Bay Wave Youth Festival @ LotaSkate Park, Brisbane(22/05/2010)

Wed 26th May, 2010 in Gig Reviews

In its eighth consecutive year, the Bay Wave Youth festival, was held at Lota Skate Park.

The festival provided entertainment for young and old; music, rock wall climbing, hair braiding, bands, skate comp, hiphop dancing workshops, bike comp, music, mechanical surfboard, free fresh fruit and more music.

Soloist Rachelle V from Warwick, had a strong stage presence and equally powerful voice projection for one so young. At 15, her performance was enchanting, with heartfelt lyrics and pretty guitar riffs, her opener I Walk Away was captivating.
The crowd sang along to Miss V’s emotive but solid rendition of The Cranberries’ Zombie . Rachelle V’s perfection and charisma is solid, it would be worth to follow this amazing maestro’s progress through the ranks of the music industry.

Five piece, Upside DownSide performed their third gig ever at Bay Wave Youth festival. This death metal band’s onstage antics of hair flicking was entertaining. Despite this reviewer’s inability to understand a word the lead singer was singing, Kyle McNamara has a voice exceedingly deep and perfect for the genre.

Cross Fire and Waiting to Die were just two of Upside DownSide’s songs performed on stage, the band are all about killing and death and heavy shit.

Folk pop vocalist Jaime Wells started singing at the petite age of seven. Her sweet but powerful manner is complimented wonderfully by both, Shane Calderbank ‘s keyboard and Mark Bono ‘s guitar abilities.

Hailing from Wellington Point, the Jaime Wells Trio band are pleasantly mushy in their passionate narratives; their song, Paradise , is about “Being away from home, being away from someone.” Additionally, the Jaime Wells Trio sound like they should be on the soundtrack of a Disney animation, with their delightfully happy melodies like Down The Road.

The Medics have just arrived from Cairns to break the Brisbane music scene. They said “We are loving it, it’s awesome.” The indie, mod boys are somewhat psychedelic in their delivery on stage. The Medics’ approach is fresh and compelling. They performed songs from their latest EP including Griffin , Golden Bear , Joseph and Her Song . An interesting use of change of tempos and pace, encrusted with clean lyrics and great guitar work.

Two piece Brisbane outfit, Jaded were not exceptionally strong on stage but were quite humorous. They declared they were usually quite serious while passing the mike around the crowd, while the crowd laughed out loud to their entertaining actions. John and Mark performed a song they wrote last week about Kate’s Party which was their best performance of the day.

A larger crowd had gathered at Bay Wave for local band, Greenthief ‘s new rock style. Their unique style of heave beats and delicate vocals makes up a tantalizing and unexpected joyful sound quality. A Million Dollars , and Get Me Out of Here were clean and exciting.

Terror Lake is a four piece band from Brisbane, whom had mojo and spirit on stage. They have a soul of punk with a tiny flair of metal. Billy announced, “We skate mongo”, while they watched the skaters in the comp in the background. Terror Lake is great background music for skating too. They finished spectacularly with Blink 182’s All The Small Things.

In Myspace land, Venice Mobster describe themselves as, “punk asthetica”. This band were far from punk and more like hard rock, nevertheless, their elusive power was taken in by the decreasing crowd. Their songs Turn Up the Racket , Mountain and The Doctor were clever, hard hitting and enjoyable.

Friends With The Enemy were the ideal accompaniment to a skate and bike competition – loud, fast and hard. The recently formed Gold Coast band only had four members present but were still fantastic in their delivery.

For the third year in a row, Don’t Tempt Thieves played to a small audience at Bay Wave Festival. The boys have certainly grown in their music abilities and it is a pity that the headlining act was put last on the bill, as all of the comp kids had left the festival.

It is always a pleasure to watch bands evolve and Don’t Tempt Thieves is no exception. They played their classics, Fighting Irish , Revolution and Spank
with energy to a small number of people.