Unexpectedly awesome
New Year’s Eve 2024 dawned grey, wet and windy. Not a ray of summer sun in sight. Temperature around 13°, a biting Southerly whipping across the city.
Hmmm. Better wear all my winter under-costume gear and pretend it’s NYE in the Northern Hemisphere instead.
We had been invited to take part in the inaugural Courtenay Carnival on New Year’s Eve – a new initiative to get people back to the former Party Central that is Courtenay Place, and have a wonderful night while doing it. We’d performed at the “trial run” Courtenay Place Block Party back in November, which had been short, sweet, super-cold and a pretty minimal audience, so I don’t think we were necessarily expecting a brilliant atmosphere at the Courtenay Carnival either.
How wrong we were.
We gathered in our Green Room for the evening – the newly refurbished Cambridge Hotel (which is actually pretty awesome – they’ve done an amazing job, considering how run-down and dodgy it used to be) and prayed for the rain to stop and not come back. Then, prepared to battle the weather, we ventured out down the backstreets to get to our starting-point at the corner of Tory Street and Courtenay Place. It was still drizzling, but only a bit, which under these conditions we considered a win.
There was a surprisingly large number of people waiting on the street for us to begin, all rugged up against the cold, and we spent about 15 minutes doing a bit of a static show, before heading off on a parade down Courtenay Place, followed by our crowd.
I’m not sure how or when it happened, but sometimes during a gig you can really feel the energy building in a super-positive way. Suddenly we were all grinning like mad people, and whooping aloud in the good bits, and just – really going for it.
Well. This was unexpected!
We did a bit of a stop-and-play-for-the-special-people when we reached the fenced-in “VIP Lounge” halfway down Courtenay Place, and then continued on to the end of the street. After a bit of an awkward shuffle round in the confined space to face in the opposite direction, we were ready for part #3 – our static performance in front of the main stage. Here, the crowd was reasonably substantial, and we could see they were up for a bit of drumming and dance.
We had a most excellent time – I remember at one point a dancer turned around and gave the drummers the most beatific smile – which summed up the evening for all of us, really.
After we’d completed our set and taken up loads of room in front of the stage doing our obligatory Team Photo, we realised that the band on after us was doing some pretty awesome covers of some pretty awesome oldies-but-goodies, so we all stuck around and danced and sang our way through Love Shack, Walking on Sunshine, and other old favourites.
The Cambridge had put on some lovely post-gig nibbles for us, which was very kind of them, so we were able to warm up in most convivial surroundings, whilst noshing on free food and having a cheeky New Year’s Eve lemonade for good measure.
We may not have been walking on sunshine weather-wise, but the atmosphere within the band and the crowd more than made up for it.
Happy New Year!
Photo gallery
Photos by Alison Green, Chris McKeown, Kelly Etuata, Kent Nation, Natalie Crane, Rebecca Routhan and Vicky Lin. Click on any thumbnail to see the larger version:
