumped and cheered for them, and got over the initial embarrassment of being the only ones doing so.
Over the next couple of acts, we really got into it, and pretty much mastered the art that is moshing (in our opinion anyway). Even if no-one else was dancing, we could pull it off because there were five of us (we had met up with a mutual friend of Bobbie and Steph).
Once, we even got a mention from one of the bands- exciting!
But dancing and the like is tiring and hot work, especially at our level of skill, so soon enough we were red-faced and puffing.
After a short break, though, we were back into it and I even won a shirt because I clapped the hardest for the sound-guy. Steph tried to tackle it off me, but was unsuccessful. I counted myself lucky, because the girl who caught the first shirt ended up on the floor while trying to keep hold of her prize.
Five became four when Erin (the mutual friend) was picked up, but there were still loads of bands to go.
One band, who I'd say were heavy rock/metal (think Rage Against the Machine), named Sir Psycho had a bassist wearing a Mini-mouse outfit, and a guitarist in purple skinny jeans, tartan shirt, Dock Martins and a to-the-floor, fluffy blue coat.
There was one more band after that one, but Steph had gone, so we decided to take our leave, too.
It was a fantastic night, I had such a blast. I definitely want to go to more things like that in the future.
I do recommend moshing to everyone, it's great fun and a good workout.