Homegrown

Yesterday Helen and I attended Homegrown - a music festival that celebrates New Zealand bands. They split the venue up into different stages to suit different genres of music - rock, indie, electronic and dub & roots. We spent most of the day at the "rock" stage.

The first band was Streetwise Scarlet. I was only familiar with one of their songs which was the theme to a C4 (music television channel) commercial. There weren't very many people there when they started as it was only 2:00pm. We weren't very far from the stage and it was awesome! The sound was a bit rough but these guys were amazing. They were so good I actually went and bought their CD.

Next up was Goodnight Nurse. We have their newest CD and were one of the reasons to get tickets. They were even better that Streetwise Scarlet! They played some of their older stuff which I hadn’t heard but really liked. They played covers of Blink 182’s “Dumpweed” and Nelis “Milkshake” which were both really good.

After them was Elemeno P. Another band I first heard as the theme music to a TV commercial (Telecom this time). I wouldn’t really call these guys rock and wasn’t all that impressed. Some of their stuff was pretty good.

By this time we needed some food so decided to take a break and find some food. We also checked a few of the other venues to see what they were like.

After food we headed back to the “rock” stage and caught the end of Evermore. We got hear “running” probably their most recognizable song. Next up was Op Shop. These guys were probably biggest surprise of the day. I expected them to be more soft rock but much of the stuff they played was fairly heavy and the sound was great!

Blindspott came up next. They were super heavy with kind of a Nu metal (rap-rock sound). THe first half of their set was a bit to load and over the top (guess I am getting old). The second half slowed down a bit and was much better.

The final band was Supergroove who were also pretty good.

All in all, we had 10-11 hours of music for less than $100. Great deal and we will probably be back next year.