Welling­ton is a great going-out town with gigs galore on any giv­en night. These are the events that stuck with audi­ences and total­ly made us blab all over Face­book about how awe­some they were.

Eru Dan­ger­spiel at the Town Hall
Riki Gooch and his 30-piece jug­ger­naut chan­neled the cos­tume dra­ma of the P‑Funk and won over the funk fatigued with sets of seri­ous sta­mi­na from some of Welly’s finest.  Jonathan Craw­ford rocked out on the bass after a clas­si­cal slice of grand piano play­ing, Ria Hall was a space god­dess diva in a gold cloak, King Kapisi made a sol­id reap­pear­ance and there were more top class per­cus­sion­ists than you could throw a stick at.  Two things made this a next lev­el per­for­mance: the 15 piece Dan­ger­spiel choir and visu­als that owned the Town Hall like it has not been owned since the ONYAS.

Sarah Harpur – Life, Death, Pets
Come­di­an Sarah Harpur had impressed us with her work in com­e­dy trio The Come­di­ettes, but brought the real good stuff with her NZ Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val show Life, Death, Pets. Her sassy stand-up ranges from her upbring­ing in Dan­nevirke (don’t wor­ry — she escaped) to her slut­ty cat. Meow. And she even throws in a few musi­cal num­bers for good mea­sure. Miss Harpur gives the lolz.

Shi­had play­ing Killjoy at SFBH
A chance to get up close and sweaty with one of Welling­ton’s great­est bands play­ing their arguably best album? That deserves some goat throw­ing for sure. From the heavy churn­ing (lol!) riff of ‘You Again’ through to the mut­ed rage of ‘Deb’s Night Out’ and ‘For what you burn’ and the thrash of ‘Bit­ter’ and ‘Get up’, this gig served as a reminder that the boys weren’t always so pop­py, but they’ve always been bril­liant.

Image by Domini­ka Zielin­s­ka

Sound­stage: Strike with War­ren Maxwell
Strike and War­ren Maxwell played a show as part of the Sound­stage series at Down­stage as sneak peak of a full- length show they are plot­ting togeth­er for 2012. The stand­ing ova­tion at the end was well-deserved, War­ren had the crowd eat­ing from his hand from the get-go as he alter­nat­ed between croon­ing and mak­ing him­self one of voic­es in our heads. Rework­ing some Strike tracks and Lit­tle Bush­man num­bers this show went off and promis­es good things to come. Earplugs were issued for the del­i­cate of ear but real­ly, hard­en up!

The Thomas Oliv­er Band at SFBH

Pho­to by Melis­sa Cow­an

Welling­ton blues/rock boys played to a sold out San Fran crowd in Octo­ber to cel­e­brate the release of their lat­est music video for the sin­gle Baby, I’ll Play. One of the high­lights of the night was the entire crowd throw­ing hang loos­es to the band, Thomas say­ing “A sea of hang loos­es was one of the most joy­ous sights I’ve seen”. This gig was a well-earned par­ty for their long-time fans and a per­fect intro­duc­tion for the new ones.